Category: Tenants

How PlanetRent is future-proofing buy-to-let

Lesley Davis Leave a comment
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It has been a tough few years for buy-to-let investors First they were hit with reduced mortgage relief and then extra stamp duty, while at the same time taking the blame for pushing up house prices and keeping first-time buyers off the property ladder. The financial penalties have been accompanied by increased regulation, so it is no surprise that the number of buy-to-let landlords hit a seven-year low in 2019 according to Hamptons International.

However, government interference isn’t the only challenge facing buy-to-let investors. Responding to the UK’s demand-supply imbalance of rental housing, institutional investors have poured billions into creating purpose-built rental housing to secure steady long-term income streams. While build-to-rent makes up only a tiny fraction of the overall UK rental market at present, with the latest British Property Federation and Savills data revealing there are 150,000 BTR homes complete or in the pipeline, this number will only grow.

Yet rather than fearing the competition from this new breed of corporate landlord, buy-to-let investors – and their agents – should look to learn from the emerging build-to-rent sector, particularly when it comes to treating tenants as customers. Just as important is to look to the tools many of these investors are using and embrace the technology that makes their lives and those of their tenants easier.

People often joke property has been a late adopter of tech. But online portals such as Zoopla and Rightmove are up there as household names with Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Yet while these platforms have made finding a property easier, the lettings process is still too often time-consuming and overly reliant on physical paperwork.

That’s why BTR landlords such as Grainger plc and Moda Living had already adopted a digital-first approach to leasing before the coronavirus outbreak. Many BTR operators also have customer-facing apps for their residents that allow residents to do everything from pay rent and bills to report repairs and organise community events.

No doubt, post-crisis others in the BTR sector will follow in taking a digitally-led approach to leasing and operations, as concerns linger around social distancing and consumers become more accepting of virtual ways of working.

That’s why at Ringley we’ve brought forward the launch of PlanetRent, our cloud-based platform that connects landlords, agents, tenants, site staff, accountants and contractors. Crucially, PlanetRent fully supports remote working by giving each party their own easy-to-use portal in which they can access everything they need from their own home.

For landlords, this means protection against hefty fines for not serving legally required documents, such as the How to Rent guide, EPC and gas safety certificate, to your tenants.

PlanetRent also helps minimise the risk of lengthy and costly void periods by nudging tenants to renew and sorting a renewal in just three clicks if they choose to stay. Properties are automatically marketed should they want to vacate.

For agents, PlanetRent frees up staff by automating mundane processes and allows deal-flow to be monitored in real-time. The platform also replaces the need for a whole host of different subscriptions, including accountancy packages, saving money.

Tenants benefit too as they can request and monitor repairs and access their relevant documents and files through their own portal and be confident their landlord and agent are fully compliant.

With COVID-19 making digital nomads of us all, landlords would be foolish to stay stuck in the analogue era. Tech has made other aspects of our lives from shopping to ordering takeout or a taxi simpler and more transparent. Letting a property whether as a landlord, agent or tenant should be no different.

www.planetrent.co.uk

Why not READ our Property Blog too at: www.ringleypropertyblog.co.uk

Evictions ban extended until August

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Tenants with rent arrears will be relieved that the evictions ban has been extended – but is it fair to landlords?

The evictions ban has been extended to 23 August. The government made the announcement on Friday, as it came under increasing pressure to rollout further emergency measures to help renters beyond the original 29 June deadline.

This is great news for tenants facing financial hardship and we welcome the move to give renters certainty and security. But allowing them more time to repay arrears directly impacts landlords who may themselves be struggling to pay the bills.

Mary-Anne Bowring, group managing director at Ringley and creator of automated lettings platform PlanetRent, comments: “With all the uncertainty going on at the moment, tenants deserve to be protected by the government from evictions if they have not been furloughed or risk losing their job through no fault of their own. However, we believe there must be genuine fairness in the government’s approach and this initiative must be balanced by proving that tenants’ income has gone down.

