It's 'not controversial' to limit no-fault evictions, says James O'Brien | LBC 

When a landlord is having trouble it means a few rough months ahead. When a renter is having trouble it could mean homelessness. So forgive me if my heart doesn't bleed for landlords.

When James says that landlords are operating at a "loss" that's not actually what it means if the rent doesn't cover the mortgage. What it _actually_ means is that they're having to "chip in" towards their own mortgage for a change instead of relying on the tenant to pay for the whole thing.

The Tories don’t want this to go through because there are to many Tory voters renting properties. It’s a disgusting practice.

The worst thing about renting is the uncertainty of all of it. Every 12 months you hold your breath and hope your landlord either isn't going to kick you out or skyrocket your rent. How are you supposed to built a life not knowing where you will live one year to the next

Rent is already a massive con. We all pay more in rent because we are not allowed to buy our home. It's cheaper to have a mortgage but we are not allowed one. So the middle management of Landlords can frankly go do one.

There's about 100 Tory MPs that are also landlords.

Property is an investment and has some risk. The UK has engineered it to make it devoid of risk. This doesn’t happen in Europe or Australia, why should UK landlords have almost feudal rights?

Last year, on the day they announced the legislation to ban no fault evictions, my landlord issued us one. He panicked and kicked us out with a 1 month old baby, and a year later its not even been made law yet...

Decent housing, along with food, water, sanitation and health care, etc, is a fundamental human right and requirement. Why on earth would we allow the vagaries and the exploitative nature of "the free market" to control any of these things?

I'm sorry but tenants not paying off someone else's mortgage is not the landlord operating at a loss! As long as the rent covers the maintenance expenses that is a profit and any other stance is delusional on the mere basis of how mathematics works.

Landlords want to have their cake and eat it too. They get their mortgage paid off and want a full time salary on top of that. Private landlords take housing stock off the market to rent out, further driving prices up and impedeing the social mobility of those working hard to own a home. I genuinely think people should be limited to how many properties they can own in this country because there isn't enough to go around.

One house for one family. Housing should not be a source of income for the greedy at the expense of the needy. Gove has just given the green light to more misery for the many. I know people who've been kicked out of their rented properties when the tourist season starts, so the greedy landlords could charge more on Air BnB. Air BnB should also be banned.

The interests of Tory landlords will always come first!

When was investing in property deemed to be guaranteed profit? I think the culture in the UK is striving to own as much property as possible and maintain it as cheaply as possible to achieve passive income. I understand a lot of people worked really hard to save enough to own multiple properties but when did this country become completely self serving. What the soldiers who died in the World Wars would think if they could see how we have all turned on each other the minute life got comfortable. I currently only plan to rent in the UK because if this trend of descent continues and this country drops any further into disrepair I will take my family and move to anywhere else that can take us in. I'm ashamed to be British now.

Landlordism is an anchor on the economy, renting out property creates no growth, no assets, no jobs, it simply shuffles money about that could be spent on more productive endeavours.

As a landlord I would never implement a no fault eviction (and I much prefer 12 or 24 month contracts) on the one rental property I own. I bought it outright (to compete with would-be buy-to-let airb'n'b-ers here in north Wales) and I rent at very much below market rates to a local family that couldn't afford such a property otherwise and which gives me a modest income after tax and ongoing maintenance. It's my house, yes, but it's the tenants' home. I could make a lot more but prefer to keep the house in the local stock for local people on lower wages. NFEs should be banned as should private buy-to-let mortgages.

As a councillor, I'm rightly unable to vote on, or even debate any issue where I have a pecuniary or prejudicial interest. So why are landlord MPs allowed to make this inept law?

Writing from abroad. When I first heard "no fault evictions" I assumed it couldn't mean what i sounded like. Rules protecting renters from this sort of thing are the norm in the developed world.

Hunt must have dementia. As well as forgetting how properties he'd accumulated he also forgot which country his wife came from.

Being told what to do with your property is called the Law. It happens in every walk of life. With pretty much everything.

If there was enough Social Housing, then the need for private Landlords wouldn’t be so much of an issue.

There are houses, but the workers are so poor that they cannot afford to buy them. If you borrow from the bank, you need two lives to go to work and pay the loan, landlords raise the price as many times as they want in a year, it depends of luxury life that the owners want

A safe warm home is a primary need, everyone should have one!

Hunt is making loads of money from is property's he has 7

I'm sorry James but your tennants not being able to pay rent is a genuine reason for eviction. Section 21s require no reason whatsoever. You could offer to pay double yet they'd still boot you out. I was issued a no-fault eviction last September. Gave me 2 months to move out and just about found one in time not to end up on the street. That was due to the Tories preparing to ban it, so my old landlord panicked and kicked us all out. Most stressful 2 months I've had in years. But the worst part is that because they gave in to pressure, this could happen to me again at any time and this time I have no savings to use

why do you need more than 1 property

To paraphrase Terry Patchett, if you own slums and rent it them out you get invited to all the best parties but, if live in a slum you are treated as if you are a criminal.

