A week before Robyn Miller was due to move into a new flat in Canary Wharf with her partner Harry*, and rescue dog, Moo, she got a call from her letting agent: there had been a “mishap” with the landlord, and they might not be able to move in on March 28 as planned.
The landlord, it transpired, didn’t actually own the property, despite the fact that Robyn and Harry had already signed the contracts and paid £51,000 — a year’s rent — upfront.
The landlord was buying the new-build property, and the sale had not completed on time. But with a week to go, Robyn and Harry had given up their lease on their Battersea apartment, booked their removal firm and end of tenancy cleaners, and were ready to move out.
“The agents tried to tell us that this is normal and that it happens all the time. But it’s not, is it? You can’t be taking money a month before moving in when legally no one owns that property.
“We’d signed contracts, and technically they were void,” says Robyn, who works as a virtual assistant coach and mentor. “We gave them an ultimatum: if you can’t tell us by March 24, we want our money back.”
When the rental fell through that day, Robyn and Harry were reimbursed and left with four days to find somewhere to live.
“They knew we’d been looking for a property for ages, and there was no sympathy, no helping us look for another property. Nothing. They were the ones that put us in the situation,” she says.
The only option was to move out, put their things in storage, uproot their lives and move back in with Robyn’s parents in Oxford.
Unfortunately, Robyn and Harry’s story is not a one-off. Once they have secured a property, London’s renters still have to contend with poor living conditions, lack of security, rogue landlords and soaring rents.
Last month, tenants of two buildings in Hackney won a landmark £263,000 payout from the company owned by their billionaire landlord.
It had been found to be operating without an HMO (Houses in Multiple Occupation) licence, with some flats in “severe disrepair”.
There were mice infestations, broken boilers, leaks and a frequently broken front door. When residents complained about their landlord to the media, they were evicted.
According to a spokesperson for the Somerford Grove Renters campaign, the case “shows how the law is rigged against renters”. And for the most part, stories like these go without consequence.
Robyn and Harry hadn’t wanted to leave their home in Battersea at all. Both 27 and from Birmingham, it was their first home in London together.
But before their year’s tenancy came to its end, they were told that their £4,100 monthly rent would be increasing to just over £5,000, making it unaffordable. They would have to find a new home.
Between January and March this year, the couple visited around 25 properties. Not only was there competition for rentals, but being self-employed meant that they were expected to pay new rents upfront.
Searching with a dog narrowed down the field — and commanded a premium. Robyn and Harry produced a pet CV for Moo to “prove that she’s a good dog” but found that although plenty of lettings advertised themselves as “pet-friendly”, few actually were.
Mostly, says Robyn, this was at the landlord’s discretion. “It depended on whether they actually liked you whether they would allow you to have a dog, which felt unfair,” she says. “Landlords can basically pick and choose who they want, because they can.”
In February, they had been on the verge of signing a contract on another flat, with checks and references completed, only to be told at the last minute that the landlord had decided that they didn’t want to allow a dog.
When their offer on the flat in Canary Wharf was accepted later that month, therefore, they approached it with caution.
“It’s been a nightmare this whole year to find an apartment. We didn’t want to get excited about it because something could go wrong. And it did.”
“No one is happy in the rental market right now, least of all renters, who have long had to contend with increases that have outpaced wage growth,” says Matt Hutchinson, communications director of SpareRoom.
“Renters usually suffer the consequences when mortgaged landlords are faced with rising interest rates.”
Renters on the ropes
The price of an average room in London has hovered around £1,000 a month for two years now. Glassdoor and Totaljobs estimate the entry level London salary to be £32,000-£38,000, which would make that rent around half someone’s take home pay each month.
Of course, many young Londoners aren’t on those salaries. And with rising costs, affordability is being stretched even further.
This month —dubbed “awful April” — council tax in all London boroughs has risen by between 4 and 4.99 per cent, energy bills have risen by an average of £111 per year and Thames Water customers have seen a hike in the price of their water bills by over £200 per year.
