By UK renters don’t mind who their landlord is or being locked in to longer-term tenancy agreements with them, according to recent data published by Vesta Property.
Four out of five UK tenants want the security of renting a property that allows them to remain in their homes long after their landlord has sold it, according to the data from this online marketplace platform specialising in buying and selling income generating residential investment properties.
It was also discovered that 79 per cent of the 600 tenants surveyed, thought it was absurd that landlords could evict tenants simply for another landlord to take their place.
70 per cent of UK tenants admitted that they don’t care who their landlord is, just as long as they have the guarantee that they can remain in the same tenancy agreement once their current landlord has sold their property, according to the recent data from Vesta Property.
UK tenants lose out in a big way through early evictions, as their finances and mental health can be considerably affected as a result of the associated stress that comes with finding a new home before their contract expires. One in nine tenants have been evicted early by their landlords who wish to sell their investment property in August 2018, and this figure rose to one in five tenants aged between 25 to 30 years of age, according to the recent data.
However, UK landlords are losing rental income through this practice due to the void periods they experience whilst the property is on the market, and the time it takes to find a new tenant which is estimated to be around £550 million per year. This calculation included the UK’s average monthly rent, the average time it took to sell a property and to find tenants in the UK and the average annual rental property sales figures, according to Vesta Property.
Regarding the practice of early evictions due to a change of ownership, Russell Gould, CEO at Vesta Property, commented: “Discussions such as enforcing three-year tenancies have raised strong reactions from both landlords and tenants who do not want to have their hands tied.
“This is not to say that tenants do not want to stay in their homes – far from it. But the answer is not to make the system more rigid, it is to move with the times and mould it into something that works for both landlords and tenants alike.
“If a landlord needs to sell their property they should absolutely have the right to do that within a time frame that suits them and ideally without losing rental income. But equally, their settled tenants should not suffer and lose their home because of it. Nor do they need to. The practice of advising a landlord to evict tenants in order to sell a property is outdated.
“New models like Vesta offering a tenant in place sale and purchase satisfy both the needs of tenants who want to keep their home and landlords or investors who wish to sell or buy.”
The numbers of tenants reliant upon the private rented sector grows every year, due to the UK’s housing stock crisis and as wages fall behind inflation, putting homeownership out of reach for many Millennials. The recent Vesta Property data reveals how difficult forced early evictions are on both tenants and landlords and highlights where the property market has room to adapt to reduce this financial burden.
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