A law firm specialising in landlord law claims landlords are losing £9.9bn to rent arrears and property damage each year.

Access Legal’s latest Landlord Report says tenants do £4.5bn damage to rental properties each year.

The news follows a renewed attack on the private rented sector by Shelter. The housing charity claimed that 125,000 tenants have suffered abusive behaviour from landlords in the past year. Shelter reported last week that some tenants have had belongings burned while others have had utility services cut off in efforts to intimidate them.

Access Legal said there was another side to the story. It calculated that £9.9bn is spent by landlords covering damage, repairs and rent arrears each year. This equates to £6,600 for every landlord in the UK.

Access Legal claimed almost half (46%) of tenants in rent arrears fail to pay up even after court proceedings.

The research found that a third of landlords (33%) feel the law sides with tenants. Three-quarters of buy-to-let investors also stated that they don’t feel money is safe with letting agents, and half (43%) of landlords have dropped their letting agents to save money and avoid safety issues.

Eamonn Hogan, solicitor at Access Legal, said: “We work with many landlords covering tenant and landlord disputes. The extortionate cost of being a landlord seems to be a figure that keeps growing. Many landlords are subject to damaged properties and rent arrears. The law doesn’t always side with tenants, but it’s a hard process for landlords to go through and a tricky legal system.”

The five most common causes of damage to a property are:

• Broken appliances (41%)
• Damaged decorating (40%)
• Damaged carpets (37%)
• Lack of cleanliness (33.18%)
• Cigarette burns (22%)

The study found that almost half (40%) of landlords have been subject to a tenant not paying rent and one in five (20%) landlords have been subject to vandalism.

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Central Housing Group’s Guaranteed Rent Scheme provides landlords with a guaranteed monthly rental income for up to 5 years. Our ‘Guaranteed Rent’ Scheme protects landlords by paying them an agreed monthly Guaranteed Rent for the duration of the term of their contract regardless of whether their property is occupied or not. In contrast to the issues highlighted in this article, our landlords do not incur any rent loss at all during void periods, with their properties on our Guaranteed Rent Scheme.

Landlords – please carefully consider the risks you run by choosing to let your property privately when, instead, you can let your property on our ‘Guaranteed Rent’ Scheme and protect yourself from any rental arrears or rental loss exposure.

As a fully contracted supplier to many of our Council clients, our accounts are audited annually and are subject to regular and close scrutiny by our Council clients – landlords can therefore have complete confidence in our ability to ensure they will receive their agreed monthly rent on a Guaranteed basis for the duration of the term of their contract with us. 

If you are interested in finding our more about our ‘Guaranteed Rent’ Scheme, currently operating in north, east & west London, please call us today on 020 8447 1222.

See details of our Guaranteed Rent Scheme here