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You are urged to seek professional advice on all legal issues
With more and more people realising the benefits of buy to let, it’s essential that every landlord is aware of their responsibilities.
An overview of the legal system in Scotland from a tenant’s perspective can be found in the Renting Basics section. This brief article highlights a few other issues of specific issue to landlords.
The lease
Please see the Scottish legals article as well as the guide to leases.
Other rules and regulations
Houses in multiple occupancy licenses: this was the first post-devolution legislation in Scotland affecting the private rented sector and was brought in after the tragic death of two young people in Glasgow (not in an HMO).
HMO applies to rented properties with three or more unrelated occupants, and stipulate health and safety regulations of a property.
Landlords wishing to obtain a licence now face an application fee of £520 in Edinburgh and an annual renewal of £360. In Glasgow, the application fee is £1700 for a three-year term, non-returnable if the application is unsuccessful. As a result, properties with HMO licences have seen their value increase.
Safety: please see the safety standards article in the basics section.
History of landlords in Scotland
Buy to let is booming across Scotland, which has seen the emergence of a wide range of available properties and consequently an increasingly competitive market. As a result, much tighter regulations have been put in place since devolution to ensure maximum safety.
However, government legislation has had a somewhat chequered past when it comes to the rental market.
At the beginning of the 1900s, 90 per cent of the population in Britain lived in private rented accommodation. In 1915 housing policy saw rents strictly controlled and landlords found it difficult to keep properties in repair, leading to slums, the sale of penny tenements and Rachmanism (extortion or exploitation of tenants by landlords). Ninety years later, ten per cent lived in private rented properties, many of which were very old tenements where tenants enjoyed rent control and security of tenure.
The 1988 Housing Act made a huge difference to a market that had previously had little encouragement from the government, and post devolution legislation concerning HMO and tighter vetting of landlords
While this may discourage some potential landlords, it means that tenants are spoilt for choice, with the private sector in many areas now providing more immediate property to let than local authorities or housing associations.
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