Letting agency boost as Government issues Right to Rent warning

Landlords who don’t use a letting agent are the least likely to fully understand their legal responsibilities when onboarding new tenants via the Right to Rent scheme, research from the Home Office has revealed.

Officials found that self-managing landlords are the least prepared when dealing with the legal requirements of the official Right to Rent scheme.

OVERSEAS

Migrants and those born overseas account for a sizeable minority of private tenants in England: over one-quarter of households in the private rented sector in England are headed by someone born abroad.

The Home Office says that The Right to Rent procedures and their consequences (whether intended or not) have the potential to affect many hundreds of thousands of tenant households, and similar numbers of landlords.

The Right to Rent scheme requires landlords of privately rented accommodation to conduct checks on all new tenants to establish if they have a legal right to be in the UK and therefore have the right to rent.

A mystery shopping exercise found that there was no statistically significant evidence of systematic, unlawful race discrimination as a result of the Right to Rent scheme.

BME

However, they did find black and minority ethnic (BME) shoppers were significantly less likely to be sent details of rental property, though the evidence does not suggest this is a specific result of the Scheme.

Nathan Emerson, Chief Executive of Propertymark, says: “It is clear from this review that self-managing landlords have a knowledge gap and it’s not surprising.

“Right to Rent has been through many complex changes in the last three years with COVID-19 lockdowns, the end of freedom of movement due to the UK’s exit from the EU and the introduction of the Home Office’s real time digital systems.

“Professional agents, particularly those in membership with a body like Propertymark, taking their compliance responsibilities seriously dedicate time and CPD to ensuring they are fully compliant.”