6 reasons it’s a nightmare renting in London

what Berlin could teach London, and how my ex-landlord was prosecuted.

A link to the blog, Renting Room 101, was forwarded to me this week by my girlfriend. It gives the best account of renting in the UK (and particularly London), I have ever seen.

This particular post was about my ex-landlord Dr Paul (Paz) Banks. A self-proclaimed ‘ethical’ landlord, ex-doctor, and current hippy, who left various houses in disrepair (see the link above) and has since been prosecuted, the Renting Room 101 blog says:

“During the inspection of the house officers found an absence of electrical power to parts of the house, unfinished kitchens and bathrooms, waste water discharging onto the ground, open unprotected trenches and dangerous electrics.”

(from http://rentingroom101.wordpress.com/)

While he had strict rules about eating meat in communal places, Dr Bank’s own website says,

“A concern is also to provide quality AND affordable housing…Accommodation is offered primarily to non-smokers, meditators, vegetarians, vegans & raw/live foodists”

But he was less bothered about the damp, faulty electricity, and crumbling walls, all of which we suffered from in our previous flat.

The point is, I don’t really blame him.

The real problem is that, in the UK, the balance of rights between a landlord and a tenant is hugely on the landlord’s side. In Germany, it’s completely different.

And here’s why renting in London is so bad:

1. It’s ruiningly expensive. The Guardian published last week on its data blog how many hours you have to work on minimum wage to pay the rent for a one-bed flat. In Southwark, for example, a pretty typical borough that includes rich (East Dulwich) and poorer (Peckham, Camberwell) areas, the median rent is £1000. That means if you work a 40 hour week at £6.08 an hour, 37 hours of work per week goes straight into the hands of your landlord. That leaves three more for you.

2. It’s cramped. This is a problem across the UK, but it’s worse in London as landlords are increasingly chopping up houses into smaller and smaller flats to increase profits at their tenants expense. The average size of a home in the UK is 85 sqm, and the average for new-builds is only 76sqm.

3. Tenants’ rights need strengthening. There are hundreds of homes in London with damp, structural problems, mice, rats, leaks, broken windows and worse. When tenants have problems with their property, they speak to their landlord. If rights exist to ensure landlords do their job, both I and most tenants aren’t aware of them. Only the courts can resolve these issues, and in this case, tenants are usually less financially equipped than a property owner to either prosecute their landlord or defend themselves, so the tenant gives up and tries to find another flat.

4. Property leasing is completely unregulated. There is no licensing of estate agents or landlords. There is no organisation that monitors how landlords and tenants deal with one another, and no one that tenants can go to for advice. The good people at Shelter are currently running this campaign to improve things.

5. And so are rents. There is no restriction on the amount a landlord can charge. And, at the end of the contract, the landlord can bump up the price as much as he or she likes.

6. No one is doing anything about it.  The main political parties completely ignore the issues, and the left is barely better than the right on this issue. Fighting over the middle ground, the parties are not competing for tenants’ votes, but for homeowners, including those who aspire to own a second home. A complete upheaval is needed in terms of how people understand housing. A decent home is a basic human right. Renting property at any price isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be. The collective British aspiration for home-ownership and the obsession with house prices distorts this idea, and hides the real issue at stake.

So what makes Berlin better?

Two main reasons:

• Tenants’ rights are well known and well used. If a property has damp, water, heating, or electricity problems,even noisy neighbours, it is the tenants right to pay a reduced rent (at varying amounts depending on the problem). The basic rule being, if the property is not 100% in order, the tenant is not required to pay 100% of the rent. And if there are any problems, your local renters’ society (Mieterverein) will help you.
• Rent control is enforced by the state government. There is a specific maximum amount a landlord can charge per square meter for a property depending on its features and location. The state government provides the amount openly for tenants and landlords to check. Prices can only be increased in regulated steps unless the landlord has significantly improved quality of life in the property.

Introducing renting regulation in London would be radical. But if London introduced Germany’s culture of letting, life would improve for many. Unfortunately, there are no sign of this being a theme for the 2012 London mayoral election from Ken Livingstone, Boris Johnson, or Brian Paddick.