"The central proposal is that all private landlords should either join a local authority accreditation scheme; become a member of one of the associations of private landlords; or let their premises through an accredited letting agent. The Government would give a central body powers to approve industry schemes and to ensure they worked effectively. It would also, as a power of last resort, be able to prevent a landlord or agent not signed up to one of the approved schemes from letting residential property."
From the press release to The Law Commission, 'Housing: Encouraging Responsible Letting'.
A grim document
8 hours ago
5 comments:
Nah ,, just more paper. God I wish that was all we had to cope with
Signed
FSA Sufferer
It's because we all know that tenants cannot be trusted to make good decisions themselves!
The new QUANGO will cost money.
Government won't want to pay for it by taxation because is already both too high and insufficient for existing spending needs.
Landlords will therefore be required to pay a registration fee.
Landlords will factor this into the cost of letting a property.
The result?
Higher rental prices resulting from either increased production costs or reduced supply.
Perhaps not in the best interests of the tenants after all!
Well, this was pretty much what happened with the deposit schemes.
Our government really doesn't seem good at understanding the full effects of its ideas. It simply doesn't think through the second and third order effects and the motivations applied to other people.
It didn't seem like a good idea to start with. And when implemented, it variously it caused the rents to go up, or made it harder for people to get lettings. Some of the people I worked with -- in their mid 20s and earning what anyone would consider "good money" -- were asked for their parents to be guarantors instead of taking a deposit.
Because it demotivates landlords from taking deposits it demotivates them from taking on the sort of tenants who might cause them to need to take a deposit...
We, for example, have simply stopped asking for deposits; firstly because we don't believe that we'd get sensible payouts if we needed to because we believe the deposit agencies require proof beyond attainability.
But then a second reason arrived. The first tenants whose deposits were left with the proper authorities moved out more than 18 months ago. Their deposit return is, however, still being processed.
Since they've returned to Poland and we have no forwarding address I have no idea where the money will end up going to...
So basically not only do we not get the deposit if the tenants abscond, neither do they if they ask for it back!
~Katie
As a postscript, after the gummint introduced equally dumb rules for childminders, the number of registered childminders fell by 10%.
Query - was this perhaps matched by an equal and opposite rise in the number of unregistered childminders?
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