A hot topic in the recent property press is ‘Why should landlords subsidise those who are struggling to pay their rent’? but at a time when the professional tenant has never been more virulent, I believe the question should be ‘Why should landlords have to support those who simply don’t pay their rent’?

I would consider my business to be a responsible letting agency who have worked throughout the pandemic period (behind closed doors and at a reduced staff level) to look after our Tenants and Landlords best interests.

Why is the government punishing Landlords?

It is clear that the Government of today wants to have the best of both worlds, they want landlords to bolster successive governments failure to invest in housing stock but penalise them for doing so…

Having lured private landlords into investing in UK housing stock with the premise of tax benefits and capital allowances for tying up their capital to support the economy, they now have turned the tide and are quite obviously set to continue to penalise those same individuals who they turned to for that support through additional taxation, the withdrawal of benefits which allowed them to tie up their capital.

Unfortunately, this puts landlord / Investors in a very difficult position and with a quandary. Should they simply sell their investments and throw their tenants out on the streets or continue on without the historic benefits??

A real dilemma for landlords

The pandemic has forced a lot of those landlords to look at the dilemma a lot harder, as professional tenants seek to use the opportunity to their advantage by not paying their rent, whilst using the system of delayed possession to their maximum advantage. We are always happy to work with tenants who are genuinely experiencing hardship but the government's intervention to delay possession hearings, whilst applaud-able in the small minority of ‘unscrupulous landlords’ cases it also interferes and harms the relationship between Landlord and tenant which then retrospectively leaves a nasty taste in the mouths of landlords towards the government!