Assuming these landlords are working within their means, then this should help restrict some of the excesses we have seen in the past and act as a brake on the expansion of those landlords.

The problem really arises with those amateur landlords who are borrowing on “non buy-to-let” basis and who will not have this oversight of their affairs.

They will not have these margin calls and can continue to overextend as far as they like.

As we have seen on the forum, this could quickly lead to many properties becoming subject to arrears as overextended landlords have the rugs suddenly pulled from under them…

What would be ideal are simple tenant advice pdf documents that can be printed out and taken along to viewings/negotiations?

If not that’s outrageous. Banks and lenders that have made BTL loans should be made to honour rental agreements in full.

In practice it may be hard to ensure that someone has not borrowed beyond their means (people or companies can conceal debt, for example, or borrow within their means and then start to live beyond them).

It would be better to ensure BTL lenders were forced to honour rental agreements to the full. That should be part of being a BTL lender.

I agree that it is madness to suggest the Government helps tenants by extending the mortgage support scheme to BTL mortgages. The only way the government should intervene in BTL mortgages is to ensure tenants are not disrupted when BTL landlords that have over extended themselves run into trouble and get their flats repossessed. That said it would normally be in the lending banks interest to keep a good tenant in the property.

The NLAs point about the fact that this is needed to ensure that landlords are able to help struggling tenants seems completely disingenuous to me. Unless they obligate landlords to help tenants as a result. Either way the idea is daft and inefficient.

There are issues, though, with drawing too many parallels between the mortgage support scheme and housing benefit. Housing benefit is a handout. The mortgage support scheme is effectively a Government-backed loan since the reduction in mortgage payments proposed would ultimately be recovered through higher mortgage bills down the line or a longer mortgage term. What the Government is doing is underwriting the defaults. This is not nothing, and does lead to valid questions over what the Government will do for tenants that run into trouble. But it’s not a simple handout either.

So far as I can see, the specifics of the mortgage support scheme mean that in practice everything is geared so people are unlikely to default. For one thing the mortgage is still secured on the property, as I understand it people would have to walk away from their home before the Government is at any risk of getting a bill.

Given that lots of lenders would give a six month mortgage holiday to mortgagors before all of this, a two year partial interest holiday is not nearly as radical as the Government would like your average home’owner’ to believe.

If the Government did a similar thing for tenants it would essentially be offering ‘take now pay later’ loans with no security. That’s arguably the fair thing to do from the perspective of ensuring the same result for the struggling renter as for the struggling mortgagor, but it would involve the Government finding the cash for those loans now (fat chance) and taking all the risk with no security (fat chance, with knobs on).

Then there’s the point that this Government cash would go straight into the pockets of landlord’s in most cases, so the Government would effectively be insuring their rental income and in many cases their means of paying their BTL mortgage. This would probably mean fewer tenant defaults and may even keep rentals artificially high.

I agree, though, that things here are somewhat stacked against the renter.

I think what’s really happening is the Government has found a cheap (near zero cost in the short term) way of making homeowners (majority of voting population) feel more secure in their homes in a time of strife. For the most part they’ll pay for this themselves in the long run so actually the Government hasn’t done much. And it won’t do much for renters either.

I’m not suggesting this is fair. But it is what I think is going on.

This is outrageous, I don’t want to put too much pressure on your fledgling organisation, but renters need a voice now more than ever.

Someone MUST stand up for us and these appalling measures the government are putting in to protect homeowners, whilst watching on as renters face the same employment and economic issues yet facing having our families kicked out onto the streets every 6 months.

We must act!!

Nick