Nearly half of Westminster’s 22,000 council homes have been sold through Right-to-Buy in the past 30 years, and because government rules don’t allow local authorities to keep the proceeds of sale the properties haven’t been replaced by further social housing. Of course many of the flats purchased under Rent to Buy have been recycled into Private Sector renting – I personally know of 4 people who were able to retire to the country in middle age on the proceeds of the Right to Buy windfall which could be as much as several hundred thousand pounds in extreme cases.
This has left the council with a situation where they are paying housing benefit to tenants who are renting ex-council properties from private landlords – and this costs the council around four times the rent charged for a council home rented directly from the council, and on occasions up to five or six times the council rent.
What a mess – but probably not a mess that the government wishes to acknowledge as it stems from a conservative policy a generation ago, rather than something that can be neatly pinned on the last government.
Why is Housing the most Important Issue Facing London?
New Labour coined the Mantra “Education Education, Education” , relying on the concept that a new generation of educated citizens would vitalise an economy and profit our way to wealth. Yet if those children do not have a decent place to live, the ability to sit quietly and read or do their homework away from their siblings, they will continue to lag behind their more affluent schoolmates. If teenagers do not have a decent place to live, they are more likely to be on the streets when they should be at home, potentially being drawn into gangs and anti-social behaviour. If parents and children do not have a decent place to live, they are more likely to suffer health inequalities. If adults do not have a decent place to live, they are more likely to say, “What has society done for us?” “Why should we obey the law, pay taxes, vote in elections?”
I’m lucky, I am a property professional with a commercial line in finance and a solid Pimlico base of property to secure future property investment. have a decent home. My daughter wants to buy a London Flat, but as a qualified teacher and head of literacy in a major comprehensive she cannot raise the deposit and loan necessary to compete with investors, mainly from overseas, looking for a bargain in a difficult market. She can probably get a small mortgage cannot afford the large deposit now demanded by banks – not on a teacher’s salary!
The media are talking about a generation that will not be able to afford to buy their own homes. First time buyers are frozen out of the housing market while investors ensure London property prices continue to rise. That’s why housing is the priority for the Government, Local Authorities, and the Mayor of London.
There is a lot of land under the Mayor’s control, mainly Transport for London land that can be used to build such homes. With the most expensive element of building in London, the land, available to developers at little or no cost, even commercial investors, could still make their profits and give Londoners decent homes at genuinely affordable rents.
The dream of a property-owning democracy is a good one but investors will always distort the London market and most Londoners simply cannot afford to buy. That means the priority must be to build decent, genuinely affordable homes for rent. Not creating sink estates exclusively for those on the lowest incomes, but building developments where young professionals live alongside those unable to work – in vibrant, mixed communities. And if people are happy to live in these homes, maybe that could take some of the heat out of both the rental and homes for sale markets in London.
Land Data is the official government appointed organisation that manages and regulates the National Land Information Service (NLIS) providing consumers with official electronic land and property information and is the only provider in England and Wales. Jan Boothroyd, their Chief Executive, has said that Home Information Packs almost immediately became synonymous with price and the reduction in price was mirrored by a reduction in the quality of property searches contained within the pack. Ultimately this exposed consumers to incomplete and out of date information, often insufficient for the needs of a buyer, which led to the buyer’s conveyancer ordering searches for the property again and the unsatisfactory situation where the seller and the buyer were both paying for searches.
With the removal of HIPs Land Data has called for Government to look at new initiatives to improve the home buying process and they believe making official searches compulsory will not only protect the home buying public from poor search practices but will bring instant clarity to a confused market. They say that consumer interests are best served by official, indemnified authoritative data from local authorities, water companies, Land Registry and The Coal Authority.
One simple online search to provide all the information required for a property purchase. Sounds good to me!
A Carmarthenshire landlord has been fined £2,000 for failing to comply with the terms of an improvement notice served on his HMO. After several complaints from tenants, council environmental health officers carried out a full inspection of the property under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System. They found numerous problems with the accommodation, including issues with fire safety, damp, mould growth, issues with heating and food safety.
The landlord was then served with an improvement notice ordering him to bring the property up to scratch. He failed to comply with this and the work was not completed.
Balasubramanian Pulendrathasan was convicted at Llanelli Magistrates Court in his absence of an offence contrary to Section 30 of the Housing Act 2004. He was fined £2,000 and order to pay costs of £1,160.
Councillor Hugh Evans said that the landlord “showed a total disregard for the local authority and for the health safety and wellbeing of his tenants.”
We’ve heard a lot about HMOs this week, with John Healey‘s proposals to “tackle concerns” about them. There’s a whole other blog post on the “war on landlords” coming up shortly, but this story just shows how unnecessary that war is. The legislation to tackle “rogue landlords” is there already. Those who don’t maintain their properties to a decent standard, those who don’t look after their tenants propery, those who damage the industry for the rest of us – there are ways of dealing with them, as this case has shown. We don’t need more legislation – we need better enforcement.
Via Residential Landlord http://www.residentiallandlord.co.uk/news2151.html
James Davis - Upad
A guest post by James Davis, the CEO of Upad.co.uk, the UK’s leading online lettings agent. Upad lists your rental property on 100+ sites and portals – including Rightmove – for just £59: tenant guaranteed. Follow the Upad blog and on Twitter for rental industry news and tips for landlords on making the most of your properties
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