I wouldn’t want to be a commercial landlord at the moment.

You may as well draw a pair of devil’s horns and a tail on these guys, such is the government’s determination to paint them as the villains during this crisis.

I’m not sure they deserve that reputation.

The Council of Retail Property’s released a poll today showing that half of their retail tenants didn’t have to pay a cent of rent last month.  That’s because the landlords helped their tenants out.  The indication so far is at least some will help them out again this month.

Now, of course landlords would say this. They would want to paint themselves in a good light, so this shouldn’t be taken as gospel, but it does support what we’re hearing from some tenants themselves, which is that their landlords are helping.

This is a different story to the one we’re hearing from the government, which is that landlords are not budging on rents. 

To be fair, that would be the case with some. But I think we need to question what the government’s up to here.  Why would the government single out a group of people and paint them as a villain.

Could it be that the government is trying to avoid copping the blame when retailers start falling over because the government took too long to help them with cash to pay their rent, and when it did, it wasn’t a lot?

Could that be why? I’d say so.

I think we need to remember who we’re talking about here when we talk about landlords.

They are not all faceless corporates who own giant portfolios and rip everyone off.  Some of them are just small businesses themselves: a local businessman or woman who owns a few buildings in the town they live in.

They are now living with the reality that they could struggle to pay their mortgages because their tenants might not survive this lockdown, and in an economic slump, there may be no one to take their place.

They’re also living with the government’s threat to pass a law forcing them to cut their rents which is quite frankly outrageous.

Using the law to cut across existing contracts should be used very, very sparingly.

So rather than the devil incarnate, I think some commercial landlords may actually deserve our sympathy.