“One concern is that many landlords are retired. According to the English Private Landlord survey retired people account for 33% of landlords. They may not have a mortgage to claim a repayment holiday on, relying on their property for income – and without rent or furlough monies coming in, they may struggle to make ends meet. So it is vital that tenants do not use the extended eviction ban as an excuse to mistreat the property they live in or to withhold rent if they are not in a genuinely financially difficult situation,” says Mary-Anne.

At Ringley, we continue to press the point to our clients that tenants and landlords should be working together in what is a difficult time for all of us. Recent research by the National Residential Landlords Association points to the fact that this is already largely the case, with the majority of landlords trying to work with their tenants to resolve issues such as rent arrears.

Longer-term, we think the government may need to consider other ways of financially supporting households post-crisis. For example, through higher housing benefit payments. Clearly, the high cost of the furlough scheme means it cannot last indefinitely. Some renters may need extended financial assistance from the government but cancelling rents or getting the government to pay would ultimately be hugely damaging. What do you think?

www.planetrent.co.uk

Why not READ our Property Blog too: www.ringleypropertyblog.co.uk

Rental sector can’t meet demand for homes to let

Lesley Davis Leave a comment
As lockdown is eased, demand is currently outpacing supply, but London is seeing rents fall.

The rental sector is taking off again as lockdown restrictions are eased. But for renters, it’s very much a game of two halves. As we blogged yesterday, around 2.6 million renters are estimated to be in rent debt or likely to find themselves in arrears as a result of the pandemic. And landlords are feeling the financial fallout too. So unless they are able to come to suitable payment arrangements with their tenants, there could be a flood of evictions when the government lifts the repossession ban – currently scheduled for 25 June unless steps are taken to extend the embargo.

Clearly, this is bad news for tenants in financial hardship. But it may benefit those whose jobs have been unaffected by the pandemic and who now want to move, giving them more choice as those properties come back onto the market later in the year.

In London, property agent Chestertons explains that the outlook for landlords is being impacted by the fact that fewer people are willing or able to move to the capital due to the pandemic. The agency told Letting Agent Today that rents in London have dropped by between 10% and 15% as a result. Fewer students, fewer corporate rentals and tenants worried about their income are all making the situation worse, as is the trend for renters to try and negotiate lower rents with landlords, says Chestertons.

In the rest of the country, the story is a more positive one. According to Rightmove, demand for lettings is up by 22% compared to last year, with the online property specialist telling the BBC that the easing of lockdown has released “two months of pent-up tension”.

Lockdown break-ups, forced moves and the wish to relocate away from cities is driving the market, and the pandemic has left many people with “an immediate housing need” according to Rightmove. At the same time, buy-to-let landlords are exiting the market due to worries about finding financially sound tenants, while those that continue to let property are likely to be hand-picking the tenants with the best references and credit records. All this adds up to high demand for fewer rental homes. So we can expect to see rents rising and more people struggling to find an affordable home – unless we see that potential spate of evictions bringing many more rental properties onto the market.

The market is in an interesting place and, with coronavirus likely to be with us for some time to come, it’s hard to predict what the rest of the year will bring for landlords and tenants. What do you think?

www.planetrent.co.uk

Why not READ our Property Blog too: www.ringleypropertyblog.co.uk

Will there be a post-pandemic rental crisis?

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With an estimated 2.6 milion tenants at risk of arrears, is there a rent crisis looming?

There is a “looming crisis in the rental sector” due to the financial hardships being faced by both landlords and tenants as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. This was the verdict of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, which published the interim report in May from its call for evidence to examine the effect of the pandemic and Government support for tenants. Committee chair, Labour MP Clive Betts, told the BBC last week that the UK is currently in “the lull before the storm.”

