This column will have a personal aspect based on my recent experience helping a family member rent a property but will make a wider point, so please excuse the short \u2018case study\u2019 that ensues here.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s worth taking this approach because some landlords, property investors and letting agents out there have not grasped yet how their lives will change after the Renters\u2019 Rights Bill<\/a> becomes law in a few months\u2019 time.<\/p>\n I have seen platitudes from letting agents saying \u2018good landlords will have nothing to fear from the legislation\u2019 but that\u2019s them being corporate and coy \u2013 times they are a changing, as I hope to show here.<\/p>\n My niece, who is starting her second year soon at university in London, has rented a three-bedroom apartment in the Barbican complex with two friends.<\/p>\n Given my job as a property journalist, she asked for some advice on the draft contract, which was being sorted out via the landlord\u2019s agent, Foxtons.<\/p>\n Was it fair? Should she sign it? Were there any bear traps? \u2013 were the questions she wanted answering.<\/p>\n A perusal of the 17-page document, which was not based on the government\u2019s model Assured Tenancy Contract, was many things if not pricey at nearly \u00a35,000 a month. Oh, to be a student in 2025.<\/p>\n The first shock for me was that the three students were being asked for six months\u2019 rent in advance, plus the deposit \u2013 so just under \u00a334,000 \u2018up front\u2019.<\/p>\n Their contract has one other curiosity \u2013 there was no break clause in it. The trio were committing to two years at the property without the ability to leave should their circumstances change \u2013 although the Foxtons negotiator assured me that they would help swap out any of the tenants if they had to leave suddenly under its \u2018jointly responsible\u2019 terms. But that put the ball firmly in their court.<\/p>\n I challenged the negotiator on this, and the answer came that the landlords, who are a couple, believe this rather one-sided approach was justified because the property is \u2018furnished\u2019, suggesting they were lucky to get the property in this state.<\/p>\n I am not going to get into the moral maze about whether this contract is fair or not (the tenants signed it) because, although aggressive and favouring the landlords, it was drafted by Foxtons after all \u2013 and in London\u2019s super-competitive market fairly standard, I\u2019m told.<\/p>\n The wider question, which I\u2019ve put to Foxtons, is what on earth landlords like the couple who own this apartment and the thousands like them are going to do once the Renters\u2019 Rights Bill<\/a> becomes law?<\/p>\n Among its many fairly radical measures designed \u201cgive renters much greater security and stability\u201d (housing minister Matthew Pennycook has insisted on many occasions) it will ban \u2018rent in advance\u2019 of more than a month and enable tenants to give notice to quit of two months the moment they move in, along with a rolling \u2018periodic tenancy\u2019. ASTs will be toast, by the way.<\/p>\n One other point \u2013 the rental contract I\u2019ve been discussing also allows the agreement to be forfeited and therefore terminated if the rent \u2018remains unpaid for 14 days\u2019 .<\/p>\n This area of tenancy is also set to change under the Renters’ Rights Bill \u2013 the renting reforms will increase the mandatory threshold for eviction<\/a> from two to three months\u2019 arrears and increase the notice period from two weeks to four.<\/p>\n When speaking to the Foxtons negotiator, I pointed out that the contract was pointless in its current form because, when the Renters’ Rights Bill becomes law, it will mean many of the clauses within it will be retrospectively rendered illegal and\/or unenforceable.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, your niece will be OK then, won\u2019t she,\u201d came the cheeky riposte. Mine in return was to point out that issuing the contract in the first place was, therefore, somewhat pointless, but hey ho.<\/p>\n As mentioned, I\u2019ve put all this to Foxtons. Why? It\u2019s important that BuyAssociation readers understand how renting homes is about to change \u2013 and not for the better if you\u2019re a landlord \u2013 and how the sector is going to adjust when the Renters’ Rights Bill passes into law.<\/p>\n Foxtons says it and the landlords the firm represents will operate \u2018in line with the requirements of the Renters’ Rights Act\u2019, which it\u2019s keeping landlords up to date on \u2018as the Bill develops\u2019 \u2013 although the Government have refused all but three minor amendments so far.<\/p>\n The firm also says that in its experience good tenants and good landlords only make a change when absolutely necessary, so we don\u2019t believe the Act will generate a major change in behaviour or length of tenancy.<\/p>\n That may be so \u2013 but Foxtons is referring to \u2018in-tenancy\u2019 changes while the contract is issued to my niece and her friends was all about the \u2018pre-contract\u2019, something the company has chosen to dodge, perhaps understandably given it will soon be a minefield \u2013 as landlords realise their \u2018security\u2019 once so easily obtained via tight contracts like this has largely evaporated.<\/p>\n Keep up to date with the Renters’ Rights Bill on our news pages<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Property journalist Nigel Lewis looks at tenancy contracts in practice, and how crucial it is that landlords and letting agents get on board with the Renters’ Rights Bill as quickly as possible. This column will have a personal aspect based on my recent experience helping a family member rent a property but will make a… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4215,"featured_media":6527,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[699,2,179,59],"tags":[15,741,718],"class_list":["post-6106060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guestposts","category-buy-to-let-landlords","category-expert-advice","category-trending-news","tag-landlords","tag-renters-rights-bill","tag-tenancy-agreement"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6106060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4215"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6106060"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6106060\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6106061,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6106060\/revisions\/6106061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6106060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6106060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6106060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Tenancy agreements in practice<\/h3>\n
Renters’ Rights Bill is imminent<\/h3>\n
Understanding the changes<\/h3>\n