[Ben Reeve Lewis reflects on being a tenant.)
Frazzy and I are coming up to the end of our fourth year as tenants. Renting a 1 bed flat in London.
We are getting the usual threatening letters from our high street letting agents informing us of an astronomical proposed rent increase and the obligatory paragraph stating “Please let us know if you don’t wish to renew your tenancy and if not we will issue you with two months notice to leave”.
In response to which we make our bid for the “National Wooden Spoon Award” by once again playing the annual game of emailing our landlord asking him why he wants us to leave, to which he responds “I don’t” and which we counter with “But your letting agents say they will serve us with notice if we don’t pay them the £120 renewal fee”.
Phone calls are made and the matter is dropped, as is the proposed rent increase which is usually about £80 more than the landlord actually wants.
All driven by the letting agent’s desire to either charge a renewal fee or get paid for finding a new tenant.
What would YOU do with it?
But I just did a rough calculation and in the time we have been in there we have paid £60,000 in rent. How could I have better used that money in supporting myself instead of someone else’s pension fund?
As Viv Stanshall says in Sir Henry at Rawlinson End “If I could have back all the money I’ve spent on drink, I’d spend it all on drink”.
Now I know you have to pay to live somewhere but this is the most profoundly depressing figure I can remember seeing and I’m not alone. Reading in the Guardian this week a review of 20 years of housing I read of Dagmar Noble, a former home-owner trapped by negative equity and repossessed who says that although she is happy renting says:
“I don’t like paying someone else’s mortgage – I feel like I’m being taken advantage of. I’d rather rent a council or housing association property”.
Got it in one Dagmar, that’s how I feel and probably most private tenants.
Difference is I do have a way out, even though it will involve moving 180 miles from home to do it. Watch out Midlands, here we come.
Property winners and losers
The Guardian’s article is worth a read. I don’t think anyone has looked at the winners and losers of the property boom which started around 20 years ago.
“It is a tale of two Britains, where buyers have made millions and renters have shelled out tens of thousands of pounds and live a fragile existence”
Says the piece and it has indeed been a strange time. Working at the coalface of housing problems in this period I’ve seen a massive increase in allegations of harassment and illegal eviction and a concomitant increase in homelessness applications.
I haven’t seen the other end of it, the people who did well by making the right choices or having favourable life circumstances. Same as under Thatcher, I never personally knew anybody who got rich, just the people who got trodden under foot by her dictatorship.
Maybe I need to get out more.
Renting in Delhi
But at least I don’t rent in Delhi . Most are familiar with the old epithet from Peter Rachman’s days “No blacks, no dogs, no Irish” but in Delhi the signs read “No alcohol, no meat eaters, no bachelors”.
I like Indian signage. I remember backpacking around Kerala and Tamil Nadu some years back and seeing a fantastic sign at a viewing point in the hill station Kodaikanal which read “The mocking of ladies is punishable”
My favourite Delhi landlord sign is “Government officials only”, which frankly beggars belief in my world. I’d rather have a drunken idiot smashing up me furniture than George Osborne and his mates carousing over a bottle of 30 year old malt but there ya go.
The combined prejudice among Delhi landlords about bachelors as tenants seems to be:
- Theyre drunk
- They don’t pay their rent
- They sleep with women.
- They have bad hygiene.
- Theyre a bad influence on children.
So, back to George Osborne then.
Lime Legal for housing lawyers
After the best part of 6 weeks off air the good folk at Lime Legal have produced their first reports of 2016 about issues crucial to housing law practitioners.
All housing law-heads who haven’t fallen over this amazing resource need a kick up the arse. It’s the ‘One Show’ for housing law (I can feel Jan Luba cringing at the analogy)
The Lime posse pointed us at the strange case of the tenant under an injunction for keeping an Alsatian where attempts to commit him to prison for contempt of court on ignoring the injunction and failing to re-home the dog.
As a newly reconstructed dog lover I have to say I would rather live in a caravan than get rid of my little fella. Some things are more important than a roof.