Key points from the committee’s report are:

  • A recommendation to bring forward legislation to amend the 1985 and 1988 Housing Acts to allow judges to use discretion where a tenant is in rent arrears due to the coronavirus crisis for the next 12 months at a minimum. Discretion could include consideration of whether a pre-action protocol has been complied with.
  • The Government must accelerate its plans to introduce the proposed Renters’ Reform Bill to Parliament and abolish ‘no-fault evictions’ under section 21 of the Housing Act 1988 within the next 12 months. By amending the Act to allow judges to exercise discretion, the Government will have time to deliver a Bill that provides greater security for tenants.
  • The Government must ensure that the Local Housing Allowance (LHA) rate is set at a level that reflects real market rents and ensures those in need are able to afford properties in their areas.

The committee believes that unless the Government amends existing housing legislation, its plans to introduce a pre-action protocol to the private rented sector will be toothless. This poses the danger of a cliff edge of evictions once the moratorium on possession cases ends.  

Research from the Resolution Foundation published last weekend reveals that one in eight private sector tenants have fallen into rent arrears to-date. And as the impact of the pandemic on the UK economy really starts to bite, Citizens Advice calculates that around 2.6 million tenants could find themselves in rent arrears.

The National Residential Landlords Association told Landlord Today that more than half of its members have already experienced some combination of rent payment problems or unanticipated void periods. Some landlords who already had possession cases for rent arrears going through the courts prior to the ban, could find themselves trying to cover more than a year’s worth of rent if the courts are unable to resume existing cases from the planned date of 25 June. So it is calling for a “careful re-opening of evictions needs”. 

Of course, landlords who do find themselves in financial difficulty can ask their lender for a mortgage holiday, but the reality is that this only pushes payments further down the line – and may ultimately impact their credit rating.

In London, more than 2,500 households have agreed not to pay their rent thanks to a campaign by the London Renters Union. The LRU is calling on tenants to withhold their payments to landlords if they find themselves in financial hardship One activist told Landlord Today that the government is prioritising landlords’ profits over renters’ survival. “Right now, it must suspend rent, cancel rent debt and make the eviction ban permanent, she said. “Otherwise we’re headed for a chaotic rent debt and eviction crisis.”

However, the official guidance from the MHCLG remains clear.  Landlords and tenants should work together to address any concerns and find solutions to overcome rent arrears, such as an affordable repayment programme. This is very much our view too.

But will this approach be enough to prevent the pandemic causing widespread problems for landlords and their tenants? What do you think?

Tenancy agreements made easy with PlanetRent

Lesley Davis Leave a comment
Produce tenancy agreements fast with PlanetRent

Tenancy agreements are either not read or are difficult to understand. Or at least that’s the way it looks from a report we spotted earlier this week in Landlord Today.

When renters have questions about their rights and responsibilities, they are turning to Google for the answers, says the article. No surprise there we hear you say. After all the internet is everyone’s first port of call if they need to know something.

But most of the questions being searched aren’t complicated – in fact, they are pretty basic. Clearly, tenants aren’t reading their rental agreement – or would rather not have the hassle of speaking to their letting agent or landlord to get an answer.

Research from Boiler Plan reveals the most common questions private renters asked Google in April. They were: 

  • Can landlords increase my rent – 3,200 Google searches
  • Can my landlord evict me – 1,880 Google searches
  • What are my responsibilities as a tenant – 1,600 Google searches
  • Can letting agents charge fees – 760 Google searches
  • Can my landlord keep my deposit – 550 Google searches
  • What are tenancy fees – 250 Google searches
  • Can you paint a rented house – 220 Google searches
  • Does the landlord have to fix my boiler – 130 Google searches
  • What repairs is the landlord responsible for– 110 Google searches

Our view is that tenants should always be asked to read their tenancy agreement and come back to the agent or landlord with the kinds of questions we’ve just listed. Some of these, such as issues around boilers, repairs and redecorating may not crop up until later in the tenancy but basic questions about rent, eviction and deposit monies should be ironed out right from the start. That way everyone knows where they stand.

Of course renters won’t read their agreement if it runs to 50 pages, so landlords should keep their paperwork short and to the point.

By using our new cloud-based letting platform PlanetRent, landlords can keep tenancy agreements simple. PlanetRent generates tenancy agreements in a matter of minutes, making them fast, accessible and easy to use.

