The Impact of Covid is not forgotten
Four years ago every aspect of our lives was tipped on its head.
Just like every other industry, the property sector faced challenges. As the pandemic took hold, the housing sector regrouped and forged ahead overcoming some of the most difficult obstacles ever faced. We forget just how tough it was and upon reflection everything else that’s been a problem, pales into insignificance. Change Management is a real thing and dealing with the pandemic and the consequences it threw at us demonstrated the ability to react DAILY.
#covid #pandemic #changemanagement #preparedness
Revised guidance published on terms used in property advertising
15th August 2023 • Published by the National Trading Standards Estate & Letting Agency Team
Revised guidance has been published by the National Trading Standards Estate & Letting Agency Team with regard to supplementary terms used when marketing properties.
The guidance now includes terms relating to lettings and has been developed in consultation with industry stakeholders. Please see the revised guidance here.
The guidance has been updated to provide clarity and consistency for agents and consumers and improve standards across the industry.
Property Condition and Decent Standards
Most landlords make sure that the houses and flats they rent out are safe and secure, warm and dry. But some landlords do not, and this means that some tenants live in dangerous or unhealthy conditions. The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 requires landlords to ensure that their rental properties are ‘fit for human habitation’, which means that they are safe and free from hazards.
The Act works alongside the Housing Act 1985 and the Housing Act 2004 - Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS) which form the basis for ensuring that rented property reaches a certain standard. The private rented sector white paper outlined the measures that will require rented properties to be free from serious health and safety hazards, and landlords to keep homes in a good state of repair so renters have clean, appropriate and useable facilities.
Demand for Rental Properties creates Bidding Wars
The only thing worse than being gazumped on a home you want to buy is being gazumped on a home you need to rent. Bidding wars may be commonplace in Britain’s frenzied sales market, but they are becoming the norm in lettings too.
The post-pandemic landscape has changed. Landlords are selling to make the most of record house prices or they have pivoted to letting their properties on a short-term basis on platforms such as Airbnb to escape taxes, regulations and make money out of the staycation boom. The result? Fewer properties available to let long-term and tenants are having to outbid each other on the monthly rent to find a place to live.
Social media is full of tales of rental heartbreak. Tracey Pearce(@elementalturtle) wrote on Twitter how she lost out on an £1,800-a-month house for which she had bid £2,000 a month after it went to a tenant who made an even higher offer. She wrote: “We were facing homelessness with four kids as our current landlord had sold our rental but the letting agent thought it was a game and got angry when I cried.”
Another Tweeter, B (@BeeSansMerci), wrote: “We put in an application on a house, landlord picked us, we were on our way to estate agents to sign and put down the deposit and in that time one of the rejected applicants offered an extra £50 a month and the estate agent gave it to them instead. Cried for days.”
There are stories of letting agents telling tenants not to bother applying unless their salary is 40 times the rent. Tenants say that letting agents have even led group viewings that ended with a bidding war in the garden.
Imogen Tew, 25, has rented in London for seven years, but she was first asked to make an offer for rent in June 2020 after the first national lockdown when she was looking to move in with her boyfriend. Tew was outbid on one property in Blackheath, southeast London, and another went to a tenant who could move in quickly, so she realised that she had to up her game.