Speaking for the landlords Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council, the housing officer Amy Caroll said:
“She heard it barking as recently as this morning and last night inside the property and also being let out into the back garden of the defendant’s property; the defendant repeatedly referred to the dog as “Midas”. She further confirmed that she has also seen the dog on a number of occasions and therefore knows that it is the same dog that is the subject of the injunction.”
Reading through the report I can’t see any allegations that the dog attacked people. The basis of the legal action seems based on the sole fact that he had a dog in breach of his tenancy agreement. A prison able offence?????????????????? Perleaze!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Call me old fashioned but I would quite like to get an injunction against Donald Trump, just for being Donald Trump. It’s the same logic. Guilty of being in possession of offensive hair and racist views.
You could also have Man United’s Van Gall up on the offensive hair charge. For god’s sake man what are you thinking?
What made me smile this week
Last Saturday night Frazzy and a bunch of waifs and strays, loosely called our friends, dusted off the white gloves and glow sticks and danced ourselves to death at the excellent party night ‘Havent stopped dancing yet’
In the post apocalypse years since the 1990s I’ve got used to stop-start dancing at DJ events run by idiots who think their DJ set is for their own private amusement, completely ignoring the fact that nobody is on the dance floor while they play some obscure roots revival tune to people who long ago gave up Sensii to protect their sanity.
HSDY is the ultimate party night for the over 40s whose knees are still relatively in tact.
Be there or be square.
See ya next week.
NRM says
January 29, 2016 at 9:29 AMAhhhhh don’t get me started on the rent thing, how much paid and how absolutely impossible it is to save….so with you on that Ben as we have been trapped in that hole for a few decades now! Rent control according to the local area is the only answer, but with figures/percentages of how many MPs are L/L’s is not encouraging.
Surely that is a conflict of interests??
We should all pool whatever we can and be L/L’s ourselves….we would do it so well I reckon!
I was having a Trump-free-day until…..DOH!
Ben Reeve-Lewis says
January 29, 2016 at 10:35 AMHmmm not sure about being a landlord, I was one for a short period of time. Not my cup of tea, also whilst I get profoundly depressed looking at how much I’ve paid into my landlord’s pension pot I don’t want to simply swap positions and have someone else contribute to mine.
I’d prefer a bigger solution for everyone.
I suppose at root NRM I actually believe it is immoral for one individual to own the home of another.
And yes I can feel the outrage that is about to be heaped on me by landlord readers.
Having said that have you seen how much a home owner pays back to the bank over 25 years? Wonga couldn’t do better but the difference is there is a finite time of paying after which the equity is at least yours, whereas a tenant pays for ever with no returns
Sam says
January 29, 2016 at 12:31 PMA big reason for the Buy to let boom was because Brown raided the pension funds (they were among the best in europe) and then cutting interest rates. Add in massive immigration and not building houses there you have it. Funny thing is there is supposedly 2 million Landlords in this country with a population of 60 or so million and yet Australia has the same amount of Landlords and a third of the population.
Although with Osborne being on the attack those days may be numbered but the massive immigration will continue and corporate landlords will be receiving the ever increasing rent. Then people who ‘may’ have been landlords will simply buy the shares of said corporate landlords but now the tenants will never have the personal interaction with the landlord and will be given a out of country call centre.
HB Welcome says
January 29, 2016 at 12:58 PMDone very well on the Lefty Bingo this week Ben.
A ‘Thatcher’, ‘Donald Trump’, ‘Peter Rachman’, ‘Dictatorship’ and a ‘Trodden under foot’;
With a Bonanza Lefty Bingo Bonus in the comments;
“I actually believe it is immoral for one individual to own the home of another.”
Property is theft and anarchy is order eh Ben?
Up the revolution Comrade!
Dave Griffith says
January 29, 2016 at 6:13 PM“I don’t like paying someone else’s mortgage – I feel like I’m being taken advantage of. I’d rather rent a council or housing association property”.
