Veteran Portsmouth landlord Alwin Oliver has vowed to work towards finding solutions to homelessness and helping landlords prevent rent arrears.

The vice chairman of Portsmouth & District Private Landlords Association has just sold his lettings agency Flats in Southsea due to ill health after 12 years, but Oliver, who’s been a landlord in the city for 32 years, intends to spend his retirement lobbying to solve some of the problems he’s witnessed at the PRS coalface.

While he has noted some landlords quitting the sector, particularly from the student sector, he says others are buying properties (he bought 10 flats earlier this year) and took on two new properties the day he handed over the agency.

However, more tenants are withholding rent on a pretext such as damp – sometimes caused by their failure to use an extractor fan – while tenants on benefits simply say they don't know where the money has gone, report Oliver; his agency found that 73% of landlord arrears were due to non-payment of Alternative Payment Arrangements.

Feeling

“My feeling is that private landlords aren't referencing enough to identify issues,” he tells LandlordZONE. “They are also now more likely to get rent arrears because they’re being targeted by those tenants who don’t want to be referenced, and who approach landlords through online listing-only portals.”

Find an agent who provides a reference service, advises Oliver, while legal cover guarantee insurance is key for landlords of any size, as £200-300 a year is money well spent for peace of mind.

Mediation

Oliver doesn’t believe in blacklisting tenants and is a believer in mediation to sort things out before issues escalate. The issue of tenant referencing is a passion, and he aims to use his background in applied behavioural analysis to conduct an academic study about ways to reference tenants more effectively.

“At the moment, I don't see how it’s right if you have a £1,000 credit card debt that you get a score from Experian but if you reference a tenant they only pass, fail or pass with a guarantor. It’s also absurd that a self-employed taxi driver who could crack his head in an accident would have no income while he’s off work for six months, but a registered nurse, who would have sick pay after a similar accident, would be scored the same way.”

Away from landlord, PDLAP and lobbying activities, Oliver hopes to enjoy holidays and short breaks during his retirement, which he describes as “rather overdue”.

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