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Weakening ‘no fault’ evictions would lead to exodus of landlords, says Shamplina

Leading evictions specialist says proposals to withdraw or water down Section 21 'no fault' evictions would persuade many landlords to throw in the towel.

Nigel Lewis

Banning Section 21 evictions would lead to a rapid exodus of landlords from the private rental sector, specialist Landlord Action has claimed, because so many landlords rely on them to evict tenants in arrears.

The company says that over half of the landlords it recently canvassed said they had used a Section 21 eviction notice to eject a tenant in rent arrears because they had no faith in Section 8 notices and the court system that underpins them.

“Section 21 gives landlords and mortgage providers the reassurance and flexibility to recover their asset if they need to,” says Landlord Action founder Paul Shamplina (pictured, above).

The research by Landlord Action also reveals that just 6.5% of Section 21 evictions were due to landlords wishing to sell up or move back into a property, one of the key arguments put forward by campaign groups such as Generation Rent for banning this kind of eviction.

Time consuming

“Not only is using Section 8 already more time-consuming, tenants can delay the process further for landlords by counter-claiming,” says Landlord Action founder Paul Shamplina.

“In addition, discretionary grounds of Section 8, such as anti-social behaviour, can be extremely difficult for landlords to prove, meaning it has a lower success rate.”

He says to abolish Section 21, or even dilute its current use, will require ‘significant reform’ to the Section 8 process to reassure landlords that if they had to use this route for rent arrears, moving back into the property or selling up, there would not be significant delays in the court process.

The government recently closed its consultation on reforming redress within the private rented sector including the evictions process.

 

February 5, 2019

One comment

  1. You mean an additional exodus!. Landlords are already leaving in droves, more tax rises, more bureaucracy, less hassle investments thanks. It’s not as if the courts are even quick is it. I’ll certainly sell all of mine.

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