After all these deductions, the average earner on £32,000 will be left with around £340 a month to cover everything else: clothes, socialising — living.
Aurelien, who is 28 and works full time as an assistant curator at a prominent London museum, says that he’s had to take on a second job to make ends meet, with rent for his room clocking in at £1,000 a month.
“I’ve managed on just one salary in the past but only ever socialising at people’s houses, no eating or drinking out,” he says.
“I cycle, don’t pay for public transport, I don’t save, I get free food from my second job.” In an ideal world, he thinks his primary job should provide a liveable income in London.
“It’s mad to see how much of my monthly pay goes on fixed costs,” he says.
Crucially, high rents do not always equate to liveable properties. Eva*, a 26-year-old writer, was also paying £1,000 a month for the “box room” of her Shepherd’s Bush flat.
She moved in last year in August, but as summer turned to autumn, she and her housemates noticed pervasive black mould spreading throughout the apartment.
“It was a sprawl of mould that only a set designer on The Last of Us could’ve dreamt up,” Eva says.
Eva bought a dehumidifier and complained to her landlord, who eventually arranged a “mould inspection”. Nothing was put in place to fix the problem.
When Eva went away for two and a half weeks over Christmas, she returned to find the clothes in her wardrobe covered in mould. Behind the wardrobe was “The Last of Us, all over again”.
An entire corner of black mould and mushrooms stretched up and across the wall. “I had a panic attack over how long it had been growing, how long I could’ve been breathing in mould-infested air.”
Eva had to hire crime scene specialists to clean the mould and dispose of her wardrobe to the tune of £400 (which her landlord eventually reimbursed her for).
When she eventually threatened legal action over the lack of help from the landlord, the landlord immediately served them with an eviction notice.
“He doesn’t do conflict,” the letting agents told Eva. “We had no choice but to find new homes within four weeks.”
Ray of light for tenants
The long-awaited Renters’ Rights Bill, which is currently making its way through the House of Lords, will scrap Section 21 no-fault evictions, which allow landlords to evict tenants during a tenancy without needing to provide a specific reason.
Instead, revised Section 8 notices will become the mechanism for evicting tenants. “This means a landlord wishing to evict tenants will only be able to do so based on a short list of very specific reasons,” says Hutchinson.
The Renters’ Rights Bill, he says, “includes several common-sense protections for tenants, who have long had to navigate a market where the power imbalance favours landlords”.
This includes ending rental “bidding wars”, introducing a new Private Rented Sector Landlord Ombudsman, giving tenants stronger rights to request a pet and requiring landlords to register their property on the Private Rented Sector Database.
But for Robyn and Harry, this comes too late. “I never thought I’d live with my parents again. I think when you’ve seen that independence and you’ve got almost a little family unit yourself, it feels odd. This is my family home but it’s not my childhood home — I see this house very much as my parents’ house,” she says.
“Having that independence stripped from me pretty quickly, I’m feeling on edge in the sense of not really knowing what to do next.”
The speed at which they were forced to make decisions — what to do about the flat, where to go, what to put in storage — added to the stress. “I don’t know how long this stuff is going to be in storage. I don’t know what I’m doing now — so what do I even need with me?” she says.
“It’s little things too — I couldn’t cancel my gym membership [at such short notice], so I’m paying for a membership I can’t use.”
Robyn is unsure whether they will ever go back to their old life in London. “I’m in limbo. I don’t know what I’m doing next,” she says.
“I love London. But for us it was a sign that maybe this isn’t what we should be doing. It just didn’t feel right. It felt like we were spending so much money to live somewhere where we didn’t feel happy or want to live.”
Both having the freedom to work remotely, the couple are considering a road trip around Europe in the summer and a potential move to Dubai.
“Why would we stay in London when it’s actually cheaper for us to go there? Honestly, I think it will be easier to move to Dubai than to find another flat in London,” says Robyn. “We’ll see.”
*Some names have been changed
