THE buy-to-let sector has been the property success story of recent years. But the handsome returns sometimes enjoyed by the new breed of amateur landlords can come at the expense of their customers.

For the past year I have been the tenant of a buy-to-let landlord. In fact, he’s just terminated my lease and told me to move. I used to think the law guaranteed tenants a certain amount of security, provided they paid rent on time and didn’t swing from the curtains. In fact, all my landlord needed to do to get me out, along with my partner and my partner’s child, was give us two months’ notice. I could have dug my heels in and forced him to obtain a court order, but the result would have been the same, because I had no right to argue my case. I’d given that away in the contract I signed when I moved in.

Like most private lettings today, mine was governed by an assured shorthold tenancy agreement. After an initial guaranteed period, usually of six months, landlords are not obliged to provide a reason for not extending the tenancy.

Before the 1988 Housing Act, legislation protecting tenants had distorted the rental market. Landlords were often unable to reclaim their property, however justified their case, and rents were pegged artificially low by rent tribunals. The system cried out for reform, and the Conservative Government provided it in 1988. But that, and subsequent legislation, tipped the balance of privilege to the landlords, leaving private tenants with virtually no security of tenure.

Expert View

The £120 billion buy-to-let sector, the very model of a cottage industry, is set to become corporate

Anne Ashworth

BACKGROUND

• An end to disputes?

• Home on the web

• It's time to make noise

• The accidental landlord

• Give me my cash back

The end of Rigsby?

Rogue landlords will no longer be able to withhold deposits

BACKGROUND

• Brief encounter

• Can't buy it? Rent it

• The accidental landlord

• The secret agent

We feel we were good tenants, my partner and I. We were middle-aged and middle-class. We were homeowners ourselves (renting because we could not sell our own homes), so we weren’t likely to turn into squatters. We were prepared to pay a rent that was much larger than the average mortgage repayment and quietly settled into an upstairs conversion flat in a Victorian terraced house in South London.

Or we thought we were quiet. But we hadn’t yet met our neighbour, the owner of the flat next to ours. Jane, let’s call her, was a woman of about 40, living alone. Pretty soon she began complaining about our noise to the managing estate agent. This was embarrassing, as she could have simply knocked on our door.

Still, I conceded that I might have been a little loud. I had been spoilt by many years living in family houses, first in Brixton and then Streatham, where the neighbourhood philosophy had been live and let live. My new neighbour was more sensitive. And the walls of the conversion were frail. I knew this because I could hear every noise Jane made too. The omnibus edition of The Archers became the soundtrack to our Sunday morning lie-ins. One night, even though she clearly wasn’t in, I was kept awake into the early hours, transfixed by an unfolding saga next door as a man repeatedly rang her number, leaving increasingly aggrieved messages on her answering machine.

I rationed the amount of music I played and lowered the volume of my hi-fi, but these measures weren’t sufficient for Jane, who complained again to the agent. So far he had been affable in our dealings, but the complaints appeared to be getting to him too, because his reaction was a formal and vexed letter, telling me that any (in bold, underlined) music or noise audible after 11pm was unacceptable.

I was so taken aback I wondered if I had signed away my right, so hard won all those years ago, to stay up till midnight. The conditions of a tenancy agreement are far-reaching and numerous, so it’s not unreasonable to forget one or two. One must solemnly undertake not to damage the fabric, not to permit or suffer the timbers to be maimed, not to keep pets, or make pinholes in the walls, not to smoke, not to put damp objects on the radiators, not to hang washing where it is visible through the windows . . .

I was beginning to get vexed myself. I wrote letters to my agent and my neighbours saying I was not aware of a curfew operating in the neighbourhood. I asked them if they made their dinner party guests leave their homes at 11pm. I said I would endeavour to live as quietly as possible in future, but it was impossible to live in a converted property of this kind without being overheard. Every now and then – birthdays, argument nights – a little noise was inevitable.

All this was having an uncomfortable psychological effect on us. We no longer felt welcome; we tiptoed around the flat. I was writing a book about music, but I stopped playing the stuff. In the late summer we were away from the flat for five weeks apart from two nights, but even this wasn’t quiet enough because Jane complained again, this time directly to the owner of our flat. We were in Spain when the agent called me on my mobile, at my expense, to tell me he had decided not to extend the lease. It was simply the easiest way to deal with the matter. And we didn’t have a say in it.

Our subsequent move to Balham, also in South London, at a time when we least wanted to move, was expensive and exhausting, but we’ve done it. We’ve signed another long tenancy agreement. Shortly after moving in we had a call from our new managing estate agency to say that two safety officers from Wandsworth council needed to make a routine inspection of the flat. The owner of the agency would bring them round himself. The first we saw of him was when he came through the front door after unlocking it with his own key, ushering in the inspectors after him and stating abruptly: “I did knock.” The inspectors expressed the deference of polite intruders, but he didn’t give us another word or glance as he led them round the flat.

It didn’t feel like a home, it felt like his pitch. While there is a shortage of affordable housing, the buy-to-let market gets bigger and the landlords and their agents fatter. And tenants are a growing disadvantaged group.

Still, the new flat has a generous feel about it and not a soul has complained about us. One Saturday night, soon after we moved in, a party geared up next door. A good party, by the sound of it. We lay in bed listening to people whooping and laughing and singing along to Shane MacGowan and The Pogues. It was music to my ears.

TENANCY DEPOSIT SCHEME

The Tenancy Deposit Scheme will apply to assured shorthold tenancies only. Deposits taken by landlords must be placed in a tenancy deposit protection scheme within 14 days of payment.

The scheme, due to come into force on April 6, should ensure more deposits are returned to tenants and fewer disputes. Further information is available at www.communities.gov.uk/tenancydeposit

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