Renters' Rights Bill - Will it screw me over?

ConcernedRenter

Bigphil1474 said:

Is there no student accommodation you could go into for a year then get a reference, or is this post student life? If it's post student for work, could your employer help?

I'm on a 2 year postgraduate course, my university does have a few post grad halls but they are mostly prioritized for international students. I tried applying but I was rejected.

ReadySteadyPop

FlorayG said:

Yes you are. I'm on a landlord forum and so many are saying they won't rent again to students with no income or foreigners who can just up and leave. It's only the guarantee of 6 months rent up front has kept them in that market until now. No landlord in their right mind would take that chance with no reasonable expectation the rent will be paid every month

If that is the case loads of landlords will be going out of business in the coming years, this means more housing supply so a good thing really. The problem for landlords is that anyone can "just up and leave" at the end of the six month period, what good is that if you are running a business? The key to good long term tenants is  - Cheaper Rent! So simple really.

Albermarle

I'm a student who will need to start looking for a room in London in a few months. Unfortunately, I don't have any recent landlord references, nor do I have anyone who I can really ask to act as a guarantor. I currently live off a mixture of my own savings (around £40k) and student loans. I always assumed I'd be able to offer rent in advance to persuade a landlord to consider me.

One of my offspring rented 2 different places at Uni and 2 different places after Uni.
She has never been asked to pay in advance more than two months, and not even that at a couple of them.
Most students could not afford to do it anyway.

ConcernedRenter

Albermarle said:

I'm a student who will need to start looking for a room in London in a few months. Unfortunately, I don't have any recent landlord references, nor do I have anyone who I can really ask to act as a guarantor. I currently live off a mixture of my own savings (around £40k) and student loans. I always assumed I'd be able to offer rent in advance to persuade a landlord to consider me.

One of my offspring rented 2 different places at Uni and 2 different places after Uni.
She has never been asked to pay in advance more than two months, and not even that at a couple of them.
Most students could not afford to do it anyway.

Did they not have a guarantor, or at least recent landlord references?

I don't have either of those sadly so it'd probably be a lot more difficult for me.

dinosaur66

student accomadation is a more niche market

HMO  room will always be available as they are more transient in and out lets.

the university in beckton has accomadation already built in.

but if it is in just a few months you are looking the new renters rights bill will not have passed /trouble is the massive rise in new people every month looking to rent in london you are competing against .

not sure how london landlords get away with it but i know they do

too many for officials to catch up

in newham / dagenham and redbridge where you have to be licensed as a landlord and face 30k fines for big breaches they flew drones over back gardens and i think it was 1 in 2 had prefab sheds where they suspect renters are living illegally .

and that is on top of when i went to school population of newham was about 180k

in 2004 it was about 220k / in 2024 it is now 350k to 370k estimate and that does not include all those prefabs .

at the same time an exodus of the legit /due dilegence type landlords.

not sure if these are spefically for students/young workers  as i never asked but the 30k of new flats built

in canning town /silvertown way are all populated by very young twenty somethings that i have been told are rental only and not for sale / very nice for that area and i have never seen anyone that looked over 30 come out of there.

railway to the city 400m way / but its only my obsersvation might be young canary wharf of city workers just seens strange there age group /  i was a market trader at rathbone market and see them all pass by .

Mr.Generous

I'm afraid that what people have done in the past won't help much. They may have taken students without rent in advance or a guarantor but they could evict, and they couldn't always choose a tenant so easily.

Despite what posters with no experience as a landlord say it's a sellers market. Massively skewed in the landlords favour. They will probably get between 20-50 applicants and they will take what they believe is the best one. 

Landlords are going to be more cautious and risk averse. Most will not shortlist you for a viewing I'm afraid. The new laws are going to impact tenants far more than landlords. Some will indeed sell up because of the new rules, including the new EPC rules not yet in force, and this really won't help. Supply and demand imbalance doesn't just drive up rents it gives landlords carte blanche to select tenants. 

A landlord mate has just taken a couple from Hong Kong and an Indian Dr in 2 houses. Both unable to pass affordability tests because no UK employment history, both got tenancy with 12 months up front. In future these people won't be able to rent. If you fail affordability checks then usually landlord insurance won't cover you. Policies require tenants to be vetted and pass checks.

dannim12345

Any ‘private’ purpose built student accommodation in the area? I stayed with Unite but there are many companies around now. 

gazfocus

spoovy said:

You certainly won't be "screwed over" by the proposed improvements.  Temporarily inconvenienced maybe, but in the long run (assuming you continue to rent for a while) you will probably appreciate being treated like a human being rather than a cash dispenser.

I’m baffled that there are people that think the renters reform is a good thing for prospective tenants. The only people it’s good for is the government that I’m convinced want to get more people back into social housing (which will make the government money), but that social housing does not yet exist. 

Think about it logically… the government have well and truly waged war on small private landlords and many of those landlords have already decided to sell up and leave the rental market with many more following I’m sure (we are actually looking at whether we should give our tenants notice to leave). All that is going to do is make the rental properties that are left more expensive and more difficult to get as more people will be competing for them. It will make it much more difficult for people to rent a house with pets, minor financial blemish’s, etc because there will be other applicants that don’t have pets or with squeaky clean credit. 

I’m in a bit of a peculiar position as I’m both a landlord and a tenant (bit of a long story which I’ll not go into here). But, I’ve seen rents increase by significant sums over the past few years. When we rented out our first home (a fairly new 3 bed semi), prospective tenants would tell us £675 was overpriced (it was the going rate plus the house had a brand new £12k conservatory etc). The same size houses now in our area are around £1100-1200 per month. Many families wouldn’t be able to afford that but rents are getting higher all the time. 

I agree something needs to change drastically but alienating landlords and driving them to sell up isn’t the answer and will only make things worse. 

Anyway, to answer the op’s question, I would speak to the housing people at your uni and see if they can help. When I was at uni, they had a list of approved landlords that were experienced in dealing with students and worked alongside payment dates for student finance etc. 

spoovy

I think the idea is to not make perfect the enemy of good. Yes of course in the short to medium term disruption will impact renters and that's not ideal, but that's not a good reason to allow the current parasitical and abusive system to carry on unchanged forever.
We'll have to see how it pans out in practice.
If the landlords do all sell up then sale prices at the bottom end will come down, a bit at least, and many FTBs at the low end will benefit and escape the rent trap, also reducing demand on rental stock at the same time; the impact on rental prices might not be that great. 

FlorayG

spoovy said:

I think the idea is to not make perfect the enemy of good. Yes of course in the short to medium term disruption will impact renters and that's not ideal, but that's not a good reason to allow the current parasitical and abusive system to carry on unchanged forever.

The current regulations are not 'parasitical and abusive'
SOME landlords are parasitical and abusive
Most of us are not
And guess what? The bad landlords will ignore the new rules just the way they ignore the current rules so it won't even affect them , it will only cause more hassle for the landlords who look after their tenants