Landlord fined for dumping father and son’s belongings on street and changing locks

lookstraightahead

Soon there will be fewer private landlords. This will enable landlords to price higher, with more people unable to rent.
it's a bit like the housing market at the moment.

MobileSaver

Grumpy_chap said:

Perhaps there needs to be some similar process that bans rogue landlords from being a landlord again.  Not sure how that would work in practice, but hopefully the idea can be understood.

It already happens in Scotland, you can be refused permission to be a landlord if you are deemed to fail the "fit and proper person" test. However, I've no idea how it works in practice.

Again, for balance, there should also be a central tenant register where rogue tenants can effectively be blacklisted so they can never again make a private landlord's life a misery.

Which list do you think would contain more names? The rogue landlords or the rogue tenants?

MobileSaver

lookstraightahead said:

Soon there will be fewer private landlords. This will enable landlords to price higher, with more people unable to rent.

Agreed, similarly practices such as council's "gatekeeping" should be banned as all it does is exacerbate the problem in the long term.

Grumpy_chap

MobileSaver said:

Which list do you think would contain more names? The rogue landlords or the rogue tenants?

That is a biased question.  There are more tenants than landlords so one list will be larger by default even if the proportion is the same.

There is a part to which bad landlords foster bad tenants and vice-versa.  This is, perhaps, in part driven by some entrants to the LL role being so over-leveraged and inexperienced that they cannot "ride" any bumps and fail to understand the needs of running a business, nor have the competence to do so.  

newsgroupmonkey_

lookstraightahead said:

Soon there will be fewer private landlords. This will enable landlords to price higher, with more people unable to rent.
it's a bit like the housing market at the moment.

Whilst you might think that, the truth is very different. As more people are finding housing unaffordable (and I'd expect quite a few repos to hit the market once we sort things out), there is going to be a bigger need. The BTL market is still very much buoyant, particularly in certain areas where housing is much more affordable.

I've always enjoyed @theartfullodger 's posts on here. He understands the risks and what it takes to be a landlord (my folks are landlords and despite what the sheffield FB page might say, they're not in it for greed - they don't have private pensions so this is all they have). The laws about booting people out on the street have been there for a number of years. Landlords should know what they're getting themselves into.

I personally wouldn't worry about a load of right wing and generally poorly educated people (the Facebook users who commented) think. There's a mixture of "Should have given him a dig whilst they kicked him out", some toxic masculinity ("should of manned up") or "Landlords are only in it for greed, so they deserve it".

macman

There are surely other financial implications for the LL in acquiring a criminal record. His insurance premiums will go up, and his credit worthiness will go down. 

2bFrank

macman said:

There are surely other financial implications for the LL in acquiring a criminal record. His insurance premiums will go up, and his credit worthiness will go down. 

There is none at all, not for this type of conviction, it was only fines, no custodial or even community work. anywhere, where he needs to declare it, wouldn't even give it a second look. Only issue he may have is if he applies for a visa from another country to work etc. they may refuse it, unlikely but a possibility.

The worse he will have now is a little extra admin. I've been saying it for ages on here, and even got into some arguments with people on this forum, but in todays society crime does pay. The police wouldn't have given this a second look and said its a civil matter. Courts are backed up and hardly enough time to even hear a case when it comes up.

Roughly £2,000 in fines and compo easily outweighs the cost of a legal eviction, plus you don't have the risk of the tenant damaging the property in revenge. We are going to see a lot more of this, well legal evictions, ill be honest I cannot see many going to court. I don't agree with it, but some landlords don't have any other option.

Hasbeen

Agree Landlords will look at this and In true MSE style will decide around £2000 in court fines etc is better than £2000 in Lawyers fees? and perhaps 6 months lost rental at perhaps £500 per month? to just to get to court, totalling £3000 plus lawyers, say £5000. So up by £3000? If tenant has story to tell at court this cost to Landord may even double?

And no damage to property as they cannot get back in? Might me tempting to some.

Norman_Castle

While the penalties might appear low compared to the potential savings the fact he has been convicted should dissuade him and hopefully others from doing this again and hopefully if he does repeat this a conviction for further offences would be far higher.

Elmer_BeFuddled

MobileSaver said:

Which list do you think would contain more names? The rogue landlords or the rogue tenants?

I'd expect rogue landlords (multiplied by their per tenant).