If Cowan wants good landlords to feel they are playing by the same rules, they’d feel a lot happier if those rules were actually being applied and enforced and bad operators were kicked out of the market.

What I can’t figure out for all this bluster and talk of compliance, is that nobody in the commission seems to be aware that before you start an assured shorthold tenancy (AST), a landlord already has to provide copious amounts of paperwork.

My AST’s used to consist of five pages; they are now over 70 pages long. By the time I include the gas safe certificate, electrical installation certificate, fire alarm check, smoke alarm check, carbon monoxide check, energy performance certificate, how to rent guide (the current edition), deposit protection information, deposit protection prescribed information (which is ever changing) and a whole load of bumf the tenant is swamped with information about the property – and that’s before they’ve even looked at the property inventory.

This follows a lengthy and detailed referencing procedure whereby the landlord has already been expected to undertake the role of border force and do right to rent checks along with affordability checks, credit checks and so many other checks my head goes dizzy. 

I bet no rogue landlord is doing half of any of the above. 

But this is the problem with the report – because all it does is continue to bash good landlords and make their lives even harder. 

No rogue landlord cares about unfair rent hikes. The report uses some fanciful jargon about “third generation” rent stabilisation which would manage in-tenancy rent increases. But this is not an issue for good landlords. 

Good landlords do not hike rents. Good landlords who have good tenants keep their rents below market rent. And even if they did try and bump them, we currently have a mechanism for dealing with it – it’s called a tribunal.

I’m all for raising the standards, but I’m sick of being the sacrificial lamb. It’s about time a housing report recognised the good many landlords provide and stamp out the bad elements in our sector.