As you will know if you follow this blog, since June (2012) I have been setting out my thoughts on housing law and the private rented sector, and giving some suggestions for reform.
That series finished today.
However it is difficult to get a grip on the ideas and suggestions spread over three months worth of posts, so I have collected them together in a handy ebook.
You can download it >> here.
Please feel free to forward it on to anyone who you think may be interested in it.
Although I don’t claim to have all the answers, I have been working as a specialist in residential landlord and tenant law for nearly 20 years so hopefully there should be something of value within its pages.
Steven Keith says
October 7, 2012 at 12:31 PMHi Tessa,
Just finished reading your ebook. Loved it. It’s a great roundup of the important issues affecting the lettings market today. Very balanced view point as well.
Steven
Tessa Shepperson says
October 7, 2012 at 3:55 PMThank you! A lot of thought went into it so its nice to know that at least one person agreed with me!
Feel free to pass it on to anyone who you think might be interested.
HB welcome says
October 8, 2012 at 2:10 PMHello Tessa,
Thanks for writing the ebook, I don’t necessarily agree with it but it is certainly thought provoking.
A lot of it hinges on landlord licensing, which most landlords view as an intrusive bureaucratic job creation scheme. The figure of £500 you put up as a possibility would seem to bear this out.
I presume you came up with this figure from Newhams scheme? In which case it works out at £8.33 pcm not £40 as it is a 5 year licence. Even then it is far too expensive. A link here showing how they dreamed up the amount;
http://www.annaraccoon.com/politics/newham-landlord-license-sir-robin-wale/
Considering Scotland and Wales can do it for around £50, a firearms licence costs £50 for 5 years and an EPC* £50 for 10 years, (with nationwide registers) then it can only be viewed as a revenue raising exercise at that price.
Pitch it at its true cost of £50 for 5 years and I think you would garner more support.
*Im not suggesting EPC are ‘worth’ 50 quid BTW.
Tessa Shepperson says
October 8, 2012 at 2:21 PMHi HB, and thanks for your comment.
The ebook is just a discussion document with ideas.
I am not personally going to set up anything (I am just a private individual, not the government or local authority official) and I don’t have access to the sort of information which would allow me to accurately forecast any license figure – so I just said £500 at random. There was no mathematics behind it!
However when I consider the sort of payments I have to make to maintain my solicitors practice, including the practicing fee and professional indemnity insurance, I don’t, frankly, feel very sympathetic towards landlords ‘whinging’ about a payment of £100 pa (or even £500 pa).
As I said in the book, provision of peoples homes is an important service and poor housing causes damage to society not just to the people living in the houses.
HB welcome says
October 8, 2012 at 4:04 PMYou might be onto something there Tessa!
There’d be a lot less landlord* whinging if licensing was to be run by a landlord organisation offering value for money and something in return, like the SRA does for solicitors.
It’s the ‘made-up job for jobsworths’ that’s a major sticking point.
*And tenant whinging, as they’d be the ones ultimately footing the £500 pa bill.