Half of eviction notices are invalid in cases where landlord selling home, according to housing charity Threshold

Houing charity Threshold has said almost half of the recent eviction notices it has examined in cases where a landlord is selling a home were invalid.

Threshold said it supported 8,835 households and prevented 1,121 households from entering homelessness, including 1,758 adults and 1,185 children, between July and September. Advisers answered more than 12,000 calls and responded to some 2,500 webchats on behalf of private renters regarding tenancy issues.

More than 1,300 private renters sought Threshold’s help when they received a notice of termination from their landlord. Six in 10 of these had been issued by landlords intending to sell the home and Threshold advisers identified that 46 per cent of such notices were invalid.

The charity said it saw a large increase in tenants seeking help in the first nine months of the year, with an average of one call to its helpline every 20 minutes from people facing eviction. Each month, on average, some 472 private renters who were facing eviction sought assistance between January and September, according to Threshold’s Q3 Impact Report.

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“In the first nine months of the year, over 50 per cent of queries received by Threshold concerned security of tenure and tenancy termination,” the charity’s chief executive John-Mark McCafferty said. “This level of queries surpassed the number received on the same issue for the entirety of 2021 and was over double the number received in 2020.”

He said “a large exodus of landlords from the private rental sector” was continuing and this was resulting in fewer properties being available to rent and fewer housing alternatives for those facing eviction.

“Given the increasingly dire situation, it was necessary for the Government to introduce a ban on evictions to allow for short- and medium-term solutions to be implemented to combat the growing rental crisis.”

The Government needs to use the period of the moritorium, which runs until next April, to slow the rate of evictions being served to private renters and to increase the availability of affordable and secure homes.

“Failure to establish such measures will result in no improved outlook for private renters at the end of the eviction ban in Spring 2023.”

Threshold has called for a reduction to the Capital Gains Tax payable when a landlord sells a rental home with the tenant in situ to a local authority or approved housing body. It also called for a reduction to the rate of tax on rental incomes from properties with long-term lease agreements to increase security of tenure, with leases only terminable if there is wrongdoing by the tenant.

It is also seeking an increase in schemes and targets to return vacant homes for use in the rental sector and necessary measures to return properties from the short-term rental sector to the long-term rental sector.