A landlord is the owner of a house, apartment, condominium, land, or real estate which is rented or leased to an individual or business, who is called a tenant. When a juristic person is in this position, the term landlord is used. Other terms include lessor and owner. The term landlady may be used for female owners, and lessor may be used regardless of gender. The manager of a pub in the United Kingdom, strictly speaking a licensed victualler, is referred to as the landlord/lady.
A leasehold estate is an ownership of a temporary right to hold land or property in which a lessee or a tenant holds rights of real property by some form of title from a lessor or landlord. Although a tenant does hold rights to real property, a leasehold estate is typically considered personal property.
The Right to Buy scheme is a policy in the United Kingdom which gives secure tenants of councils and some housing associations the legal right to buy, at a large discount, the council house they are living in. There is also a Right to Acquire for assured tenants of housing association dwellings built with public subsidy after 1997, at a smaller discount. By 1997 over 1,700,000 dwellings in the UK had been sold under the scheme since its introduction in 1980, with the scheme being cited as one of the major factors in the drastic reduction in the amount of social housing in the UK, which has fallen from nearly 6.5 million units in 1979 to roughly 2 million units in 2017, while also being credited as the main driver of the 15% rise in home ownership, which rose from 55% of householders in 1979 to a peak of 71% in 2003.
Housing Benefit is a means tested social security benefit in the United Kingdom that is intended to help meet housing costs for rented accommodation. It is the second biggest item in the Department for Work and Pensions' budget after the state pension, totalling £23.8 billion in 2013–14.
Local Housing Allowance (LHA) was introduced on 7 April 2008 to provide Housing Benefit entitlement for tenants renting private-sector accommodation in England, Scotland and Wales. The LHA system introduced significant changes to the way Housing Benefit (HB) levels are restricted and how benefit is paid. It did not replace Housing Benefit - it is just a different way of calculating entitlement under the existing Housing Benefit scheme: the Local Housing Allowance is based on the 30th percentile of local rented accommodation, while the 50th percentile or median was used from the introduction of the policy until 2011. LHA rates relate to the area in which the housing-benefit claim is made. These areas are called "Broad Rental Market Areas", defined as "where a person could reasonably be expected to live taking into account access to facilities and services", and a selection of rents in the area are used to determine the LHA for each category of housing in the area.
The Private Rented Sector (PRS) is a classification of United Kingdom housing tenure as described by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, a UK government department that monitors the national housing supply.
The Housing Act 1980 was an Act of Parliament passed by the Parliament of the United Kingdom that gave five million council house tenants in England and Wales the Right to Buy their house from their local authority. The Act came into force on 3 October 1980 and is seen as a defining policy of Thatcherism. In Scotland the Right to Buy was provided by the Tenants' Rights, Etc. (Scotland) Act 1980 and for Northern Ireland it was left to the Housing Executive.
A house in multiple occupation (HMO), or a house of multiple occupancy, is a British English term which refers to residential properties where ‘common areas’ exist and are shared by more than one household.
Land reform in Scotland is the ongoing process by which the ownership of land, its distribution and the law which governs it is modified, reformed and modernised by property and regulatory law.
An assured tenancy is a legal category of residential tenancy to an individual in English land law. Statute affords a tenant under an assured tenancy a degree of security of tenure. A tenant under an assured tenancy may not be evicted without a reasonable ground in the Housing Act 1988 and, where periodic changes in rent are potentially subject to a challenge before a rent assessment committee.
The Landlord and Tenant Act 1985 is a UK Act of Parliament on English land law. It sets bare minimum standards in tenants' rights against their landlords.
The Ellis Act is a 1985 California state law that allows landlords to evict residential tenants to "go out of the rental business" in spite of desires by local governments to compel them to continue providing rental housing.
The history of rent control in England and Wales is a part of English land law concerning the development of rent regulation in England and Wales. Controlling the prices that landlords could make their tenants pay formed the main element of rent regulation, and was in place from 1915 until its abolition by the Housing Act 1988.
In England and Wales, a section 21 notice, also known as a section 21 notice of possession or a section 21 eviction, is the notice which a landlord must give to their tenant to begin the process to take possession of a property let on an assured shorthold tenancy without providing a reason for wishing to take possession. The expiry of a section 21 notice does not bring a tenancy to its end. The tenancy would only be ended by a landlord obtaining an order for possession from a court, and then having that order executed by a County Court bailiff or High Court enforcement officer. Such an order for possession may not be made to take effect earlier than six months from the beginning of the first tenancy unless the tenancy is a demoted assured shorthold tenancy. If the court is satisfied that a landlord is entitled to possession, it must make an order for possession, for a date no later than 14 days after the making of the order unless exceptional hardship would be caused to the tenant in which case possession may be postponed to a date no later than six weeks after the making of the order. The court has no power to grant any adjournment or stay of execution from enforcement unless the tenant has a disability discrimination, public law or human rights defence, or the case is pending an appeal.
Rent control in Scotland is based upon the statutory codes relating to private sector residential tenancies. Although not strictly within the private sector, tenancies granted by housing associations, etc., are dealt with as far as is appropriate in this context. Controlling prices, along with security of tenure and oversight by an independent regulator or the courts, is a part of rent regulation.
Rent regulation is a system of laws, administered by a court or a public authority, which aims to ensure the affordability of housing and tenancies on the rental market for dwellings. Generally, a system of rent regulation involves:
Pay to Stay was the name of a government policy in the United Kingdom whereby council tenants earning £30,000 would have to pay "market or near market rents". The measure was due to come into effect in April 2017 with the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimating that the policy will impact upon 10% of social housing tenants. On 21 November 2016 the Housing Minister Gavin Barwell announced that the new plans for Pay to Stay would be dropped. Councils maintain the option of charging near market rates to those on incomes of £60,000 or more.
The Housing Act 1988 is an Act of Parliament in the United Kingdom. It governs the law between landlords and tenants. The Act introduced the concepts of assured tenancy and assured shorthold tenancy. It also facilitated the transfer of council housing to not-for-profit housing associations, which was then carried out partly through the system of Large Scale Voluntary Transfer.
Right to Rent is the name given to a UK Government policy contained in the Immigration Act 2016 whereby landlords in England have to check the immigration status of tenants they rent properties to, and deny lodgings to those who cannot prove they are permitted to live in a rented home.
The Housing (Scotland) Act 2014 is an Act of the Scottish Parliament which received royal assent on 1 August 2014.