PlanetRent is lettings automated. It puts you, the landlord, in the driving seat and helps you provide your tenant with everything they need to make their lettings journey simple and painless. We have a killer pricing model too. So why not check out PlanetRent today.

www.planetrent.co.uk

Why not READ our Property Blog too at www.ringleypropertyblog.co.uk

Don’t forget – Tenant Fees Act in force from Monday!

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The Tenant Fees Act applies to all tenancies in England from Monday 1 June

Landlords, from next week the Tenant Fees Act 2019 applies to all your tenancies and you are banned from charging renters any fees apart from those specified in the legislation. That’s rent, tenancy deposits, holding deposits and any default charges that are specifically stated plus a few others we list below.

The Act came into effect in England on 1 June 2019 with a one-year transitional period, which exempted existing tenancies from the new rules. This is about to end. So from Monday 1 June, all assured shorthold tenancies and HMO licences are subject to the legislation. The legislation also introduced a deposit cap that limits deposits to five weeks’ rent (or six weeks if the annual rent is £50,000 or more).

To remind landlords of the rules, here’s a list of allowable charges:

  • A refundable deposit
  • A refundable holding deposit – capped at one week’s rent
  • Rent, utilities, communication services, TV licence and council tax
  • Fees for changing or ending a tenancy at the tenant’s request
  • Default fees for late payment of rent  
  • Fees for replacing a lost key or security device, where required under a tenancy agreement and with evidence of the cost in the form of a receipt or invoice.

If landlords charge for anything that isn’t on this list that’s a breach of the new legislation. This carries a fine of up to £5000. And even worse, if you break the rules again within five years of being fined the first time, that counts as a criminal offence and carries an unlimited fine. So make sure you understand the new rules.

For a full list of charges that are now banned under the legislation, you can read the Government guidance in full here.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that any deposit taken before 1 June 2019 that was higher than the five or six-week cap that is now in place, doesn’t need to be refunded immediately. Instead, renters should receive a refund at the end of the tenancy. The new tenancy deposit cap will apply to any new tenancy agreed after that.

www.planetrent.co.uk

Why not READ our Property Blog too at www.ringleypropertyblog.co.uk

PlanetRent makes deposit-free renting safe and easy

Lesley Davis Leave a comment
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Agents and landlords can now offer deposit-free rentals safely and easily with our new lettings platform PlanetRent. The average deposit paid by tenants over the past year sits at £1,299 according to mydeposits. With the earnings of a typical Brit estimated by the Office for National Statistics as £585 a week, most deposits would be more than half a month’s income.

By using PlanetRent, your tenants get a much better deal.  Our partnership with deposit alternative provider Reposit ensures landlords are protected while tenants can move into their new home and avoid putting down a hefty deposit.

Here’s how it works. Renters simply purchase a ‘reposit’, which costs just one week’s rent as a service fee. Reposit then offers market-leading property protection of 8 weeks to PlanetRent landlords – with very little admin and zero risk. PlanetRent landlords can use the service automatically, with all of the information around the tenant and the tenancy contract sent to Reposit at the first instance.

Research by Legal and General reveals that 15% of people have no savings at all, and just under a third have less than £1,500 in the bank. With coronavirus upending the economy, household finances are likely to worsen, underlining the need for solutions that reduce key living costs such as renting.

Landlord Today reports that a survey of more than 4,500 private landlords by the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA), shows 90% of landlords with tenants who are struggling to pay their rent are bending over backwards to help.

By using PlanetRent with Reposit, landlords and agents can cater to renters whose personal finances have suffered from the disruption caused by coronavirus. The partnership between PlanetRent and Reposit allows landlords to house a greater range of people, including those on lower incomes who can’t necessarily afford a traditional deposit, while staying protected, and those looking for their first job, just leaving education or looking for their first home.”

