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Category: Housing

No, falling behind with your rent isn’t the same as stealing from a supermarket.

No, falling behind with your rent isn’t the same as stealing from a supermarket.

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Landlords, stop saying that it is. As the country faces a second wave of Covid, and an economic crisis seems inevitable, the attention of Britain’s buy-to-let landlords turns inevitably to one of their abiding obsessions: their inalienable right to kick people out of their homes as easily as possible. To this end there is a petition to Parliament demanding the ability to evict renters once they have fallen as little as 14 days into arrears: Let’s be clear, automatic eviction…

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Ignore the prophets of doom: ending Section 21 is the right thing to do.

Ignore the prophets of doom: ending Section 21 is the right thing to do.

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It is widely-reported that Thursday’s Queen’s Speech will include provision to abolish no-fault evictions in England by abolishing Section 21 of the Housing Act 1988: which enable a landlord to evict a renter after giving just two months’ notice once the fixed term has expired, and without having to prove any fault by the tenant. Predictably, this has led to the usual predictions of doom from landlords’ groups, claiming that scrapping no-fault evictions will lead to terrible unintended consequences for…

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Maybe I was wrong about the National Landlords Alliance

Maybe I was wrong about the National Landlords Alliance

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Heaven knows I haven’t been an unequivocal supporter of the National Landlords Alliance. I’ve reported on its curious origins, how its members don’t acquire any of the usual rights of members and are effectively just making a donation, the Information Commissioner’s probe into them, queries about their staffing, and their overreaction to being scrutinised. And I may have mentioned them on Twitter once or twice. Up to now, I’d always taken it for granted that the Alliance was a bad…

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Information Commissioner launches probe into National Landlords Alliance

Information Commissioner launches probe into National Landlords Alliance

In a post on the landlords’ website Property 118, National Landlords’ Alliance CEO Larry Sweeney has confirmed that his organisation is under investigation by the Information Commissioner’s Office in relation to a “Rogue Tenants Database” that’s referred to on his website. There’s absolutely no information about this database on the Alliance’s website. For non-members the site just displays a message saying the information is available to members only. It’s a matter of legitimate public concern (and of particular concern to…

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The National Landlords’ Alliance – keeping it in the family

The National Landlords’ Alliance – keeping it in the family

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I had not intended to return to the so-called National Landlords’ Alliance, not least because they’ve been well covered elsewhere.However, a curious incident on Twitter has brought to light a potential further issue with this organisation. Over the past few weeks I’ve had a number of replies on Twitter from someone called “Steff.” Steff seems a little obsessed with me and, specifically, what I do for a living. Over the past few months all of her tweets have been at…

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More on the National Landlords Alliance: they don’t like it up ’em.

More on the National Landlords Alliance: they don’t like it up ’em.

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  Well, I seem to have ruffled a few feathers with my previous post about the National Landlords Alliance. First, there was this helpful post on the Property118 landlords’ forum: Thanks for all the extra traffic, guys. Let’s be clear, though, asking questions of one landlord organisation doesn’t make me an “anti landlord spin Doctor.” Then there was this charming suggestion that landlords should, apparently, blacklist me: Cheers “Monty”, at least I have the balls to post under my own…

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On the curious case of the National Landlords Alliance

On the curious case of the National Landlords Alliance

It appears that Fergus Wilson isn’t the only landlord with a rather overinflated sense of his own importance. Friends, we now have a new favourite example of Landlord Derangement Syndrome: allow me to introduce you to the National Landlords Alliance and its CEO, Larry Sweeney. Sweeney announced plans for his Alliance in a post on the landlords’ website Property118 in which he asked his fellow landlords to pledge £100 for membership. He had, he told readers, been thinking of setting…

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