Propertymark has responded to the Scottish government’s draft rented sector strategy, A New Deal for Tenants, warning that the strategy represents a further erosion of landlords’ rights, particularly around their ability to seek possession of their properties.
The tenant-centred approach being taken to further reform Scotland’s rented sector is overlooking the needs and rights of letting agents and their landlords, says Propertymark.
Propertymark re-enforces its opposition to rent controls and recommends politicians refocus their efforts on policies that will increase the supply of homes across all tenures as a long-term solution to addressing affordability and improving housing quality.
It also describes a proposal to ban winter evictions as ‘unnecessary and unworkable’.
Private landlords provide much-needed homes and 94% of the 240,000 registered in Scotland own one buy-to-let property. Without providing incentives to stay risks losing their investment and their properties from a sector that is already struggling to keep up with need.
Daryl McIntosh, Propertymark’s Policy Manager for the UK Devolved nations, said: “This strategy proposes fundamental and far-reaching changes that are tenant-centred and in some cases lack the data-led evidence that they are completely necessary.
“By considering tenants in isolation, policymakers are showing little regard for the legal rights of landlords and their letting agents.
“The Local Government, Housing and Planning Committee has just published its scrutiny of the Coronavirus (Recovery and Reform) (Scotland) Bill in which it too leans favourably towards tenants despite hearing warnings directly from landlords that permanent changes to the possessions process would place too much financial risk on them and could force more to sell up.
“The sector is already under huge strain and desperately in need of more investment, not less, so we urge the Scottish Government to carefully balance its reforms to ensure any interventions to achieve short-term objectives do not lead to market failure in the long run.”
What’s winter got to do with it!
Unscrupulous landlords and reckless letting agency practices over ingoing tenants affordability’s is bringing rent control closer to reality. If your applicant tenant cannot afford the rent, it should be no different than applying for a loan …. you get rejected. All you are doing renting blindly to those that cannot afford to maintain the rent is a rod for your own back and a shameless practice.
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Lol, how can you get a thumbs down for spelling out ……. don’t rent to someone who can’t afford it.
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Meanwhile from the NRLA . . . Crickets and tumbleweed. It seems Beadle’s not about.
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In The Future of Private Renting in the UK (2004), Professor Michael Ball concluded that the status quo should be maintained in terms of deregulated rents:
“Rent controls and permanent security of tenure have been successfully abolished in the UK. To go back to them would create severe market distortions and cost the Treasury dearly for no clear social or economic benefit”
In The Future of Private Renting in the UK (2004), Professor Michael Ball concluded that the status quo should be maintained in terms of deregulated rents: Rent controls and permanent security of tenure have been successfully abolished in the UK. To go back to them would create severe market distortions and cost the Treasury dearly for no clear social or economic benefit.
An HM Treasury paper, Investment in the UK private rented sector (2010), supported the view that landlords withdraw from the market in the face of regulatory controls.
Research into the impact of rent controls introduced in San Francisco (USA) in 1994 found evidence of landlords withdrawing from the market.
A further factor that may have added to landlords’ resistance to regulatory control, particularly rent control, is the introduction of restrictions in the amount of Income Tax relief they can get with effect from April 2017.
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