7 ms·

I’m not sympathetic at all with this idea. They shouldn’t have built shops and restaurants because there’s a council estate? On gentrification, if you own you

by mmarq 4y ago

I’m not sympathetic at all with this idea. They shouldn’t have built shops and restaurants because there’s a council estate? On gentrification, if you own your flat then you have won the lottery, for its price is 8 times what it was 20 years ago. Similarly if you can use the so-called “right to buy”. If you are renting privately, you should get you MP to vote the abolition of section 21, which is an uncivilised law. That should sort out all issues related to people being priced out of the area.

jlokier 4y ago
How would abolishing section 21 evictions sort out issues related to being priced out of the area for private tenants? Tenants still have to leave when their 12 month fixed term tenancy ends (the most common type I've seen), if they receive an offer to start a fresh one at a raised price that's higher than they can afford.
- mmarq 4y ago
  Contracts will be perpetual or will last decades, with rent increases linked to inflation. Tenants will be able to end their tenancies with 1-2 months notice, landlords won’t be able terminate a tenancy unless they have to move into the property or the tenant is not paying rent. This is how renting works in Western Europe.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - lentil_soup 4y ago
    Last time I rented in the UK it was 1yr contracts that I had to renew and hope it didn't go up in price. Is that not the case anymore?
    - mmarq 4y ago
      Nothing has changed since Thatcher, I was describing a scenario where the UK completes its westernisation process and abolishes S21.
      - xnorswap 4y ago
        Not quite true, they changed it a few years ago so agencies had to stop scamming both tenants and landlords out of massive fees (often charging both for the same thing) every time the contracts were renewed. That and the tenancy deposit scheme overall has made renting a lot less stressful than it was a decade or two ago.
        mmarq 4y ago
        These are all very minor changes. Yes, agencies can’t steal 100£ from you for each renewal, but they replaced it with commissions. The tenancy deposit scheme is again a fake solution. Landlords can still block your money for months and force you to accept some deductions (because a fork is missing or the flat hasn’t been “professionally cleaned”). If you are money constrained and don’t have enough money to pay 2.5 months of rent (first month plus deposit), you are forced to give accept your landlord’s deductions in order to move to the next flat.
  - Ekaros 4y ago
    It really depends on country for Finland that is certainly not the way. 1 year contracts turning in perpetual ones are somewhat new standard, but this is by the landlord to protect their gains. Otherwise it is always 1 month notice from renter or 3 month in case of less than 1 year and 6 months for landlord.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
nly 4y ago
I really don't understand what the hate is with respect to Section 21. If you own property then you should be able to do whatever you want with it, whenever you want, provided you meet your obligations under any tenancy agreement. As a tenant myself I have always accepted the possibility that my landlord could serve notice as my fixed term approaches its end. It literally says the landlord has the right to do so in the document I signed.
- jlokier 4y ago
  For HN readers, section 21 eviction means a landlord can send a "no fault" eviction notice to their tenant at (almost) any time, and the tenant must leave fairly quickly (2 months), which is not long enough to plan around. As a result, no tenant is secure where they live. I would guess most people who do not own property have had to move several times with little notice, usually to another area of town because it's not that easy to find somewhere else nearby at short notice. This can be particularly rough on families because it means the children must change school, and on people with care needs because their (typically unpaid) carers who live nearby don't live nearby after the move. And it's just generally shitty to be unable to settle into a community long term anywhere. The move to remove section 21 in its current form (set the bar higher for a landlord who wants to reclaim the property), is a tenants' rights move. It's disagreeing with the parent comment that a person (or a corporation such as a pension fund) who owns properties should be able to do "whatever they want, whenever they want" because that results in unacceptably bad living conditions for tenants, who almost universally have no choice about being tenants, and no alternative type of tenancy available to them. One of the most obviously questionable aspects of section 21, which would be easy to change without harming reasonable landlords, is that a landlord can evict a long-term tenant for no reason just to replace them with a different tenant, just because they feel like it. There is no requirement that the landlord intends to use the property for something else. In practice, because these evictions are easy and common, sometimes they occur because the property agent (intermediary between landlord and tenant) feels like it, because it nets the property agent some extra fees to start a new tenancy. Sound unlikely? It happened to me a few years ago where I am currently living. It's only because I accidently met a representative of the landlord that we realised the property agent had lied to both of us, and the landlord intervened to let me renew!
imajoredinecon 4y ago
> section 21 For any other Americans who were shocked British landlords could evict with 2 months' notice for any reason, I did some googling and it turns out section 21 _does not apply during your lease term_. It seems like a section 21-eligible lease in the UK is just like a US a month-to-month lease that requires 2 months' notice for the landlord to end. (For the Brits reading this unfamiliar with US leases, this is an eminently normal thing to have happen to a lease in the US at the end of its fixed term.) Source: https://www.gov.uk/evicting-tenants/section-21-and-section-8-notices https://www.gov.uk/evicting-tenants/section-21-and-section-8... ("You cannot use a Section 21 notice if... the fixed term has not ended")
- rowanajmarshall 4y ago
  This sounds about right. On a fixed lease, the landlord generally can't kick you out. But when a fixed-lease ends, unless it's explicitly renewed, it automatically becomes a month-to-month lease which can be ended by the tenant with one month's notice, or the landlord with two months notice. In my experience landlords prefer to renew as a fixed-term.
LightG 4y ago
I'm not sympathetic with locals being priced out of their area. Your analysis around that is incredibly simplistic.
- _dain_ 4y ago
  They get priced out because it's so hard to build anything anywhere else. The restricted places where development can happen, end up with all the pent up demand flooding into them. The solution is not to prevent building from happening, it's to loosen restrictions everywhere else. The planning system is in serious need of reform.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    If you want to see what happens if you let people build what they want, have a look at Auckland, New Zealand. Low quality building on large sections spread over a vast area. High infrastructure requirements with low population density. It's not good.
    - _dain_ 4y ago
      When you say "low quality building on large sections in a vast area" that makes me think of American style restrictive single-family zoning. And hey, looks like they had something similar until last year: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/15/new-zealand-has-adopted-a-radical-rezoning-plan-to-cut-house-prices-could-it-work-in-australia https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/15/new-zealand-ha... >Planning law has long been criticised for being restrictive, unwieldy and slow. It is blamed in part for slowing down housing development, entrenching single-house dwellings, and creating urban sprawl, which has implications for transport, infrastructure and climate change. >Building a standard single-story house in New Zealand comes with a lot of paperwork, but trying to build a multi-storey or multi-dwelling development could tie someone up in regulatory battles for months or years, at great expense. >If an area is zoned as a single-family area, the standard residence is a single house with a garden. Anyone wanting to build multiple dwellings, or anything other than a standard house, requires consent from the local council. Councils can reject the application for a whole number of reasons, including, for example, an unhappy neighbour about to lose some sunlight. So it just proves my point even more. Left to their own devices, people do not naturally make nothing but low density low quality suburbia. It didn't exist until government zoning was introduced after WW2. Same thing happens here: the Deanobox is a product of a restrictive planning regime. If you really want to see what happens when people are allowed to build, look at Tokyo. A first world megalopolis, that is also affordable. They understand the revolutionary idea that homebuilding has to keep pace with the growth in residents.

