Landlord Forum - Renting Homes (Wales) Bill

We'll be holding another one of our regular Landlord Forums on Wednesday 28th August in Bangor at 6pm.

Topic: The Renting Homes (Wales) Bill

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As you’ve most likely seen in the press and heard from our teams, the Renting Homes (Wales) Bill (better known as the tenant fee ban) is provisionally set to come into affect on 1st September. 

Whilst the bill is still yet to be finalised it covers far more than just tenant fees and many of the new regulations will impact landlords across Wales, as it already has those in England & Scotland. 

We plan to hold a landlord’s forum at our Bangor office to explain the changes in more detail and answer any question you may have. 

Key Points (at time of writing)

• You will only be allowed to charge tenants a fee off the permitted payments list. The list currently allows rent, security deposits, holding deposits, utilities, communication services, council tax, and green deal charges.
• You may take a holding fee, but this is capped to 1 weeks rent and must be returned to the tenant within 15 days of being received, if the tenancy hasn’t begun or an extension is agreed. 
• In England deposits have been capped at 5 weeks but as yet this hasn’t been implemented in the Wales draft document.  However, the provision for them to add a cap is there.
• Restrictions on variations in rents are currently being reviewed. In England it is an offence to drop the rent between two periods, but it is not an offence to raise the rent. In Wales the rules work differently, and it simply compares any two periods and if the rent in one is lower than the other, the amount of the higher payment over the lower payment is a prohibited payment. This can be found in Schedule 1. This could potentially impact student lanlords.
• In England for the first offence are charged at £5,000 whilst in Wales they are looking at a lower amount of £1,000 per offence.

With the introduction of Rent Smart Wales, changes to the taxation benefits and now this change in legislation, with talk of Section 21’s being scrapped in Wales, landlords have felt under attack.  These efforts have been to improve the standard of lettings and weed out rouge landlords, whilst making access to rental accommodation easier for tenants.  Time will tell if these changes will make a difference, but we aim to help guide you through this ever changing market with experienced, educated and qualified lettings staff.

Please register your interest on the link below, if you’d like to attend this event, which will be held at our Bangor office.