Eviction less viable
Possession - Section 8 and Section 21

nicest landlord
nicest landlord
471 Thanks
1,724 Posts
2 years ago
0

I have not posted my 2p worth for quite a while so here comes £2 worth.
This business is really changing. In some ways it is changing in our favour - tenant demmand only ever grows and I am amazed by this year's increase in rent levels (I am talking Manchester not London). But one of the biggest changes against us is the way the bar is continually raised for getting an eviction through. I was looking forward throughout summer for 1 October so that I could serve a 2 month s21 notice on a difficult housing benefit tenant after her 2nd use of the firebrigade's service! But when I looked at what the court requires for possession order application these days I could not believe how much they want. eg Continuous gas safety certificates going back not just to the start of the present tenancy but day one of occupation - in this case 7 years ago. I did not keep all the old gas certs because the law did not require them for anything. I had most of them but not the critical first one. So what good is s21 to me? There are no arrears and so I am stuck with her. And even if I could serve a valid s21 the court system might take several months to process the claim.
And these are the good old days whilst we still have s 21. I went to a fringe meeting about private renting at the Tory party conference a couple of weeks ago. Housing minster Christopher Pincher told us about his plan to pinch my right to use no fault eviction at all under any circumstance. The panel was 2 Tory mps and Polly Neate from Shelter and another "housing activist" who all nodded in line to welcome the long overdue reform to abolish no fault eviction. Not one of them questioned this. And the housing minister did not seem to think it needed any justification until the angry rumbles of furious landlords in the audience kicked off. So it is clear to me that s21 will go soon and there is no political will to keep it. Landlords are friendless amongst the Conservative Party, let alone Labour.
So the reality is that we need to get used to managing our tenancies without having the power to end the tenancy unless we have already lost thousands of pound before we start the fault based process. I have good tenants because I pick them carefully but I do not always get it right. 10 - 20% of my tenancies are a mistake. So what tools in my bag do I have to use against tenants who misbehave. Very few. About the only effective one I can think of is s13 rent increase. Most of my tenants have good incomes and so they don't want a ccj and with the poor ones, well I am building up amuniton ready for the wonderful privilege of serving a valid s8 notice.
Legally the landlord and tenant relationship is now very one sided. They can end it. We have to find a way of keeping going... however rude, destructive, racist, threatening, manipulative, childish they are. A landlord going into an ast is like a guest at Hotel California "check in any time you want but you can never leave".

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