A brand new subscription model for the incoming tenant fee ban has been launched by online letting agency MakeUrMove. With just £12 per month on the ‘Good Landlord’ subscription, landlords will have access to a wide range of services, including Rightmove and Zoopla advertising, tenant referencing, rent collection, legal eviction services,
Research from June 2016 carried out by building society, Kent Alliance, has shown that 40% of landlords are planning to increase their rents by an average of 5.6% over the next 6 months. Three quarters of these have blamed new Government legislation for the increase, while a study by the
Jackson-Stops & Staff, one of the UK’s leading estate agents, has released new information that suggestions as to the reform of stamp duty on second homes, may actually fail to achieve the goal of putting off buy-to-let investors. The information, in effect shows that inflation in housing prices may actually
BDC 319 : Aug 2024
A brand new subscription model for the incoming tenant fee ban has been launched by online letting agency MakeUrMove. With just £12 per month on the ‘Good Landlord’ subscription, landlords will have access to a wide range of services, including Rightmove and Zoopla advertising, tenant referencing, rent collection, legal eviction services, property licence checking, as well as documents and renewals. “The tenant fee bill is going to affect the whole property industry. The most innovative agents will look to technology to reduce costs. We’re at the forefront of this as the first agent to come out and support the tenant fee ban. As a tech platform, we’re constantly developing and will be adding new features as standard to our package. We want to be a landlord platform rather than a letting platform,” said Alexandra Morris, Managing Director at MakeUrMove. Moreover, the subscription offers optional bolt ons, such as guaranteed rent for up to six months in the case of a tenant failing to pay and annual gas safety certificates, for a small additional cost. MakeUrMove conducted a research that showed 25% of landlords and a staggering 85% of tenants didn’t understand the upcoming ban. “We’re confident that our new subscription model will do this, while providing peace of mind and security for landlords, knowing that they will pay a fixed cost of £12 per month with no prices increases over the term of their subscription, as well as benefiting from referencing, legal eviction cover and renewals included as standard. This whole focus behind these packages is to try and mitigate costs for landlords when it comes to having an empty property, as well as supporting them and reducing the risk of non payment of rent,” explained further Alexandra. The £12 per month subscription model will be offered alongside a basic package, which will include advertising and one downloadable tenancy agreement. There will also be a standard package offered at a one-off cost of £96, which will also include tenancy documents and deposit lodging, rent collection for 12 months and advertising with the major property portals.
Research from June 2016 carried out by building society, Kent Alliance, has shown that 40% of landlords are planning to increase their rents by an average of 5.6% over the next 6 months. Three quarters of these have blamed new Government legislation for the increase, while a study by the Residential Landlords Association (RLA) earlier in the month also shows that most landlords plan to raise rents on their tenants. 56% of these intend to do so within the next 12 months and the majority blame new Government legislation and changes to mortgage interest relief. However, the latest research from property classifieds site, TheHouseShop.com, has discovered that nearly half (42%) of private renters would not be able to afford a rise of up to 5% in their monthly rent costs – which shows quite how precarious the UK rental market has become. The YouGov survey of more than 1000 renters and mortgage holders asked people to estimate the minimum percentage that their monthly mortgage or rent payments would have to go up by before they became unaffordable. Shockingly, an increase of just up to 1% would be unaffordable for 16% of private tenants, which demonstrates how many tenants are already paying the upper limit of what they can afford. In comparison, homeowners (with mortgages only) were much more likely to be able to withstand smaller increases in their monthly payments: with just 3% saying they could not afford an increase of up to 1%, compared to the 16% of private renters who said the same thing. Mortgage-holders were more able to absorb larger increases in monthly payments, with 24% saying monthly mortgage payments would have to increase by more than 20% before they became unaffordable, compared to just 7% of private tenants who said the same of their monthly rent payments.
Jackson-Stops & Staff, one of the UK’s leading estate agents, has released new information that suggestions as to the reform of stamp duty on second homes, may actually fail to achieve the goal of putting off buy-to-let investors. The information, in effect shows that inflation in housing prices may actually offset the reform changes, and that the 3% surcharge placed on second homes may not yet be enough to actually deter potential investors from seeing buy-to-let investments as optimistic. And while it has been declared that there has been a surge in registrations made for buy-to-let properties up to April, it has also been highlighted that the majority of these investors will see greater returns from the inflation of property prices in the modern recovering housing market (potentially in under a year), thus positioning the 3% surcharge as nothing more than an inconvenience. In fact, Jackson-Stops & Staff has warned that those most affected by the surcharge will actually be tenants who will suffer from increased rental prices as reported previously. This, in effect, will likely deteriorate the market conditions for those looking to break onto the rental market as already previously highlighted, with landlords still seeing optimistic market conditions for at least some time. As explained by Jackson-Stops & Staff’s Chairman, Nick Leeming, the government’s attempts to even the playing field for property investors and first-time buyers, the situations does nothing to remove the spotlight which landlords should be seeing on investments into property as one of the most solid investments to this day. He added: “The idea that stamp duty tax will act as a deterrent is a fiction, as for most landlords it won’t amount to a significant figure.” Of course, with the impacts, once again, hitting the tenants of properties as opposed to the pockets of landlords, the growing debate on the depreciated affordability of rental housing stock is of even greater note. The question, however, is as to whether the government can find an alternative way to dissolve interest in buy-to-let investment in a way which won’t come down on the tenant.
