The Renters’ Rights Bill, which will be the biggest change in Landlord & Tenant law in over 35 years, continues its passage through Parliament at speed.
The Bill is now at committee stage in the House of Lords which is due to complete on the 8th of May. After that will come the 3rd reading, before it heads back to the Commons for the final stages. The smart money is on this completing all stages before the summer recess. In other words, we can expect this to become law by the middle of July after which it will need to be implemented. The exact implementation date is unclear as the Government said that it would give at least 2-months’ notice, but a good estimate will be October-November this year. Even then, the Bill won’t come into force on one day but will be implemented in stages. We still anticipate the abolition of Section 21, the end of fixed-term tenancies, and the introduction of restrictions on rental and advance payments to be among the first changes implemented, while measures such as the PRS database are likely to follow later as the finer details are finalised.
There have been many amendments tabled in the Lords, but that it is wishful thinking for any of these to make the final cut. This Government has a big majority, and this is a manifesto commitment so expect all these clauses to be thrown out once they come back to the Commons. The Government has already published an amendment which plots the path to the PBSA exemption and whilst it has been drawn very widely, we don’t think anyone should expect that this will be extended more broadly to the general student PRS market.
This timeline means that for student landlords letting their properties now for the 25/26 year, this undoubtedly means that the tenancies that are being signed now will be changed by this new legislation as it will apply to new and existing tenancies once the changes come into force.
Sulets will be running another webinar with sector expert David Smith on Monday July 7th where we hope to cover the final version of the Bill and discuss next steps. We will also be recording an interview with Vanessa Warwick of Property Tribes where we will be discussing how Sulets can help student landlords with the massive changes that are coming to the sector.
We will be publishing details of how to join these events soon.
Previous webinar recordings can be viewed on our YouTube channel.