Press Release Summary = Both existing landlords and investors thinking of entering the buy-to-let market will need to familiarise themselves with the effects of new regulations that came into force last month. The Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS) was first ratified as part of the Housing Act 2004 and officially came into effect on the 6 th April 2007.
Press Release Body = Both existing landlords and investors thinking of entering the buy-to-let market will need to familiarise themselves with the effects of new regulations that came into force last month. The Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS) was first ratified as part of the Housing Act 2004 and officially came into effect on the 6 th April 2007.
Any landlord who takes a deposit from a tenant on an assured shorthold tenancy - the most common form of rent agreement - must now take part in a TDS. The scheme was introduced as a way of protecting tenants against unscrupulous landlords who would seek to make unfair deductions from deposits or hold on to them completely, despite their being no damage to the property or other justification for retention.
A second reason for the implementation of the scheme was to provide a mechanism for resolving disputes between landlords and their tenants without having to have recourse to the courts. An alternative dispute resolution service is provided - free of charge - by the three companies that the government has contracted to run the TDS. If both parties agree to the alternative dispute resolution, then they are bound by any decision made and waive any right of recourse to the courts.
However, the scheme has met with a mixed response from professional landlords, with some saying that regulations targeted specifically at \"rogue elements\" would have been preferable to a universal, mandatory code of conduct. This is the view taken by the National Landlord\'s Association (NLA), a body which promotes the interests of private sector, residential, landlords throughout the UK.
\"We accept that there are rogue operators, that there are landlords out there that bring the sector into disrepute by withholding unfairly all, or part, of the deposit. We would not have gone for a mandatory, universal system\", said spokesman Simon Gordon, adding that the organisation would have \"preferred something that had been aimed specifically at the rogue elements.\"
2012
