This erosion of landlord property rights will spread. Mark my words
As a landlord I don’t feel I have any rights. Reading the news and the social media mess crowing about the delay to the abolition of Section 21 and how it’s a “victory” for landlords makes me feel physically sick.
We do not know the date of the General Election, but what we do know is that when Labour gets in (I do mean when, not if) they have said they will abolish the right to use Section 21 from day one.
Labour has also proposed that landlords will be banned from selling their property or moving back in for two years once a new tenancy has commenced.
The party also wants tenants to be able to have the right to stay in a property for just two months rather than being forced to live in allegedly poor conditions. They’ve has also said guff about having to prove who’ll be financially worse off if a landlord wants to evict a tenant.
Do you think I want to carry on doing business when a government with these ideas comes to power?
I am in absolute turmoil. I know I will not be alone. Over the past few months, I have been evicting (while I still can) and selling more of my property business. I never expected to do this and I struggle every day worrying that I am knee-jerking, but what do you do when the keys to the asylum get handed to the inmates?
I wanted to be in this for the long haul and I have to remember that in my 20 years of business there have been 22 housing ministers. But how much longer can I hang on? And is it really worth it?
The direction of travel is clear. The Conservative Government hates private landlords and has done everything in its power to make it difficult to operate with their unfair taxes and proposal to ban Section 21. But the shadow minister for Housing and Planning, Matthew Pennycook, has made his contempt for private landlords abundantly clear before he even gets his seat in parliament.
What now? Where do I go from here? Is it really worth me trying to fight for my business anymore when it’s clear all any government wants is more social landlords and big business to fill private landlords’ shoes?
What really frustrates me is every minister’s lack of understanding for how the private rental market is currently working. They don’t seem to understand that currently serving a Section 21 doesn’t even get you your property back.
You have to fight tooth and nail. You have to get a solicitor. You have to go to court. You have to foot all those expensive bills and take all of that stress on just to try and get your property back with the current system – and they’re planning to take Section 21 away from us?
How much more could they break this system?
But what worries me most is the way everybody thinks this is a “landlord’s problem”. Property owners are rejoicing they have their safe space – but they need to think again. The erosion of property rights is starting right here with landlords – but it will spread.
Mark my words. This housing crisis is intensifying and widening.
Billeting, a common practice in the war, will come around again. We have already seen dummy runs of this with the government asking us to open our homes to victims of war-ravaged nations.
We have seen older people encouraged to allow younger people to lodge with them. House-sharing is all the rage, apparently.
It’s time for property owners to wake up. Section 21 and the Renters’ Reform Bill is not just a landlord issue. This is a wider issue about property rights – and about how if you think you have any, you likely soon won’t have.
