Buy to Let Landlord Registration is Thought to Be Ineffective

The Government plans to oblige all private landlords to register before they get a permission to rent out residential property. According to a national registration system, private landlords will have to pay a registration fee – perhaps £50 – and to maintain certain standards. Those, who fail to carry out repairing works or who browbeat tenants, could be refused a landlord license. The idea of the introduction of national registration system for landlords came out from a move headed by the Association of Residential Lettings Agents, aimed at the introduction of a similar voluntary licensing initiative for letting agents. At the same time, Landlord Assist emphasizes that further expenditures of landlords will influence those who enter the market and also the choice of rental property available. Managing Director of Landlord Assist, Graham Kinnear, shares his opinion on further legislation, saying that it will be useless, as long as landlords are already suffering from reams of legislation. According to Kinneat, supplementary registration schemes will only prevent people from entering the market. The legislation aimed at ensuring that landlords meet the required gas and electric standards is already in place; legislation for failure to provide an energy performance certificate plus legislation surrounding the correct operation of Houses in Multiple Occupation licenses and the treatment of tenants’ deposits also exist. Stephen Parry of Landlord Assist is of the opinion that it becomes evident during the working process that the number of unprincipled landlords is equal to the number of unprincipled tenants. At the moment landlords are less protected by law than tenants. Experts comment that the government’s proposed scheme will poorly perform because only responsible landlords will comply with it, whereas bad landlords will evade it as they do ignore all current requirements. There is no sense in controlling registered landlords, says Landlord Assist. All in all, landlords and tenants are looking forward to learn the details of the proposed scheme, which are to be published in the Green Paper.