There's an article on 24Dash about possibly improving 'security of tenure' for private tenants by extending the notice period from 6 months to 2 years if the landlord gives them notice to quit, which might or might not be a good idea (seems fair enough to me, I'd also like to reduce the notice period from 6 months to 3 months if the tenant wants to move).
What is striking is this bit:
[The Inquiry] said successive governments have prioritised owner occupation, but it is now in decline.
No they have not, that's exactly what Home-Owner-Ism, an electoral gold mine originally struck by Thatcher but taken to extremes by New Labour, is NOT about. It pretends to be about "prioritising owner-occupation" but actually what it does is "prioritise those people who happen to be owner-occupiers when Home-Owner-Ism kicked off" and shits on all who come after them.
Look at the official stat's from the DCLG (Excel). In England...
- the number of owner-occupier households is only up by 1.4 million since 1991, and is now falling again, we are back down to 2002 levels in absolute terms and back to the mid-1980s if expressed as a percentage of all households.
- the number of social tenant households (council or Housing Association) is down by 0.5 million since 1991. Note: according to those figures, the social housing stock peaked at 5.2 million in 1981 and is now down to 4.0 million, so they 'only' sold off about a quarter of social housing stock.
- the biggest increase is in private renters, up by 2.2 million since 1991, the bulk of that increase was in the last ten years. Some of those will be renting ex-social housing, but by and large, more than half of new homes built in the last twenty years have been acquired by landlords.
It all stands to reason really, the real driving force behind Home-Owner-Ism is the large landowners and banks; the former love collecting rent and the latter would rather lend to BTL landlords than owner-occupiers, it being far less hassle for the bank if a landlord kicks out a tenant who loses his job than the bank having to kick out a mortgage borrower who loses his job.
Wednesday 12 September 2012
A common misconception
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2 comments:
"extending the notice period from 6 months to 2 years if the landlord gives them notice to quit, which might or might not be a good idea"
I'd say it may be a bad idea. Before Maggie abolished the Rent Acts, it was very difficult to find anywhere to rent, because the Rent Act made it so difficult for landlords to get rid of tenants, even if they hadn't paid rent for years and had burnt all the floorboards and doors to keep themselves warm in the winter, so many landlords sold up. The problem is that measures designed to protect good tenants from bad landlords usually end up by being used against good landlords by bad tenants and vice versa.
B, sure, ultimately the government cannot meddle in private contracts, I'm just saying that as a "nudge' the statutory default (in the absence of an express agreement to the contrary) can be set at 24 months/3 months, if the landlord wants shorter, then the tenant will expect lower rent etc.
And ripping up floorboards and not paying rent is clearly a breach of contract, of course a landlord can chuck out such a tenant, that is a quite separate issue.
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