Landlord Properties Licensing Consultation

http://www.haringey.gov.uk/propertylicensingconsultation

Please have a look and fill out with your opinions.

There are a number of poor landlords and absentees across Stroud Green. The council is proposing a paid licencing system to regulate all landlords.

Comments

  • Just another scheme to tax the law abiding and ignore the people renting out sheds / sub-letting for cash, loads of other councils are doing it already though so it will go through.
  • Perhaps. But that's due to enforcement, in theory it's a good idea to try to root out scum landlords and protect tenants.

    Yes ofc, there's a monetary element, but that's all the better. If you can rat on a bad landlord, the council has an incentive to send over the inspector.
  • Its been the law in Scotland for a long time and seems to work. At least it gives a common set of mimimum standards to be followed as you can see here

    https://www.haringey.gov.uk/sites/haringeygovuk/files/proposed_selective_licence_conditions.pdf

    I wonder who ensures the council meets these standards. Costs the landlord £600 for 5 years
  • edited July 2021
    Scotland? I am a landlord in London (yeah yeah, boo hiss) and have had to enrol in a licensing scheme already.

    I agree with the principal and being a 'good' landlord my property passed the minimum requirements with ease (as would any property with the appropriate fire, gas and electrical certificates) so it is simply a tax on top of the minimum requirements.

    Unless of course you do not have the minimum safety requirements and will not bother with a licence either.

    I am guessing this will be outsourced nationally to someone like Capita before too long anyway and used to engineer the minimum standards for mass corporate ownership.


    When I was a gas engineer I saw firsthand the ridiculous situation of CORGI being stripped of the competent persons scheme / register before stealing the databases and customer details of thousands of Gas Engineers (via the registration of gas appliances) and marketing to them customers directly.

    They then handed it over to "Gas Safe" (aka Capita) who only prosecute the registered engineers and leave the unlicensed alone until someone is seriously injured or killed.

    God I need a drink.



  • I hope they continue to add 'a tax on top of the minimum requirements' until it's no longer worth people being landlords. The consequent redistribution of property would allow an awful lot of people to get onto the property ladder, help to tackle intergenerational inequality, give more people a more substantial stake in society and a more assured future, allow people to start families who who are currently too financially insecure to do so, and - dear to my heart - greatly reduce the number of neglected house frontages.
  • Out of interest @HolbornFox what is the scheme you're already enlisted in?

    I'm interested as to whether or not it can hold landlords to account for poor building maintenance and safety.

    I don't think you should be ashamed of being a landlord, unless you own 20 houses in slum conditions- @Arkady people will always need to rent, i.e. me when I was a student and whilst building a deposit.

    Most landlords only own one extra property - however I do agree with extra taxes per house owned + quality checks. However as the council doesn't really have a 'register' of rented properties (or at least, not one that is compulsory from my understanding) im unsure how they will catch landlords who don't register their properties unless the public get in touch with them.

    As ever, it's enforcement that's the bugger.
  • When I was an undergrad I spent two of those three years in actual student accommodation, which was vastly superior to the crappy rental we had to endure in the other year. If all those with second homes put them back on the market people wouldn't have to save for nearly as long to get on the ladder - many now never do. Housing associations should fill any remaining rental gaps.
  • Whoa! Too many generalisations and grauniad soundbites to tackle right now, I will have to return later to dispel some of them.

    Suffice to say you will get your wish in the next 20 years and then the corporates will own them all instead, let's see how that ends, maybe we really will own nothing and be happy?

  • I look forward to you 'dispelling' my 'soundbites'.
  • edited July 2021
    Good, it will be next week as i literally haven't got the energy right now.

    As a tasty titbit i definitely didn't receive any intergenerational benefit (pretty hard to inherit anything when growing up in a one parent household in a sink estate council flat) and my tenants have been in my property for 12 years so, as a consequence, pay below market rent.

    What a total bastard taking all the risk while providing well kept accommodation to a family for 12 years without hiking the rent up in a property that they could never afford eh.
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