Regulation & Law
News articles looking at national legislation and local regulation and the application of law to the residential property industry.
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NLA slams CAB report
A new report which claims that landlords earn in the region of £5.6 billion a year from unsafe homes which fail to meet legal standards has been slammed by the National Landlords Association (NLA). The Citizens Advice study report, A Nation of Renters, says 740,000 households in England now reside in privately rented homes which present a severe threat to tenants’ health from problems like rat infestations and damp. Gillian Guy, Chief executive of Citizens Advice, said, “Rogue landlords are putting profits before safety.” The Government is planning to give councils new powers to tackle unscrupulous landlords which own homes with a category 1 hazard, as part of number of proposals to be tabled in a new Immigration Bill. The details of the Bill, which will be a central part of the new Government programme will be announced in the Queen’s speech this week. “The Government has rightly said it wants to tackle the country’s housing crisis – it must make targeting dodgy landlords, giving tenants better rights and driving up standards a major part of that effort,” Guy added. But while recognising that bad practice does exist in private housing, “and that it needs to be stamped out”, Richard…
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Labour appoints new Shadow Housing Minister
Roberta Blackman-Woods (right), the MP for the City of Durham, has been named as the new Shadow Housing Minister, the Labour Party has confirmed. Professor Blackman-Woods, a sociologist with expertise in housing, is originally from Northern Ireland and pursued a career in academia before becoming an MP in 2005. The Durham MP has replaced Emma Reynolds (left), who was promoted to Shadow Communities Secretary in last week’s reshuffle following the result of the General Election, and becomes the fourth Labour politician to hold the post in the past five years. She will be responsible for both housing and planning, which Labour had previously divided. Her last role in Parliament was as Shadow Planning Minister. The new Shadow Housing Minister will now have to take a long hard look at Labour’s recent housing policies, including proposals to introduce a mansion tax, cap rents, ban letting agent fees,make three year tenancies the norm and restrict tax reliefs for landlords who do not keep properties to basic standards. She will also decide which policies to keep and which were ill-thought-out and, possibly,contributed towards Labour losing the recent General Election. Only then can she begin to challenge the Conservative Party and Brandon Lewis (right),…
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Regulation of the letting agents needed, says CEO
The newly elected Conservative Government should make the regulation of letting agents a priority in a bid to deal with unscrupulous letting agencies and help improve standards in the industry, according to Leaders’ Chief Executive, Paul Weller. Mr Weller (left) believes that millions of landlords and tenants in the private rented sector (PRS) would prosper from the formal regulation of letting agents. He said, “More people and families than ever before now use the PRS and the services of letting agents. Yet the vast majority are unaware that letting agents are not regulated by the Government and that anyone can set up a letting agency, with no experience, knowledge of lettings law or client money protection in place. “Letting agents can hold hundreds of thousands of pounds in rent which they are supposed to protect. But without regulation, there is no way to enforce this and there have been countless cases of letting firms losing their clients’ money, using it for their own ends, or completely disappearing with it, leaving landlords and tenants badly out of pocket. Too many people have suffered at the hands of agents like this, as well as incompetent and unscrupulous agents who fail to provide…
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Brandon Lewis remains Housing Minister despite confusion
Brandon Lewis (left) will remain Housing Minister despite reports he had been replaced. At the start of last week, it was thought that Mark Francois, MP for Rayleigh and Wickford since 2001, had been appointed the new Housing and Planning Minister, in the Communities department, following the appointment of Greg Clark as Communities Secretary. Following 24 hours of confusion, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) confirmed that Mr Lewis, who is widely thought to have impressed during his brief tenure as Housing Minister in the run-up to this month’s General Election, would in fact retain ministerial responsibility for planning and housing in a reshuffle that has seen various new MPs arrive at the DCLG. A DCLG spokeswoman, said, “I can confirm that Brandon Lewis will remain Housing Minister.” Mr Lewis, who retained his seat in Great Yarmouth by a majority of 43 per cent, outstripping the Labour and UK Independence Party (UKIP) vote, will report to new Communities and Local Government Secretary Greg Clark (right), who replaced Eric Pickles in the Government reshuffle, while Mark Francois has actually been appointed as a Minister of State at the DCLG. The role of Minister of State for Housing and Planning…
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Labour plans for PRS would be disastrous – NLA
Labour’s plans to cap rents, ban letting agent fees, and restrict tax reliefs for landlords who do not keep properties to basic standards could have an adverse impact on the private rented sector (PRS), according to Richard Lambert, Chief Executive Officer at the National Landlords Association (NLA). While acknowledging that Labour has tenants’ “concerns at heart”, Lambert points out that the policy will almost certainly backfire because “they don’t understand the economics of supplying private housing to rent”. The NLA’s CEO (left) insists that these changes “will have far-reaching consequences for the PRS”, and could deter many people from investing in the buy-to-let market which in turn would reduce the supply of housing stock in the PRS. He commented, “If these proposals are going to be rushed into the first Queen’s Speech, less than a month away, without time to think through the consequences, Labour’s good intentions could make the housing crisis worse, not better.” NLA research has found that around two-thirds of landlords do not increase rents during a tenancy. Lambert continued, “Capping annual price rises to inflation sounds like a great consumer protection initiative, but wherever these formulas have been introduced, it’s proved to be counterproductive because it…
