A fairer deal for renters

I think letting agents also need to change their charges. In the UK it’s front loaded and they receive all payment upfront and they are forever chasing revenue in fees from landlords and tenant. The fees for reference checks and contract charges were too steep for the service provided. It’s in agents interest to have short term contacts because they make money from both owner and tenant when there is a renewal.

We were hounded by a letting agent to renew our tenancy when I just expected it to roll over. I challenged them and they said the owner wanted asked them to act. This was not true. The owner was also fed up with aggressive actions from the agent so that they could make money from him. He did not have long term tenants until we arrived.

In Australia the agent gets an ongoing commission from the rent so is not incentivised to draw up more contracts or push rent rises through unless the market changes. They facilitate and manage properties. I had positive experiences renting in Australia. The UK is just a nightmare because of the agents we dealt with and yet we were lucky we had a good relationship with our landlord. 

Does stopping no fault evictions mean that an owner can’t completely refurbish a property (with the intention of charging higher rent) until a tenant leaves? I think better quality rental properties are very much needed in cities. Although, I could see some landlords could use that to evict tenants and not actually renovate which would be a problem.

I really don't understand most of these proposals....the biggest issue with the London housing market (renting and buying) is the cost of housing. Making it more difficult for landlords to rent out a property is just going to reduce the liklihood of people renting out properties, reducing supply and increasing demand. We already see this with wealthy foreign owners who buy for an investment and can't even be bothered to rent out the property. 

This will also increase fees - if a landlord has even less power to evict someone you can be assured they will increase the number of checks done on potential tenants before signing contracts, and that cost is just going to be passed on to the renter. 

I have a couple of rental properties, and treat my tenants fairly. If they want to leave they can do so with minimal notice, but same doesn’t apply to me if I want to cease the relationship. Should be the same rules each way.

My places are well presented and may issues are attended to immediately. Every time a tenant leaves I incur massive costs as their deposit is protected and biased against me. Last time the tenant left an iron burn in the centrre of a new carpet, but I could only claim for a percentage of the carpet damaged. How do you repair a hole on the middle of the carpet - you need to replace it all. Cost to me £800, deposit retained £100, so £700 out of pocket.

Penalise bad landlords not good ones.

PS if the councils hadn’t had sold all their properties at a massive discount to earlier tenants there would be plenty of housing available. 

I seem to be old enough to remember when almost everyone rented and very few owned their own property.

Maggie Thatcher ended that when she took the houses away from the local councils and gave people the right to own their own homes.

This, in turn, took away a valuable source of income for the councils and led to a reduced ability to provide the normal services such as rubbish clearance, policing etc.

We are now left with more unscrupulous landlords, offering a not even half decent or fair service for extortionate amounts of money.

The rentee has become a dirty word in our language and is synonymous with failure and "poor" people.

The landlords charge the earth for a very small space and put next to nothing back into the property, and with the smallest of complaints terminate the contract and look for another unsuspecting victim.

London is the honey pot that attracts all kinds of people to its doors and there should be a fair rent for a decent place to live, with the security of not being evicted for a minor infringement.

The letting agencies are also milking the system dry. I have yet to see a poor estate agent. They should not have the right to earn so much money from the public. I know, I have been burnt by a despicable agent.

I have a property I let. I only give notice if the tenant is months in arrears. It then takes months to get them to leave. I rely on the rent to pay mortgage. I never raise the rent during a tenancy so my tenants stay for years normally. I would be willing to give longer leases if mortgage rates were guaranteed for the same period but if the were to rise dramatically (I remember 17pc) I would need to Inc rent. I have no other income apart from state pension. I hope at some point we can afford for my son to move out of my flat into the rental property. The biggest prob in London is not enough homes since councils stopped building homes for the lower paid. Plus everyone wants more space. I shared a bedroom with my sister. Now everyone expects their own room and prob bathroom

One really key thing not addressed by the 'London Model' proposal is the exclusion of people on benefits even from flats they can afford - the 'No DSS' thing needs to be stamped out completely. So many people (low paid workers, unemployed, sick and disabled) rely on Housing Benefit in London, and the level the benefit is set at already makes a lot of housing unavailable to them. Landlords and agencies should not be allowed to shut people out from the few remaining homes they can afford.

