Almost 75% Of Landlords Face Rental Arrears

November 11, 2009 | In: Landlords, Property News | By: Zoe Piper | 4 Comments » | Tweet This!

11 Nov 2009

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That’s the info coming from the Residential Landlord’s Association this week. They cite a report by Landlord Assist, who help landlords overcome problems like rental arrears – the report says that 150,000 tenants will face legal action because of rental arrears by the end of 2010. A staggering 75% of landlords said they’d had tenants fall into arrears in recent times – shocking figures even though we’re still in a recession.

I’ve been a tenant for longer than I care to think about, and never missed a payment. What I don’t understand is how such a vast proportion of landlords can have (I’m using the word loosely) problem tenants. After all, tenants go through credit checks, paying the rent is very important to tenants, and I find it hard to fathom that so many renters have fallen onto such hard times.

Having said that, the difficulty in obtaining a mortgage coupled with the recent (bizarre) rise in house prices is still pushing more people into renting. Not all renters will be financially sound. Does that equate to a problem for three-quarters of landlords…really?

If you’re a landlord with a story to tell, please leave a comment.

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4 Responses to Almost 75% Of Landlords Face Rental Arrears

Ant Chippendale

November 11th, 2009 at 2:53 pm

I’m sure this “The number of people unemployed in the UK rose again in the three months to September, although the 30,000 increase was the smallest since May 2008.” which was in the news today has something to do with it. And that doesn’t include the 5000 job cuts announced yesterday by Lloyds.

Paul Reeves

November 11th, 2009 at 8:08 pm

Interesting piece Zoe. I don’t believe it either, 75% is a massive figure.

Interestingly though is the number of tenants that have lost their homes because landlords with buy to let mortgages haven’t been paying their mortgage even though they have been deriving a rent and the mortgage lender has had to evict the tenants. We don’t hear too much of that, but I know some cases where that has happened.

Gary Hartley

November 11th, 2009 at 10:48 pm

Recession and job redundancies still isn’t a solid solitary reason for these surprisingly high percentage claims. If is magical 75% figure is true then letting agent credit checks on tenant applicants must be failing. I’d love to read the report that’s fed these findings, specifically percentage breakdowns of tenancy lengths to first missed payment. If say 50% of the tenants that have started to miss payments have been in a property under a year then alarm bells would ring out for me. Alternatively if it’s spread evenly and the findings are true then I’d be extremely shocked. Being a landlord myself, forced due to the housing crash, the biggest fear has up to now been the times without a tenant, now I have a new worry. Fingers crossed I’m one of the lucky 25% who get good, regular paying tenants.

Johnzz

March 31st, 2010 at 9:13 pm

Hey,

Just a quick hello from as I’m new to the board. I’ve seen some interesting posts so far.

To be honest I’m new to forums in general

John

Almost 75% Of Landlords Face Rental Arrears

Author : Zoe Piper

4 Responses to Almost 75% Of Landlords Face Rental Arrears

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