Mary-Anne Bowring, group managing director at Ringley and creator of PlanetRent, says: “Deposits help ensure landlords are protected from any extra damage caused by tenants beyond reasonable wear and tear but for many renters, they are a huge financial burden and will be even more so thanks to the uncertainty caused by coronavirus.”

The partnership between PlanetRent and Reposit takes the pain out of renting. Our new cloud-based platform really is lettings automated – it’s quick, easy and hassle free for landlords and agents and now its deposit-free for tenants too.

www.planetrent.co.uk

Why not READ our Property Blog: www.ringleypropertyblog.co.uk

Landlords in the firing line – again!

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Landlords in the firing line don’t deserve always to be seen as the bad guy

Landlords in the firing line from another consumer group may once again be wondering what they have to do to prove that they are not always the bad guy. Following on from recent calls for tenants to pay no rent if they are suffering financial hardship due to Covid-19, this week Citizens Advice wants buy to let properties to be re-let only if the tenants in them want to move.

The proposal is just one in a list of tenant-related demands made by the organisation, most of which relate to the Coronavirus outbreak. But yesterday Citizens Advice told Letting Agent Today that “properties should only be put on the rental market if the tenant has said they want to move.”

We think there’s a major misconception here. There seems to be an assumption that just because tenancy agreements are for a fixed term, landlords automatically want to change tenants. They don’t.

Ringley Group MD Mary-Anne Bowring says: “The truth is that a sane landlord would want to end the tenancy only if they were experiencing problems with the tenants. Why face a void period if your tenant wants to stay.  A void means not only the loss of a couple of weeks rent but also the need to refresh the property, spruce it up a bit and maybe even change curtains, furniture or carpets”.

Citizens Advice is also calling on the Government to “accelerate its policy to scrap Section 21”. We wholeheartedly disagree with this too and have campaigned to keep a system that we believe is effective. Section 21 is simply a polite way to evict difficult tenants. It stops the court system being clogged up with many small rent arrears cases and gives landlords some certainty that their worst bad debt is the term of the tenancy without protracted court proceedings.

Most property owners who rent a home to tenants do a good job. They are not constantly trying to rip-off or evict renters who pay their bills and look after the property. So why put landlords in the firing line – again!

www.planetrent.co.uk

Why not READ our Property Blog too at www.ringleypropertyblog.co.uk

Moving house? Now you can!

Lesley Davis Leave a comment
Time to get moving – but you must stick to the new guidelines

Have your moving house plans been brought to a halt by the lockdown? If so, you can now re-start the process. Yesterday, Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick announced that, from today, anyone in England can move home if they follow the new Government guidance.

Since lockdown restrictions were implemented in March, more than 450,000 people have been unable to progress their plans to move house. The government hopes to re-start the market and get buyers, sellers and renters moving again.

Clearly, this announcement doesn’t mean a return to normality – far from it. The process of finding and moving into a new home will be different and that now includes doing more of the process online. Initial viewings will be virtual and vendors will be asked to keep away while potential buyers are shown around. Properties must also be thoroughly cleaned before someone else moves in. So good news for commercial cleaning companies used by landlords and block managers.

After seven weeks in lockdown, the announcement is welcome news for the property industry as well as for buyers, sellers and renters. Ringley Group MD Maryanne Bowring said today:  “There’s no reason buyers or renters shouldn’t be able to move home if they are able to do so safely in accordance with social distancing guidelines”. However, she is quick to point to the fact that this doesn’t mean the housing market has returned to its pre-coronavirus state.

 Lockdown is set to continue in some form for an unknown amount of time and the resulting economic disruption is likely to weigh down on activity in the for-sale market. A stamp duty holiday, as proposed by RICS and others (see our 29 April blog for more details) could see a stampede in transactions while an extended Help to Buy will support some sales and in turn housebuilding.

 Maryanne thinks the Government now has an opportunity to think long term and introduce policies to reflect Britain’s changing housing needs. “Private renters are a fast-growing part of the housing market and need catering to,” she says,  “yet politicians seem intent in squeezing buy to let landlords out of the rental market and the build to rent sector – a positive emergence – simply isn’t big enough yet to absorb all rental demand.

