Renters Rights Act - Can Balance be Achieved?

Property litigation tends to hide in the shadows when it comes to the headlines.  

The public often don't realise that behind the high-profile administration of a high street chain, or the dispute about a right to build, or even the right to camp in the wild, there is a team of property litigators working hard on issues such as forfeiture in a statutory moratorium or easements.

So when actual property litigation breaks into the mainstream media, it's all the more exciting.  That excitement appears to be double at the moment.  Not only is cladding (and the Building Safety Act) often in the mainstream news, but so too is the Renters Rights Act.

As with everything, there are two sides to the changes.  The attached article is very much focussed on the advantages to tenants, giving a (somewhat niche) example of how beneficial the new Act is to a student who wanted to change universities.

The landlords we act for, however, have a different view.  We are acting for some landlords who have taken the decision to sell their rental portfolios because the additional administration from the new Act, coupled with the ridiculous court backlog, makes it uneconomical to risk having a non-paying tenant, and so they are simply selling up.

As the article also rightly acknowledges, this greater security and freedom for tenants under the Act may well come at the price of increased rent, which cannot be what was intended.

As with everything in life, it's all about balance.  I can't help but wonder whether the government putting money into reducing the court and bailiff backlog, and so making it easier for landlords to evict problem tenants where they find themselves with one, might go some way to addressing the imbalance landlords are currently feeling, and so open the market back up to tenants that landlords are currently deeming to be too risky to rent to.  Any thoughts on the matter are of course welcomed.