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There has been a lot of mention in the popular press about so-called ‘retaliatory evictions’ whereby private landlords evict tenants when they complain or ask for repairs to be carried out. The Residential Landlords Association (RLA) wants to put these claims to rest and
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has released the results of a survey it carried out on 1,760 landlords.
Reasons Why Landlords Evict Tenants
56% of the landlords surveyed said they had been forced to evict tenants at some point. However, 90% of evictions were as a result of unpaid rent and 43% were for anti social behaviour, which included 40% where tenants had caused damage to the property and 20% where drugs were involved.
Despite what the press would have us believe, only 30% of evictions were carried out because a landlord wanted to reclaim the property for some other reason, i.e. because he wanted to move back in or sell it. This strongly suggests that the majority of private landlords don’t serve an eviction notice unless they have a very good reason.
RLA Comments on Tenant Evictions
“We have been very concerned about claims that retaliatory eviction is a widespread practice, when there is very little hard evidence to back up those claims. As our survey underlines, the vast majority of evictions are down to rent arrears or anti-social behaviour. Landlords are being threatened with more regulation which would simply make it harder for them to evict bad tenants when they need to,” says Alan Ward, Chairman of the RLA.
