Member Article

Zero hour rent ban slammed

A leading property expert has poured scorn on a major landlord’s plan to ban tenants employed on zero hour contracts from renting his properties.

Millionaire landlord Fergus Wilson – who rents out almost 1000 homes in Kent - has announced he will reject any tenants who have no guaranteed minimum hours of pay, arguing “no landlord in his right mind” would accept them and inviting those affected to “welcome to the real world”.

Several other large landlords have indicated they would also consider not renting to tenants on zero hour contracts.

Ajay Jagota of North East sales and lettings firm KIS – named Letting Agent of the Year at the most recent national Landlord and Letting Awards - accused Wilson of “throwing perfectly good tenants out with the bathwater”.

Around 1.4 million employees in Britain are now on zero hours contracts – with the number of people employed on them having risen by at least 100% since the start of the economic downturn.

Ajay, founder and Chief Executive Officer of the UK’s most innovative sales and lettings business said:

“The rise of zero hour contracts does pose a challenge for landlord and lettings agents alike – if someone’s income isn’t guaranteed they could go from being your best tenants to not making rent from one month to the next.

“But banning them altogether is not so much throwing the baby out with the bathwater as throwing perfectly good tenants out with the bathwater. Self-employed people don’t have guaranteed paid hours either – are they next out the door?

“More and more people are on zero-hour contracts, many working effectively full-time in secure jobs. It’s not just a growing section of society you can’t afford to ignore, but a growing section of society who are unlikely to be able to find mortgages. In other words, the very people you want to be renting too.

“The trick is to make sure you have systems in place to protect you against the risks zero-hour contracts pose to landlords. Take our deposit-free renting system for example. If you let a property with KIS landlord our insurance policy means your rent is guaranteed even if your tenant defaults.

“I think Fergus Wilson is the one who needs to live in the real world, and if he is planning to sell his portfolio and leave the market as rumoured it’s perhaps a sign that there is no place in property for dinosaurs.”

KIS manage properties for landlords in every corner of the North East from branches across Tyne and Wear, and were named Letting Agent of the Year in the 2013 Landlord and Letting Awards. The firm expanded into residential sales in 2014.

The property firm is famous for being the first letting agent in the UK to abolish deposits, replacing them with a one-of-a-kind landlord insurance policy offering guaranteed rent, deposit replacement, legal assistance and round the clock emergency maintenance.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ajay Jagota .