Owning a house shouldn't be a job. The rental price shouldnt be more than what a mortgage would be either.

They should make it illegal to purchase a house on mortgage and rent it out to tenants in order to pay the mortgage

you get what you voted for...30 years after thatcher

There needs to be a massive shift in housing. Social housing needs to be reinstated. Council run housing with in house council tradesmen as it was decades ago. Rents go back into the councils to pay for maintenance etc.

Property owner is a title. Landlord is a job. The illusion that renting out houses is quick money has spread all throughout the west. It’s a long game that takes discipline and hard work to win. These clowns jacking the rent up bc they’re nervous, it’s unethical.

I commented below and i am a small landlord i agree with James - i have never evicted a tenant on a no fault eviction since having my faults for 7 years. NEVER. I also have NEVER increased the rent on a sitting tenant, and i had the same tenant for 5 years. If you are even a small landlord, if you can't have periods of having no rent, you need to stop being a landlord, i've had periods of no rent and am about to sell one of my 3 flats. There's been no tenant in it for 4 months and i still pay the mortgage and utility bills. The tenant left of their own will after living there for 4 years (again with no rent increase) costing me £4k to refurb the flat to sell it, however £4k in 4 years for wear and tear IMO is reasonable. Problem is a LOT of landlords think a tenant should be upkeeping the flat to a standard inc painting and decorating it - sorry but i don't agree with that, it;s not the tenants responsibility to do that, it's the landlord. That being said in one of my other flats i had completely decorated it before the tenant moved in and i REFUSED a request from them 1 year later to have it painted. Reason being is the average person that owns a house or flat there is NO WAY they paint the whole flat once per year, once every 5 years perhaps but not once a year.

Housing for profit is an inhuman system! Your home is the foundation of your life and your stability! Housing is a human right nobody should be forced out of their home unless they're being destructive. It's not cost-effective in any way to force people out of their housing and into the street. It costs society way more to create homelessness then it does to create affordable stable housing putting people out of their housing should be a last resort. Give people dignity through stable long-term housing

just got a section 21 - very frightening

If they can’t afford to look after the house and not rip tenants off, then they should be forced to sell their properties back to the councils or other social housing programs and start to relieve the pressures on social housing issues.

Even with a minimum of 6 month tenancies, can you imagine what that's like for children? Getting settled in 'their home' only to have to 'upsticks' and potentially move to a new school and leave their friends.

After fourteen years of chaos and ruination the Tories should be left with zero seats. they do nothing for poverty line working people who work with sickness and pain long hours

Did landlords reduce people's rents when interest rates fell in 2020?

It's merely the same logic as they use against the less well off.. If you can't afford a holiday out of school term, then don't go If you can't afford an updated car, then don't get one If you can't afford a new TV then get a better job etc etc etc Jesus, I hate this primitive world.

IF you are a landlord that needs a mortgage for your buy-to-let property then you aren’t a boon for the economy, you are making the housing situation worse. You’re buying a property, usually at a higher price that a local resident can afford and forcing your renter to pay your mortgage. You aren’t paying your mortgage, they are paying your mortgage and you are getting the benefits.

It's simple. You can't base a countries housing policy on the idea that interest rates will be low forever and credit is limitless. No mortgages for rental properties.

housing benefit is well below the market rate - even for 1 bed accomodation

The only solution is for the state to build suitable homes for rent. I'm a landlord with five properties, mostly long-term tenants, and below-market rents. I would welcome state intervention into a dire situation. I recently let a two-bed flat for £560 fully refurbished. and got almost 150 enquiries, some of whom cried during the viewings.

When you consider how contracts have been manipulated to work you quickly realise how they always benefit the more powerful side. Fhere is no real protection for the punter. Mobile phone contracts, gym contracts, home broadband contracts, even home energy contracts lock you in and punish you if you need to leave early. Renting a home? We'll kick you out when it suits us thanks ...

What is happening is designed to make landlords and all home owners sell their properties, so that large investment companies can buy them all up and rent them back to the now burgeoning population of renters. It's all part of the same plan - own the public services and all the homes, and then you effectively have a population of slaves. Who go to work just to pay you all their money to survive another day to go to work. This is what they learn and devise and plan in institutions like Eton college. They don't learn a trade or a vocation, they learn how to farm the people for their sweat and taxes, and how to keep them weak and in control. If you don't own your home then you're working to pay for someone elses life. Simple.

