A NEW TENANCY bill being examined by the legislature would, if approved, make a complete mockery of the right to property. This is a bill that protects the rights of a tenant to such an extreme degree (his tenancy agreement is inherited by his offspring or spouse after he dies) that it penalises the owner, depriving him of the right to use his property as he chooses. And whereas a tenant can pass on the rental agreement of a property being used as work premises to his wife or children, the owner of the property cannot claim back his property for his own offspring.
The House interior committee made one change to the bill, submitted by interior ministry, which stipulated that after the death of a tenant, the tenancy agreement would be passed on to his heirs, even if they were not using the premises for professional purposes! In other words, if a carpenter was using a shop as his work premises, once he passed away his tenancy contract would be transferred to his heirs even if they were not carpenters and did not need the premises for their work.
In such a case, the heirs of the tenancy agreement would sell it if they did not want to move and make a nice little profit, blessed by the law. The owner would have no say in the matter and the only way reclaim his property would be to pay the tenant’s heirs some compensation to surrender the contract. This was changed so that a tenancy agreement would be transferred to a person’s heirs only if they were working in the rented premises as well; if they were not, they would not inherit the agreement.
A semblance of rationality may have been introduced by the change, but the bill remains pretty absurd and unfair, perfectly in keeping with the existing rent control legislation that is heavily weighted in favour of the tenant. The intention of the lawmaker may have been to protect tenants but so many safeguards were included in the law that the property owner lost most of his rights. Yet the law should have protected people renting houses to live in, not business premises and shops. Predictably it is businessmen who are primarily exploiting the existing law and not house tenants.
And we now have the situation whereby the tenant is all-powerful reaping all the benefits from the property he is renting. The rent control law ensures thousands of tenants are paying rents well below the market value for premises in prime locations; and the tenant collects the goodwill payment — often in the region of hundreds of thousands of pounds — to leave the premises and sub-let. The law prohibits sub-letting now but tenants still hold out for a goodwill payment.
And instead of abolishing the antiquated rent laws, the government is now trying to impose additional restrictions that will cause even more distortions in the rented property market — the only group of tenants that need a little protection from the law are those who live in rented accommodation. But businessmen, craftsmen and traders need no protection from anyone and should not receive privileged treatment by the law. The rental of premises by these people should be governed by a legal contract, as happens in the rest of the world, so that the property owner is put on an equal footing with the tenant, which is only fair.
