Pandemic-led overdue rents fade
The study by Sequre Property Investment suggests the pandemic-related overdue rents affecting 17% of the UK landlords start to ease.
The study was based on 3,842 UK landlords. Sequre Property Investment reveals 17% of the respondents were affected by the pandemic-related overdue rents.
But most landlords see overdue rental payments going down.
What happened?
Out of the affected respondents, 27% experienced a slight inconvenience of the overdue 1-month rent. Another 23% were out of money from 1 to 2 months. Then, 50% of landlords saw overdue rental payments between 2 to 5 months.
Causes and current trends
Amid the pandemic, the government banned tenant evictions and increased eviction notice times to 6 months. The UK landlords had to deal with this and hoped that the lost rental income could be redeemed later.
The bright side is that overdue rents seem to go down since landlords report the reduction:
- 36% of landlords reported overdue rental income owed to them remaining on the same level since the middle of the pandemic.
- 37% said that overdue rents went down
- 28% reported increasing overdue rents
Expert comment
Daniel Jackson at Sequre Property Investment highlights the impact of the pandemic negatively affecting both tenants and landlords. The government supported the tenants but neglected the landlords to some extent.
He says landlords could not evict tenants failing the rents thus they had to wait and hope for overdue payments to go down. The crisis seems to be easing since most landlords start to show faith in the tenants given the challenging settings and get the overdue rents repaid.
He points out the recovery of the rental market heading in the right direction. That is despite some tenants still struggling with rents or abusing the system.
Jackson reveals the buy-to-let (BTL) sector remaining an attractive business despite challenging settings and legislative changes to BTL. The market attracts investors from amateur landlords to institutional investors.