Friday 26 May 2017

We own land! Give us money!

From This Is Money:

Landlords call for help as tenants can go almost a year without having to pay rent due to lengthy eviction process

Tenants are able to live rent-free for up to almost year if they're in dispute with their landlord about moving out, experts have warned.

Strict laws about evicting a tenant means it can take weeks, if not months, for a landlord to repossess a property.

Arla Propertymark, the industry body for the lettings agency, described the eviction process as 'a chaotic mess' and is calling for new housing courts to be established to help speed it up.


Don't ask paying tenants to leave then. Problem solved.

7 comments:

L fairfax said...

Alternatively if you can make a small fortune by turfing out your tenant and selling it would be a good investment to offer them money to leave quickly.
Obviously it would also be good morally to compensate them for being horrible to them (like redundancy payments) - but if you need to be told that...

Bayard said...

"Don't ask paying tenants to leave then."

Where does it say that these are paying tenants? The illustration of the process given in the article starts with "Step 1. Issue notice requesting possession of property and rent arrears - giving at least two months notice".

Mark Wadsworth said...

LF, exactly

B, the article appears to relate to evicting tenants for reasons other than non-payment.

Bayard said...

Mark, it would be more accurate to say that the article relates to evicting tenants due to arrears of rent (the whole of the section entitled "CURRENT PROCEDURES FOR EVICTING A TENANT FROM A PROPERTY" is about tenants in arrears), but does peripherally cover evicting paying tenants as well. So your solution "Don't ask paying tenants to leave then" doesn't really cover the bulk of what the article is about, which is the time it takes to evict non-paying tenants.

Mark Wadsworth said...

B, the article starts with "The eviction process can take months, and many tenants do not pay rent during this time even they though they are legally required to do so" and also says "One option for landlords is to make tenants leave of their own accord by increasing the rents to a level that they cannot afford"

That strongly suggests to me that the tenants WERE paying rent at the time the eviction notice is served and then decide not to bother paying any more as they are on their way out anyway.

Bayard said...

Agreed on the second quote, but the first quote could apply to either case. However there are six references to tenants being in arrears as opposed to only one, which you quote, which deals unambiguously with a landlord evicting a paying tenant. You have to admit that, at the very least the problems of eviction apply equally to the eviction of paying and non-paying tenants and there is no implication that the eviction of non-paying tenants is any easier or quicker, not that the solutions suggested would make paying any easier to evict compared to non-paying tenants.

mombers said...

Similar to private water companies, how about a case for rent rises be made in terms of increased costs? That'll stop rent rises in their tracks across the country. Any landlord wishing to get approval for a rent rise when/if interest rates increase will have to explain why they didn't drop their rents from March 2008, where rates have gone down or stayed the same ever since.
Also, how about a simple system to deal with revenge evictions whereby a council inspection can automatically and legally suspend rent payments until breaches of contract like broken heating, damp, etc are rectified? Together with an automatic option to extend lease by 6 months once everything's fixed, so a revenge eviction isn't possible.