Let me tell you what happened in America when the rules were tuff luck to landlords. The smaller landlords started to sell. The buyers were corporations because they could buy higher. Then they started renting them out to higher rates, strict restrictions and lawsuits that drain the tenant. So, you can't buy a house now and the rents are also sky high. Beware when you say tuff luck to the small landlord because its the corporations that move in and their greed knows no bounds.

This law has been nobbled because many Tory MPs are landlords, and many others have been given "donations",(bribes) totalling £450,000, from the renting industry to oppose it. See i-newspaper 2nd April page 6.

Nobody should beg fir food or heating or homes.

I despise the fact that someone can own a home and not live in it!

As a landlord, I believe in rent control and as long as a tenant pays the rent and respects the property they should have the security of knowing that they have a place they can call home.

Hi James. I'm sure you probably don't read these, cos you want the call ins, but as someone both a landlord and also a serial and current renter having lived in 6 countries in less than 5 years, I agree with much of what you said. I do think there should be the possibility of agreed shorter term rental. Sometimes I need 6-9 months instead of 12. Sometimes I go into a rented apartment knowing it's for sale and it could go with a month notice. Sometimes I rent a place for a year, but visa issues mean I need to leave through no choice or fault of my own. Sometimes flexibility is required, and while I'm all for long term protections (my tenant is my mate, he's been there for 20 years, and has the cheapest rent in the county, nevermind the village, but while I really should increase it, he's disabled and I can only get what the government gives him to give to me). I've seen and lived both sides. There's room for nuance...

The key here is to get rid of this business model altogether, dont buy a house and then rent it out, it's a flawed model

I'm a landlord and agree with ending no fault evictions. There are rent protection products in the market that make it safe for both tenants and landlords (zero deposit rent guarantee insurance).

13:29 Turning this around at the exploitative landlord class is just poetic 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

Anything involving Gove inevitably stinks. He's a natural stinker.

Well the Tories' default position is to punish the poor and legislate against the victims, so there's nothing new here.

Renting a residential or commercial property has the same rules. The landlord is providing a service, and has the right to discontinue a tenancy, exactly as the tenant has the right to discontinue a tenancy. The nature of tenancy is temporary, and both sides should understand this.

The obvious answer is far more investment in social housing for those that rent. We need to start treating housing as a necessity as opposed to an investment for the rich! I'd go as far as to say we need to start limiting the number of houses one person can own!

I'm amazed when Landlords say they can't make their mortgage payments. Then YOU DON'T OWN it. This is an argument between two people, neither of whom own the house but only one of whom lives in it.

Everything necessary for life should be not-for-profit from food to housing from birth to funeral

Why would they do that - how many landlords are in the house of commons. Between them, they must own 1000s of properties.

Micheal Gove is a disappointing joke. Absolutely, if you have kids...you can't even change their schools mid term

The idea that a renter should not only pay for someone else's investment, but actively allow them to profit on this appreciating asset, is so utterly proposterous, it beggars belief. I think rent should be calculated as a percentage (say 60-75%) of the value of the property. That would make renting far more attractive and viable, while allowing landlords to have a significant portion of their investment covered by the renters, and still make a significant return. In case it wasn't obvious, I meant the value of what the monthly mortgage is / would be.

If landlords can't afford their inflated-price properties, they should sell them at the real value to someone who's willing to own it as their home.

What is also concerning is that buy to let landlords have an advantage on getting mortgagea over first time buyers. We need to reintroduce a tax advantage for first time buyers that Thatcher took away.

Down here in Southern Africa, rental agreements are set for 1 year. Generally the rent will increase by 10% for each following year. So you know exactly how much your rent is going to be as long as you keep that rental agreement. If you feel that the rental is getting too steep, you know at the end of the annual agreement you can leave. You also know how long you’ve got to look for another pad.

Ah, Victorian England is back. Let’s bring back public flogging for having the audacity to be poor

I side with landlords who need to evict tenants who destroy their property or dont pay their rent, but to kick someone out to get more money from a new tenant is morally wrong. All the while your investment is gathering inceased capital equity and youve set the rate to cover your mortgage plus upkeep. How many landlords invest in upkeep? Its like a modern day feudal system all because affordable social housing is scarce.

They also promised to do with away with ground rent. Paying for no service and yet govt backtracked on their promise

Personal I’d completely ban all private rental.

Weren’t the shocking living conditions of poverty and squalor in overcrowded slums in the 19c the result of greedy Landlords-often the same people that make the rules-eerily similar?

I would love to be 2 paychecks from oblivion. I live in my overdraft 😞 Can only imagine how rich i would be without kids 😅

I've been really lucky, I've been in the same house for 10 years. But I know nothing is forever. And if you've got pets, it's really tricky.

If you need to raise rent, prove it.

A reform that stopped landlords off setting mortgage interest against income, is the main reason that the private rental sector is in crisis. Landlords have passed that cost onto their tenants. Many don't know about this change, but it had a huge impact on the sector. I am a tenant not a landlord.

