Social Letting Agency

Many local authorities and other public bodies are looking into setting up their own not-for-profit letting agencies to house people in the private rented sector. Sometimes these initiatives are called private rented sector access schemes. Most private landlords and /or commercial letting agencies would normally turn these types of tenants away, so this is quite a challenge. At LettingFocus, we […]

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London Local Authorities and the Private Rented Sector

LettingFocus despairs of the approach adopted by one London Council in dealing with its private rented sector. We have just been sent an invitation to tender from a London local authority. In the invitation they identify that they need to do some work to improve their local private rented sector, which now forms a substantial 30% plus of all housing […]

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Why Town Hall “Not for Profit” Letting Agencies Fail

Local authority schemes to attract private landlords to let to people with few housing options often fail. Here at LettingFocus, we explain why. I was invited to speak at the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) Homelessness conference in Nottingham last week. This is a big national event to which around 140 local authority and housing association staff from all around […]

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London Living Rent, Landlord Accreditation and Ken and Boris

David Lawrenson of LettingFocus worries about Ken Livingston’s idea of rent controls and says that that accreditation and registration schemes for landlords are not needed because the vast majority of landlord and tenants enjoy good relations and the minority of rogue landlords will never register anyway. Oh dear, oh dear, I spend a nice day at a CIH Conference telling […]

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