Latest HMO Regulations cause confusion

• Posted by Ian Eggleton on 14th Dec ’06 at 14:33 GMT
• 0 comments

The Government launched it's latest drive to improve the safety of Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMOs) and to root out rogue landlords with the launch of mandatory licencing for larger HMOs from April 6 2006.

Whilst the Government has published numerous guidance documents for landlords and tenants confusion still seems to exist as to what constitutes a HMO and what type of HMO actually falls under the mandatory registration requirement.

In our experience even Local Authority Housing Departments seem unsure as we have recently acted for clients who own properties which certainly fall within the requirement but they have been advised that this is not the case.

The fact that some local authorities already run their own registration schemes for smaller HMOs adds further to the confusion. If the Government really aspires to remove dangerous HMOs from the current stock and discourage disreputable landlords we feel it would have been simpler to extend the provsions to all HMO's, large or small but perhaps with a longer 'cooling' off period for registration.

Even so it would seem that these regulations have at least discouraged some disreputable landlords. Recent RICS research claims that around one third of letting agents contacted confirmed that landlords were selling there stock to avoid registration.

An RICS spokesman said:

“The decrease in houses with multi-occupation will help to cut down on rogue landlords but will cause problems by reducing the number of properties available as landlords decide to withdraw from the sector, so creating an additional burden on the state to house the most vulnerable tenants.”

— View source.

In our experience responsible landlords, who thankfully we tend to act for, had already taken their duty of care seriously and so any alterations required to bring them up to the licence standard have been minimal. In our opinion the changes are to be welcomed but the quesion remains, did the new rules go far enough?