I completely reject the idea that landlord evict tenant whenever they like. Eviction is landlord's last option, they would have considered or suffered other options before tenant suffers.

Home is where YOU tell people to get out, not where people tell YOU to get out! If you can be told to leave, you are still homeless

If you buy stocks and they plummet the government doesn’t help you out, you invest into property and interest rates work against you, you’re allowed to raise rent to cover your losses and the government intervenes to help the landlords

No renting out properties that have an over hanging debt on them. Simple.

I went thru total misery with scumbag tenants and Labour want to tip the inequality even further in their favour. Omg what kind of incentive are they giving me to vote for them?

I live in America. I don't know too much about England. Where I live if I want to build a shed on the property I own, I need to go to my local town hall and get a permit. I have to ask permission to do what I want on my own land. We also have zoning laws. If I buy a piece of property in a residential zone, I can't put a business on that land. I am sure it is not like this in all parts of America. I assume there are less restrictions in areas where your nearest neighbor is over a mile away. So when I hear this argument about how landlords cant do what they want with their own building/property I cant take this as a serious argument. It feels very infantile or absurd on its face.

I am missing too mate: renting out properties is a business isn’t it? Business means risks. What a business is if your government cuts all your risks? It’s called legal robbing not business.

It’s really simple. If you buy a second house, and it is used for renting, if that property is bought via a mortgage, it must have a fixed interest rate for the entire mortgage length. The variability can be taken into account by the lender. Simple. Also, look at Sweden. They have 25 year rentals

Here is the thing if the landlord is getting appreciation on the property value and profit on the mortgage. Then they are double dipping.

Rents should be capped and made affordable! End of! Buy to Lets and low interest rates started the surge in higher rents and runaway house prices!

ASTs are minimum 6 month Landlords have to give 2months notice to evict thats if there is a break clause in the AST otherwise they have to wait till the fixed term is over and then given them the 2 month notice.

Most of these people have never had to think about what it would be like to be in a situation like this, I doubt they’ve ever had rent off of a landlord, maybe their parents but I can tell you I’m pretty sure they probably either bought their first property or Mortgage it

James, if you outlaw landlording, you reduce the demand on the housing markets and reduce the profits of house builders meaning less house building. You can replace it with a council house building program and that would work. But to suggest you can remove landlords without some sort of economic plan and not expect economic impacts is just silly.

The question at the heart of this issue is the nature of private property. Is it a divine/natural right which can not be interfered with, meaning the landlords can do anything they please with their property? Is it a mere social convention, which can be modified to protect ordinary people from sudden homelessness?

A 2016 study by the Guardian found that around 1 in 4 Conservative MPs at the time reported earning rental income from properties. Not sure what that figure is now but I do know that many of these people rented out multiple properties

I rent out my property and didn’t raise the rent because the nurse renting my property is NHS and I supported her and the family . So I sleep easy 👍

I think in business you call this a “conflict of interest” 😂 so why is it allowed at governmental level? Also, I do feel some sympathy for landlords, especially smaller private ones, because they are suffering a lot. With regards to the rights of tenants, it sounds similar to the current Scottish model a few locals have told me about a land they have real issues with it because it is very costly and timely to remove tenants no matter what the issues.

JAMES THEY SAY EVERYTHING AND DO NOTHING

You were pretty close at the beginning. The solution is that landlords who losse money should sell. They made a poor bet. They should exist to minimize losses. If no one else wants to buy it as a rental unit, he can sell it as a condominiums. Tenants might buy there own place or may have to move out due to someone else buying it but on the large scale it will increase acces to home ownership.

Alot of tory politicians are landlords, alot of landlords this is their way to fund their retirement and finally its all about greed.

Right to buy should apply to privately rented houses as well as council

Well I was shocked when the Tories suggested it in the first pace. The party is full of stinking rich property developers and landlords.

My landlord bought my one bed flat in 2010 for £80K i've lived in it since August 2010. i've paid £625 every month since then. My landlord left me with no bathroom light for over 86 days. That is just one example of the problems. I found out from my letting agent, by chance, he owns forty seven houses that he rents out and my flat. I'm fairly sure, as he bought the property outright (not with a mortgage etc) that I, having now paid out over £100k across those years, I've at least given him enough profit to encourage him to fix the hot tap in the bath.... A plumber turned off the hot water to the bath as it was leaking and he told me the mixer tap needed replacing, but he'd have to run it past the landlord. Landlord got a second opinion that said the same thing. Eight months on, still no hot tap to my bath. vaguely hot water to the sink tap. Hot water in the independent shower (its over the bath but is connected up differently) I offerred to pay for it to be done and was told I cant do that as I'd have to hire a plumber he has approved... and both the plumbers he approves have said it needs changing.

Right to buy for private tenants