Benefits landlord Mick Roberts is losing patience with MPs whose continued ‘anti-landlord’ policies have only made more people homeless and increased rents.

The Nottingham-based landlord believes that despite initiatives claiming to help tenants, instead they simply cause harm – and the latest changes in the Renters’ Rights Bill, legislating that landlords can only increase rents using Section 13 once a year, could be the final straw.

Roberts has agreed informal rent increases with tenants for years, explaining that they have been happy to accept an extra £25 a month, as they’re still paying sometimes hundreds of pounds a month less than market rent.

Red tape

“Now, I’m totally full up with paperwork and rules and regulations,” he tells LandlordZONE. “Section 13 can take 30 minutes by the time it’s printed, filled in, signed, scanned, and sent for each property - on top of selective licensing which means we have to inspect each house every four months. It’s taking me over the edge. My existing tenants are going to have to go with a letting agent who charges £50 for a Section 13.”

The government’s target of getting all rented properties to an EPC C will cost landlords thousands of pounds and only lead to increased rents, adds Roberts. “As soon as Ed Miliband announced this, he made more tenants homeless,” he says.

He points to a litany of other regulations and restrictions on the PRS that have had the opposite effect on tenants including big fines for landlords not doing Right to Rent checks properly - which meant they stopped taking anyone who had the slightest possibility of being an illegal immigrant, impacting innocent UK citizens - as well as selective licensing affecting good landlords who have put rents up to cover costs and now don’t take risky tenants.

“The government don’t want landlords helping tenants with benefits and they bought in Universal Credit which has zero communication with landlords,” adds Roberts. “The result is that we now don’t take benefit tenants.”