An odd comment in her case as earlier in the article it states that ever since her home was repossessed in 1996 most of her rent has been paid for by housing benefit.
“Got it in one Dagmar, that’s how I feel and probably most private tenants.”
Ben your anger should be directed at the governments since 1996 that have got us in this mess not landlords like me who got lucky by buying properties 20 years ago when a lot of people thought it was madness.
I you want an individual to blame try Gordon Brown whose policies are to blame for a lot of the problems we have today. Brown always insists the crash could not be foreseen but I knew it was inevitable when I found out you could get a 125% mortgage with no proof of income.
Ben Reeve-Lewis says
January 29, 2016 at 7:05 PMOh Dave thats exactly it.
That I am a socialist is no new news, other than to say it doesnt truly represent my full views, which are actually more Anarchist when it comes to housing, in a Colin Ward sense, leaning towards self-build community developments over property developers.
But I have also been a landlord and even a letting agent in the pas as well as being a rogue landlord enforcement officert, so I have a rounded view
I believe that the housing system in the UK is a basket case. I dont ascribe this to the Tories or Labour. Miy form of Socialism, and there are many, is predicated solely on fairness.
I dont think it is fair that there is the s21 no fault ground for eviciton. the notion that a person can be an ideal tenant and yet still lose their home simply because it suits the landlord’s investment opportunity at that time.
And I dont think that the length of time it takes a decent landlord to get rid of a tenant owing £5k rent arraers is fair either.
There are rogue landlords and there are nightamre tenants. Each MUST be protected from each other.
I am not pro tenant-anti landlord, i’m just for fairness for all.
I dont see this fairness represented in a free-market economy and I dont think that the dictats of any political party truly gets it.
See-saws dont work. The 1977 Rent Act put tenants rights over landlords rights. The subsequent legislation since that time has simply tipped up the see-saw and in any situation, whoever is on the downside of whatever seesaw is in motion will kick back. Thats human nature
I’m not clever enough to promote a specific political agenda but I dont think that the housing system in the UK at this time is fair on anyone and it doesnt behove anyone to proclaim “landlord-bad tenant good’ or the other way around.
But working at the arse end of housing problems all I see is an increase in homeless applications driven by escalating rents and the benefit cap. I dont know if the evil is the benefit cap or market rents, all I see each day is suicidal people, self-harming through stress. There two possible causes.
I just mop up the pieces
Lyndsey says
January 30, 2016 at 12:08 AMBen, I’ve much enjoyed reading this week. I too see the sharp end of practice housing crisis and rents rising continously causing utter devastation.
Sadly I feel the huge new burden of regulatory requirements coming in for landlords and perfect storm of universal credit and potential to changes will drive well meaning competent small landlords out, rising rents further by the corporates.
A basket case indeed.
Smithy says
January 30, 2016 at 1:24 PMSo you’d live in a caravan with your dog? Someone has beaten you to it http://www.kentonline.co.uk/sittingbourne/news/homeless-woman-living-in-car-69919/
Ben Reeve-Lewis says
January 30, 2016 at 5:13 PMT’was a throwaway comment Smithy but hand on heart, yes I would downsize to keep my dog. Remember I only see the bottom end of housing, the broken people, the desperate and I’ve sat many a time in an interview room with the newly bankrupt former workers, self employed, even high earner business types whose lives were turned on their head by a divorce, an interest rate rise, a redundancy where like the woman in that article find all they have left in the world is their dog.
Everyone one of the several hundreds I’ve worked with, whether in the old Camberwell Spike doss house as an 18 year old or through the countless mortgage holder’s whose rapacious lenders it was my job to fight off, never for a moment ever thought they would be in that position, including the landlord I interviewed just this week who self certed mortgages on 20 properties pre recession and has lost the lot and now in a B&B with his wife.
When I was in the music business we had an expression “Be nice to people you meet on the way up coz you might meet them on the way down”