by mmarq 4y ago

jlokier 4y ago

How would abolishing section 21 evictions sort out issues related to being priced out of the area for private tenants? Tenants still have to leave when their 12 month fixed term tenancy ends (the most common type I've seen), if they receive an offer to start a fresh one at a raised price that's higher than they can afford.

mmarq 4y ago
Contracts will be perpetual or will last decades, with rent increases linked to inflation. Tenants will be able to end their tenancies with 1-2 months notice, landlords won’t be able terminate a tenancy unless they have to move into the property or the tenant is not paying rent. This is how renting works in Western Europe.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- lentil_soup 4y ago
  Last time I rented in the UK it was 1yr contracts that I had to renew and hope it didn't go up in price. Is that not the case anymore?
  - mmarq 4y ago
    Nothing has changed since Thatcher, I was describing a scenario where the UK completes its westernisation process and abolishes S21.
    - xnorswap 4y ago
      Not quite true, they changed it a few years ago so agencies had to stop scamming both tenants and landlords out of massive fees (often charging both for the same thing) every time the contracts were renewed. That and the tenancy deposit scheme overall has made renting a lot less stressful than it was a decade or two ago.
      - mmarq 4y ago
        These are all very minor changes. Yes, agencies can’t steal 100£ from you for each renewal, but they replaced it with commissions. The tenancy deposit scheme is again a fake solution. Landlords can still block your money for months and force you to accept some deductions (because a fork is missing or the flat hasn’t been “professionally cleaned”). If you are money constrained and don’t have enough money to pay 2.5 months of rent (first month plus deposit), you are forced to give accept your landlord’s deductions in order to move to the next flat.
- Ekaros 4y ago
  It really depends on country for Finland that is certainly not the way. 1 year contracts turning in perpetual ones are somewhat new standard, but this is by the landlord to protect their gains. Otherwise it is always 1 month notice from renter or 3 month in case of less than 1 year and 6 months for landlord.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

nly 4y ago

I really don't understand what the hate is with respect to Section 21. If you own property then you should be able to do whatever you want with it, whenever you want, provided you meet your obligations under any tenancy agreement. As a tenant myself I have always accepted the possibility that my landlord could serve notice as my fixed term approaches its end. It literally says the landlord has the right to do so in the document I signed.

