Sajid Javid
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Latest property news
Government to introduce regulation of leasehold property management
The government is to introduce measures for the regulation of leasehold property management, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid has revealed. His department is now seeking views on whether “a new regulatory model is needed for agents in the leasehold sector” and “what form regulation of letting and managing agents should take to best protect and empower tenants and leaseholders”. The proposals set out by Sajid take a three-pronged approach to regulate the management of leasehold properties. This will include measures to bring in regulation of managing agents, measures to protect consumers from unfair costs and overpriced service charges, and ways to give leaseholder more “say over their agent”. The Communities minister also wants to know if a new independent regulatory body for the property management sector. This is because, the Department of Communities and Local Government says, the sector is only “partly self-regulated” through the Association of Residential Managing Agents (ARMA) and ARLA Propertymark through their codes of conduct. Agents who are not members are not therefore covered by these codes and this “can provide a poor deal for consumers”. “This is supposed to be the age of the empowered consumer – yet in property management, we’re still living in the…
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Latest property news
Lettings agents “to be regulated” reveals communities secretary
Communities secretary Sajid Javid has announced a raft of proposed lettings regulations during his speech yesterday at the 2017 Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, while also revealing that the proposed lettings fees ban legislation is about to be published. The most radical of the new proposals is to force letting agents to join a professional organisation and meet “certain minimum standards”, effectively introducing regulation of the industry by the back door. The comment came during a tub-thumping speech that described the housing market as “broken” and that things where so bad he said “Jeremy Corbyn is being taken seriously” about housing – the Labour leader last weekend announced plans to introduced rent controls should labour the voted in at the next election. Sajid also said that although the Conservatives want to see more people own their homes, he admitted the chance of achieving this for many millions of Brits is now much slimmer than previous generations. “People are three times more likely to be renting than before” he said. But as well as saying “all agents must be regulated”, he also revealed several measures aimed at strengthening the “rights of people who rent”. New redress scheme These include requiring all…
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Latest property news
Government reveals promised “urgent” leasehold reform proposals
The government has revealed that its promised leasehold reform proposals will soon ban new-build houses being sold using this type of tenure. It says it will also move to restrict ground rent increases to very low or even zero, all pending an eight-week consultation. The announcement follows February’s Housing White Paper in which the government said “urgent reform” was needed to leaseholds in the UK. There are 1.2 million leasehold houses of which 100,000 feature unfair terms but these will be unaffected by the new legislation. Only future leases will be protected from unfair terms. In the past houses have been sold by developers such as Taylor Wimpey as leasehold, often at reduced cost compared to their freehold counterparts. But they come with greater costs in the long run, the government says. Examples given to support the new proposals include a family home on which the ground rent will reach £10,000 a year by 2060, making it virtually unsaleable and a homeowner charged £1,500 to make a minor alteration to their home. The government is also concerned by the practice of developers selling on freeholds and/or ground rents of leasehold houses, leaving owners “in the dark and facing increasing onerous payments,”…
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Latest property news
Javid steps in to tackle houses sold with unfair leasehold terms
Business secretary Sajid Javid (pictured) has announced that he will use the government’s Help to Buy scheme to police the growing problem of properties sold with unfair leasehold terms. Speaking to housing leaders at the Royal Society of Medicine in London yesterday, he heavily criticised the industry for the terms of agreements it forces some buyers to sign when buying the new breed of ‘leasehold houses’ being built across the UK. Javid says that although the last thing he wants to do is tie up the industry in “red tape”, he didn’t see how the government could “look the other way” while these “feudal practices” persist. So Help to Equity Loans will soon only be used to support new-build houses sold on acceptable terms. “This will send a serious message to the building industry: if you want the government to help you build and sell homes, you have to sell them on fair terms. “I’m hearing about more and more cases where developers are selling newly-built houses on a leasehold basis for no obvious reason,” he said. Javid also recounted the story he had been told of a leaseholder “stuck in a house with ground rent that doubles every ten…
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Features
Fixing our broken housing market
The UK housing market has very grave issues, affordability, supply, location… we have a housing crisis and we need urgent action to confront those issues and resolve them. The Housing White Paper: ‘Fixing our broken housing market’ was published on 7th February, introduced in Parliament by the Communities Secretary, Sajid Javid. The response from the housing industry was, in the main, lukewarm.
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Latest property news
Housing White Paper: building great expectations?
There’s a sense of excitement, The Housing White Paper lands in my inbox; will it give a Spring bounce to our housing market? The screen goes grey as 104 pages flip past, am I missing something? A new thought, idea, plan or action? Theresa May, Prime Minister, couldn’t be in Parliament today as she is busy with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, which is understandable, she cannot be everywhere, and her Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government is qualified to present this hugely important document. Mrs May says, “Our broken housing market is one of the greatest barriers to progress in Britain today. Whether buying or renting, the fact is that housing is increasingly unaffordable – particularly for ordinary working class people who are struggling to get by. “Today the average house costs almost eight times average earnings – an all-time record. As a result it is difficult to get on the housing ladder, and the proportion of people living in the private rented sector has doubled since 2000. “These high housing costs hurt ordinary working people the most.” All fine and well, but what is the grand plan? It isn’t grand, it doesn’t even seem to be a…
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