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Mansion Tax would be bad for property, warns agent
With just over a week until the General Election, London based estate agents Sandfords has joined a chorus of other industry experts and warn of the possible ‘disastrous consequences’ for the residential property market if Labour is elected into power. The estate agency firm is particularly concerned about the party’s plans to introduce a mansion tax on all homes worth more than £2 million, and the potential impact that the levy could have on the housing market in London as well as other parts of the country. _“In the immediate run up to the Election we are seeing a lot of influential individuals, economists and agents shouting about the reality of a Labour Government and the effects their proposed mansion tax will have on the whole property market, and not just in London,” said Tim Fairweather, a Director at Sandfords. “We have voiced our fears of Labour’s taxing policy on numerous occasions ever since its proposal but it’s now increasingly apparent that it will provoke far reaching problems that will have an effect on millions of everyday people,” he added. Although Labour insist that they want to help aspirational homeowners gain a foot on the housing ladder, Fairweather claims that…
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Ed’s last stand: “a load of cobblers”
General Elections bring out the opinions of the electorate and property people have been more than forthcoming in these last days before the big election day on 7th May. Naomi Heaton (left), CEO of London Central Portfolio says that Ed Miliband’s “last stand” is “a load of cobblers”. Among her points are: “The latest Labour pledge is to abolish stamp duty for first-time buyers buying homes worth up to £300,000 for the next three years. They have said that it will benefit nine in 10 such buyers to the tune of £5,000. Rubbish. “Labour is clearly very bad at its sums, which is why, of course, we are so worried about them running the economy. “The average purchase price for a first time buyer outside London is £137,120, (Halifax). Following the Stamp Duty reforms introduced by the Conservative coalition last December, the Stamp Duty charge for buyers at this level is just £242. This is what the Labour policy would save, not £5,000. “If we look at the country as a whole, including London, the average price for a first time buyer, is £171,870. Again, due to the recent reforms, Labour would be knocking off £937 off their purchase costs,…
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Political leaders vow to tackle housing crisis
High residential property prices are the single biggest concern among home-hunters, a new Rightmove survey reveals. The latest data from the property portal shows that asking prices for homes on sale in England and Wales hit an all-time of £288,133, on average, in the month to early April, pushed up by a drop in the number of properties on the market, creating a lack of choice in the market, which incidentally, is the second biggest concern for house-hunters. Miles Shipside (right), Rightmove Director and Housing Market Analyst, commented, “April’s Rightmove House Price Index reported an all-time high in asking prices this week of £286,133, setting an interesting challenge for political leaders. Failure to meet house-building targets since the eighties, nineties and noughties to match forecast housing demand has been a major factor in upwards price pressure both in the property sales and private rented sectors. “ As the cost of housing is a key concern for many home-hunters Rightmove asked David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg for their proposed solutions to make more affordable homes available, and what else they would do to try and solve the UK’s housing problems. Here are extracts from the interviews with the three…
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General Election
We are not even building half the number of homes that we need to keep up with demand. A record number of young people are living at home with their parents. Many young people and families are priced out of homeownership and some of these families are living in overcrowded conditions. We have committed to ban letting agent fees to tenants.” Despite the desperate need for more homes, under this Tory-led Government we have seen the lowest level of house building in peacetime since the 1920s and homeownership is now at its lowest level for 30 years. THE FUTURE Labour is committed to tackling the housing shortage and we have set out a comprehensive plan to get at least 200,000 homes built a year by 2020. Under our plan, we want to see all local communities take responsibility for their own future and plan for the homes local people need. A Labour Government will make it compulsory for every local authority to have a plan which sets out how it intends to meet local housing needs. But with that responsibility will come much greater powers to deliver the homes their communities need. We’ll give local councils the ability to designate…
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42% rise in complaints to The Property Ombudsman
There has been a significant increase in complaints made to The Property Ombudsman (TPO), partly due to a growing trend in the consumer world to challenge when a product or service does not offer satisfaction, and partly due to a sharp rise in the number of agents signed up to the TPO. Six months on from the introduction of new legislation, making it a legal requirement for lettings agents and property managers in England to join a Government approved redress scheme, the report shows that the number of letting offices now signed up to TPO scheme has reached a record level of 12,915, up 28 per cent year-on-year. This brings the total number of sales and lettings offices offering TPO’s free, independent dispute resolution service to 26,735. Commenting on the report, Christopher Hamer (left), The Property Ombudsman, said, “In 2014 we saw continued and significant growth in the Private Rented Sector. With an estimated 1.6 million private landlords, many of whom have limited experience and understanding of their responsibilities, and large numbers of consumers seeking tenancies, the role of letting and managing agents in providing quality customer service based on a comprehensive knowledge of relevant legislation, is more important now…
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