An agent was named in Parliament this week during Prime Minister’s questions.
Labour MP for Stockton North, Alex Cunningham, said: “My young constituent paid a £300 house-reservation fee to Pattinson estate agents, but the agents will not refund it after their landlord client withdrew from the contract because my constituent refused to pay 12 months’ rent in advance.
“She faces having to pay another agent non-refundable fees of £650 to secure a different property.
“When will the Prime Minister act to put an end to these rip-off fees and stop these agents capitalising on young people and others?”
Theresa May referred Cunningham to the Queen’s speech which “referred to what we are doing in this area”.
Cunningham asked: “When?”
May replied: “He will recognise that in this House we need to ensure that we get right any legislation that we introduce, so that it actually works.
“We recognise the problem and we are going to do something about it.”
The Queen’s speech revealed plans by the Government to cap holding deposits at the equivalent of one week’s rent, and to cap bond deposits at the equivalent of one month’s rent.
Pattinson has its head office in Newcastle upon Tyne and marks its 40th year in business this month.
Comments (7)
Well Alex Cunningham and your fellow MP’s get off your backsides and reverse social housing asset stripping of recent decades and invest in council housing to house those in need. It is not for the PRS to accept tenants they feel may be too risky. The case detailed sounds exceptional and if a landlord is demanding a year’s rent up front they must have had deep concerns. This is not normal and is clearly a rare example being used for political means. The MP concerned appears as unreasonable as the agents he refers to merely to justify his own political ends.
A little more background on the tenant might explain why landlords are wanting 12 months up front from this particular tenant.
Perhaps what is perceived as a problem with private sector failures of ‘capitalist landlords and agents’ is a convenient excuse for a broken system. Presumably this is a tenant who is not vulnerable enough for social housing, doesn’t meet the criteria of the housing associations and is therefore one of the least able to compete tenants in the PRS.
I have just dealt with a case where long term housing association tenants were evicted owing £76 arrears. They had a 3 bedroom home that was in high demand and with the children left home they apparently didn’t “need” 3 bedrooms. It seems they didn’t have a right to a home just a right shelter but only if they are vulnerable which as working tenants they weren’t. For sure they weren’t saintly tenant but that made them easy victims for eviction rather than rogue tenants.
It is time government and well intentioned lobbyists took the trouble to understand the whole problem not just headline grabbing emotive bits of it.
The thing is Robert, the people you are referring to in a three bedroom Housing Association property no longer require three bedrooms but assume the right that as they are paying rent, which I assume is reduced as it is a housing association, think they can simply stay there forever. There are young families in one bedroom flats that desperately need the three bedroom houses that are being blocked by older couples with grown children who no longer need that size property but don’t want to move because it is their home. That wasn’t what social housing was set up for. We don’t have any new stock and we have older people effectively house blocking by refusing to move. The answer is to build more social housing but we don’t have the money.
As you say the MP that has named and shamed the agent has clearly not told the whole story but having said that how many MPs ever actually tell the whole truth rather than bending the truth to fit their own agenda.
Yours is the sort of polarised,logical, can’t argue with that view point that is completey right but also in some ways wrong and that’s the problem. On one hand there is a desperate need for accommodation on the other the need for stable home lives.
This particular couple aren’t old and suddenly the ‘luxury’ of having their children ‘home’ for a meal, having, in a few years time, the grand kids to stay over is taken away from them.
The answer is not to build more social housing, the system of social housing is badly run, uneconomic and unsustainable. A whole sector approach is required otherwise nothing will ever provide a solution to a complex set of needs, wants and social balance.
That almost sounds like social engineering! You can’t keep larger accommodation once you don’t need it!! Sounds like a dictatorship to me. If you are older and own a larger house (because you have worked hard throughout your life) you are being told to down size. These are peoples homes we are talking about not hosiptal bed blocking (another syndrome caused largely by Government failures to provide adequate social care). The private rented sector is NOT a social housing provider and the social housing sector should start to understand that.. It is not private landlords that have caused the lack of investment in social housing, it is Government. The very Government and local authorities that seem to constantly landlord bash (yet need the accommodation the PRS provide). It is time the PRS is valued and not treated as ducks at a fairground shooting gallery.
Incidently council housing was set up to house those in poorer finacial positions and for the many coming back from the second world war. During the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s & 80’s there was not this attitude of moving people out because the property was deemed by some faceless administrator to be too large for them and tenant could volutarily move if they wished. Not forced to move by their social landlords. Although I understand the reasoning behind opitmising housing this should not be forced by dictatorship and was NOT what social housing was set up to do. Don’t blame social tenants for Government failure to invest in housing – the very successive government who have been asset stripping social housing. Selling social housing stock is by far the largest cause of social housing shortage. And yes you can blame Mags T for starting that one.
Good post Will!
Thank you Robert. People should understand housing history rather than the propagander put out to satisfy polical desire and expediency. It seems some politicians want to repeat the msitakes of the past.