UK HOUSING PRACTICE

UK Housing Practice

UK Housing Practice

Introduction

The assignment requires to solve the four tasks having different situations related to UK housing market. Every task has a different situation, and, there is a need to address the problems in the best possible way. In a market, where lenders remain cautious, and, risk adverse to say it has not been easy for many first time buyers to secure a mortgage would be a severe understatement. Banks and Building Societies are unwilling to lend larger sums to first-time buyers without enormous deposits. However, since the housing market downturn, it is property investors that have felt a tighter squeeze on the availability of mortgage products. Those lenders who had their fingers burned after irresponsible lending to speculators still view buy-to-let lending as inherently risky, and, are yet to increase their commitment to the market. This conventional view is no longer borne out by the facts. For instance, during 2010, just 0.48% of buy-to-let properties were taken into possession by banks and building societies. This represents just 1.61% of the 1,304,900 buy-to-let mortgages outstanding. By way of comparison, 2.09% of all homeowner loans were three months in arrears or more, in the same period. These statistics clearly shows UK housing corporations needs to address the matters related to rental arrears that are increasing at a rapid pace. Therefore, all issues related to UK housing practice in terms of prevention and management of arrears will be discussed in detail.

Task One

The first task is regarding arrears prevention. A front line housing manager has been assigned, who is managing a patch of 700 low and high rise properties on a housing estate in East London. The responsibility is to manage all housing issues related to the properties including the management of arrears. There is one family that has moved to London from Poland. The names of the couples are Mr and Mrs Wieckowicz and have three children. They have been allocated a tenancy on your patch with housing association. The problem with the wife is that she is partially sighted, and, Mr. Wieckowicz's English is not fluent. However, the difficult task is to conduct a meeting of family with the housing association for tenancy sign-up meeting. The role of the housing manager in this scenario would be quite important (Borjas, 2002, 476).

The manager needs to explain all issues related with the tenant procedure to the family. The main problem is that the family is not aware of the housing conditions in UK. The rents are mostly high in London, and, some of the people find it extremely hard to pay rent on times. The first thing that the manager needs to explain is that the family would have to take of paying the rents on time. There should not be any arrears because the housing association is quite strict in this regard. This is the reason why manager prepared a complete list for addressing all the issues that they need to communicate to the housing ...