A personal account of a ceiling collapse coincides with the author receiving a Section 21 notice, highlighting the wider issues of the UK housing market, the impact of new rental regulations, and the challenges faced by both renters and landlords. The piece explores the difficulties of finding alternative accommodation, the rising cost of homeownership, and a critical view of the current political landscape.
My son’s bedroom ceiling collapsed on Friday night. Luckily, he had left the house ten minutes earlier, otherwise things might have been a lot worse.
It came down right above where he sits at his desk – huge clumps of plaster and nails. My daughter was in the next room and thought the whole house was falling down. In a way, it’s a kind of metaphor for my life over the past few weeks and months.
Like thousands of other renters in England and Wales, I’ve been served a Section 21 notice because of new measures introduced by the Government’s Renters’ Rights Act, which came into effect on Friday. My metaphorical ceiling has come crashing down, and I have until the end of June to find alternative accommodation for me, my two kids, two dogs and two cats.
To be fair, my landlord is not the only one to have decided that the game is just not worth the candle. To say the Act has prompted a mass sell-off of rental properties is an understatement: new figures show that close to 700 rental homes have been put up for sale every day since March last year. That’s over a quarter of a million rentals off the market.
In London it’s especially bad, with former rentals accounting for 30 per cent of all new sales instructions. But can you really blame landlords? What started in 2015 when the then Chancellor George Osborne abolished tax relief on buy-to-let mortgages has culminated in a situation where owners are now hamstrung by endless regulations. The policy was, of course, first drafted under the last Conservative government by – as it happens – my ex-husband, Michael Gove.
This has prompted some to suggest that my current predicament is no less than I deserve. Maybe, but all I can say is that while I had no say in his proposals, I think he would argue that his reforms would have been mild by comparison with what Labour has ended up with. It is unlikely his measures would have precipitated quite such a mass exodus.
It’s not as if the Government, despite all its fine words, is replacing those homes, either. Since it came to power, Labour has added just over 10,000 properties to local authority stock. Not that I’d be eligible for any of that, of course, since as a humble taxpayer my sole purpose is to pay for everyone else’s welfare, not mine. Even so, it’s hardly going to suffice.
Like thousands of other renters, I’ve been served a Section 21 notice because of new measures introduced by the Government’s Renters’ Rights Act. The obvious thing is to try to buy now, not just because money in rent is money lost, but also because I long for somewhere to call my own. Combine all that with a crisis in the mortgage market and you have a perfect storm.
Owning a rental portfolio is no longer a viable investment – it’s just an almighty headache. And the irony is that it’s the small landlords who will disappear, not the big corporate guns who are more likely to be able to absorb the extra costs. The net result of all this is that vast numbers of tenants like me will be spending the bank holiday on Rightmove, scouring for new accommodation in a dwindling pool.
Far from going down, rents will go up – unless, of course, the Government decides to introduce a freeze, which was mooted last week by Rachel Reeves. So, I’m left contemplating my next move. After my divorce, I decided to rent for a while, just until I got my head straight. The obvious thing is to try to buy now, not just because money in rent is money lost, but also because I long for somewhere to call my own.
For a while I half-thought I might move out of London and pursue an idyllic countryside existence: visions of a rose-covered cottage somewhere, with a thatched roof and cosy log fire. But I realise now that is a silly pipe dream. What would I do all on my own in the middle of nowhere? My children are avowedly urban: they wouldn’t come with me.
And what friends I have are in town. Since I’m clearly destined to be single for the rest of my life, I need to be near both for the sake of my sanity. To get even a half-decent rate you need a large deposit, and with the average house price in London over £500,000, that’s a lot of cash. Plus, there’s all the due diligence and questions about spending, earnings, tax returns and layer upon layer of documentation.
Oh, and of course the stamp duty is onerous. There’s something else, too. We have an incompetent, incoherent and corrupt government that hates strivers, despises ambition and punishes success. Snapping at its heels is a Green Party run by a man who wants uncontrolled immigration, legalisation of class A drugs and – as we saw last week – has allowed anti-Semitism to openly flourish within his party.
Between the lot of them they are turning Britain into an economic and social basket case
Housing Crisis Renters Rights Section 21 Notice Property Market UK Politics
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