jlokier 4y ago
For HN readers, section 21 eviction means a landlord can send a "no fault" eviction notice to their tenant at (almost) any time, and the tenant must leave fairly quickly (2 months), which is not long enough to plan around. As a result, no tenant is secure where they live. I would guess most people who do not own property have had to move several times with little notice, usually to another area of town because it's not that easy to find somewhere else nearby at short notice. This can be particularly rough on families because it means the children must change school, and on people with care needs because their (typically unpaid) carers who live nearby don't live nearby after the move. And it's just generally shitty to be unable to settle into a community long term anywhere. The move to remove section 21 in its current form (set the bar higher for a landlord who wants to reclaim the property), is a tenants' rights move. It's disagreeing with the parent comment that a person (or a corporation such as a pension fund) who owns properties should be able to do "whatever they want, whenever they want" because that results in unacceptably bad living conditions for tenants, who almost universally have no choice about being tenants, and no alternative type of tenancy available to them. One of the most obviously questionable aspects of section 21, which would be easy to change without harming reasonable landlords, is that a landlord can evict a long-term tenant for no reason just to replace them with a different tenant, just because they feel like it. There is no requirement that the landlord intends to use the property for something else. In practice, because these evictions are easy and common, sometimes they occur because the property agent (intermediary between landlord and tenant) feels like it, because it nets the property agent some extra fees to start a new tenancy. Sound unlikely? It happened to me a few years ago where I am currently living. It's only because I accidently met a representative of the landlord that we realised the property agent had lied to both of us, and the landlord intervened to let me renew!

imajoredinecon 4y ago

> section 21 For any other Americans who were shocked British landlords could evict with 2 months' notice for any reason, I did some googling and it turns out section 21 _does not apply during your lease term_. It seems like a section 21-eligible lease in the UK is just like a US a month-to-month lease that requires 2 months' notice for the landlord to end. (For the Brits reading this unfamiliar with US leases, this is an eminently normal thing to have happen to a lease in the US at the end of its fixed term.) Source: https://www.gov.uk/evicting-tenants/section-21-and-section-8-notices https://www.gov.uk/evicting-tenants/section-21-and-section-8... ("You cannot use a Section 21 notice if... the fixed term has not ended")

rowanajmarshall 4y ago
This sounds about right. On a fixed lease, the landlord generally can't kick you out. But when a fixed-lease ends, unless it's explicitly renewed, it automatically becomes a month-to-month lease which can be ended by the tenant with one month's notice, or the landlord with two months notice. In my experience landlords prefer to renew as a fixed-term.

LightG 4y ago

I'm not sympathetic with locals being priced out of their area. Your analysis around that is incredibly simplistic.

_dain_ 4y ago
They get priced out because it's so hard to build anything anywhere else. The restricted places where development can happen, end up with all the pent up demand flooding into them. The solution is not to prevent building from happening, it's to loosen restrictions everywhere else. The planning system is in serious need of reform.
- lostlogin 4y ago
  If you want to see what happens if you let people build what they want, have a look at Auckland, New Zealand. Low quality building on large sections spread over a vast area. High infrastructure requirements with low population density. It's not good.
  - _dain_ 4y ago
    When you say "low quality building on large sections in a vast area" that makes me think of American style restrictive single-family zoning. And hey, looks like they had something similar until last year: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/15/new-zealand-has-adopted-a-radical-rezoning-plan-to-cut-house-prices-could-it-work-in-australia https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/15/new-zealand-ha... >Planning law has long been criticised for being restrictive, unwieldy and slow. It is blamed in part for slowing down housing development, entrenching single-house dwellings, and creating urban sprawl, which has implications for transport, infrastructure and climate change. >Building a standard single-story house in New Zealand comes with a lot of paperwork, but trying to build a multi-storey or multi-dwelling development could tie someone up in regulatory battles for months or years, at great expense. >If an area is zoned as a single-family area, the standard residence is a single house with a garden. Anyone wanting to build multiple dwellings, or anything other than a standard house, requires consent from the local council. Councils can reject the application for a whole number of reasons, including, for example, an unhappy neighbour about to lose some sunlight. So it just proves my point even more. Left to their own devices, people do not naturally make nothing but low density low quality suburbia. It didn't exist until government zoning was introduced after WW2. Same thing happens here: the Deanobox is a product of a restrictive planning regime. If you really want to see what happens when people are allowed to build, look at Tokyo. A first world megalopolis, that is also affordable. They understand the revolutionary idea that homebuilding has to keep pace with the growth in residents.