Those 3 measures will not make any difference to me as a renter if I can't afford the rent in London! As single woman I have worked hard all my life and yet cannot afford to rent a one bedroom flat anymore (and what is nowadays called a one bedroom flat is funny in itself, estate agents are distorting the truth shamelessly, that is not monitored either- how convenient). Rental prices have been extortionate for almost 10 years in the private sector in London. How come this is not addressed as part of the proposals? Why do working adults have to live like students and live in bedsits and flatshares? The choice is to live out of London and pay an arm and a leg to commute, or live in London and pay an arm and a leg in rent... I am in a flatshare and my rent still is more than half my wages. Considering we have less buying power than 25 years ago and most of us cannot even put anything aside on a monthly basis, it is a disgrace that a measure on rental cap is not discussed as priority.

Tenants already pay lots of rent for property, why dont the landlord pay property tax then?

Need better control of standards of PRS and allowing landlords to inspect to ensure standards maintained by tenants. Shortage of available property is major issue. What has not been mentioned is loss of overall community cohesion that results from short tenancies, tenants cannot invest in their area if they might have to leave in a few months.

When we visited Stockholm a few years ago we were told that there is ONE waiting list in Stockholm (not sure about the restof Sweden) for rental properties across the whole sector with rents fixed by an independent body. Landlords are obliged to take the next tenant on the list if their property is suitable for them. However, if the tenant fails to adhere to the conditions of tenancy and are evicted, they go to the bottom of the list and have to wait many years to get to the top again.
Therefore, there is a real incentive for the tenants to be GOOD Tenants and this means fewer problems for Landlords.

Apparently it works very well - it would be great to try it in London.

I had a problem filling in the survey as I am a tenant of a fully mutual housing co-op, hence I am landlord and tenant! It is a good system. It is a shame there are not more co-ops, which empower all their member/tenant.

As the coverment has made it hard for private landlords allready, surley this will only add to the problem of not enough property to rent ?

Landlords are treated as if they are all bad, when  like a lot of people they have taken a risk in buying property to make a living.

In this servey you fail to mention that there is alway an agreement in the contract. How common is it for landlords to give no notice to tenants?

Maybe the Mayor could look at the amout of money he waisted on fireworks at new year, this could have built a lot of new homes for low income familis couldnt it?

Tenants should be made aware that they can complain to the council if a landlord does not carry out basic repairs. A statutory stop should be put to landlords evicting tenants if they have merely complained to the council about defects and there is no other reason for notice to be served.

High rent is the most detrimental aspect of renting in London and it seems like there is no sign of this ever changing. London needs to impose a cap on rent to make rental properties more widely available. It also needs to stop the existence of empty properties owned by rich investors. 

I don't approve of forcing people out for no reason.    There needs to be a cap on rent rises otherwise the abolition of s.21 will have little effect.

But one of the reasons people buy to leave is the hastle involved when tenants default on payments or damage the property.  The proposals need to make it easier for the landlord in these cases.

Maybe it is time to ban overseas residents from buying UK residential property. When vast luxury flats are being developed and sold at prices up to £30 million to very wealthy people who have homes elsewhere, and there is such a crisis in supply of homes for ordinary people, this should be done. 

A bad survey - this is how those designing surveys get the answers they want to have, or limit the discussion.   There were no comment boxes and no way to say 'OK as far as it goes but nowhere near good enough'.  And nowhere to propose better alternatives.   In other words, the Mayor made the decision and is now elicting exactly the supporting 'consultations' he needs for the PR.    How can changes to private tenancies be good or bad for low income Londoners, when they cannot even afford the social rents any more, let alone private ones?