 “If the government cuts stamp duty surcharge for landlords it could help stimulate the market by encouraging BTL investors to snap up homes to then rent out. Many landlords also help support housebuilding through off-plan sales,” she adds

 The housing market as whole will also have to get ready for a digital-first approach to transactions as more tasks and jobs are done remotely.

www.planetrent.co.uk

Why not READ our Property Blog too at www.ringleypropertyblog.co.uk

What is Labour’s five-point plan for renters?

Lesley Davis Leave a comment
We say two years to pay back arrears is not practical or necessary for most renters

A five-point plan to help renters cope with the economic fallout of the Covid-19 outbreak has been published by the Labour Party. The Bank of England has warned that the UK could be heading for a deep post-lockdown recession, which is likely to heavily impact tenants in the private rented sector.  Last week we blogged about the Government’s response. There are plans for a protocol to help tenants in rent arrears avoid immediate eviction when the lockdown ends.

This week, as the Prime Minister announced plans to ease Covid-19 restrictions, Labour is calling on the government to go further and bring in new measures to protect tenants, proposing the existing three-month evictions ban be extended and renters are given a two-year timeframe to pay back rent arrears.

The Government has already banned evictions for three months and increased the Local Housing Allowance but Labour wants to see temporary legislation provide greater protection for renters. Its five-point plan proposes:

  1. Extending the evictions ban for six months or however long is needed to implement the legal changes set out below.
  1. Giving renters at least two years to pay back any arrears from the lockdown period.
  1. Giving residential tenants the same protections as commercial tenants, by not allowing them to be made bankrupt by their landlords for non-payment of rent.
  1. Bringing forward the government’s proposal to scrap Section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions and outlawing evictions on the grounds of rent arrears if the arrears were accrued because of hardship caused by the coronavirus crisis.
  1. Speeding up and improving the provision of Universal Credit and considering a temporary increase to the Local Housing Allowance to help prevent the risk of homelessness.

The Momentum group within the Labour party wants to go further and is calling for a “people’s bailout” which would mean cancelling rent completely rather than giving tenants two years to pay arrears to landlords.

 At Ringley we are happy to back any fair and workable proposals that will help tenants stay in their homes. From the beginning of lockdown, we have actively encouraged the landlords we work with to engage with tenants facing financial hardship so that arrears can be dealt with sympathetically. But to suggest that any rent owed should be simply wiped off the slate is both unfair and unreasonable, particularly now that the Chancellor has announced an extension to the Government’s Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme to help ensure people are provided for while they cannot work.

Most landlords are not faceless institutions but small business people who are simply trying to make a decent living. The majority treat their tenants well and provide them with a decent, well-maintained home to live in. This is not a free service. And tenants do not expect to be provided with a roof over their heads for nothing. 

The other consideration is that many banks are granting mortgage repayment holidays of both interest and capital as easily as the government suggests they should.  So any measures need to be proportionate to both parties, not one-sided.  Ultimately, if the tenant is receiving furlough money – which assists the self-employed with accounts and those working – then they do have money to pay rent.  Yes, there are a few who fall through the cracks in the schemes quickly put together by the government because they pay themselves dividends or have only just set up their business, but by and large, tenants do have an alternative income. So the benefit of reducing income for landlords who still need to carry out repairs as well as keep on top of their commitments should be called into question.

We hope the Government will give due consideration to Labour’s proposals but two years to repay arrears will not be needed in the majority of cases. And Momentum’s “People’s bailout” should be treated with the contempt it deserves for being unbalanced and one-sided.

Arguably it could lead to tenants taking money from both sides and worsening the burden that all taxpayers will no doubt have to fund for years and years!  After all, not only is the possibility of tenant abuse when they are receiving furloughed monies too great, but the notion that rent arrears are just as easily collectible after two years as for six months is nonsense.

www.planetrent.co.uk

Why not READ our Property Blog too at www.ringleypropertyblog.co.uk