The only thing that will lower rents and will make landlords angry is if you build a 20 story building next to their investment.
Otherwise any regulation is a ticking box exercise that no serious landlord will have issue with. It even pushes out the less serious landlords who dont want to jump through those extra hoops.
Result? Lower supply and more rent coming in for serious landlords.
potpan0 on
Landlords will use any excuse to raise rents. It’s just more evidence that we should not be so dependent on landlordism for housing in this country.
DoranTheRhythmStick on
Landlords, like any business, will charge the most the market can bear. The only ceiling is prices so high that properties remain vacant.
Individual landlords may not always raise rents ‘in line with the market’ or set rents at the highest they think they can still find a tenant for, but as a group and economic class they have demonstrated that they’ll charge the highest that they can still sell their product for. This shouldn’t be surprising, most businesses do exactly the same thing.
This is just ridiculous posturing by a very profitable and secure industry angry that they can’t exploit their customers quite as much as they could before.
HumbleOwl6876 on
Supply and demand. We need to lower the demand for housing if you don’t want housing to get less and less attainable. We build something around 30k dwellings a year. Population growth is negative not including migration. Net migration was around 700k last year.
This isn’t an issue of building houses have you seen the state of new builds. Regulators can’t manage the amount we’re building already we would have to 10X the amount we build to even keep up with population growth.
wagonwheels87 on
If anything this is just even more evidence of how tenants require total legal coverage from predatory landlords.
I’m sure there will be some commenters who own flats that they let out. I encourage you to consider that just because you’re a fair and egalitarian person doesn’t mean there aren’t people who would run this country like a slum if they could get away with it.
Rajastoenail on
Like they weren’t planning on raising the rent again anyway.
The next rise is the only thing most landlords care about.
Pay_Your_Torpedo_Tax on
Sounds like a load of irresponsible people being rightly punished for their mistakes.
Elsa87 on
Keep raising it until what point? Renters are already struggling and won’t be able to fork out more money.
test_test_1_2_3 on
Trying to regulate the rental market into giving renters what they want is a farcical strategy that has zero chance of achieving the intended outcomes.
What will result in the best market for renters (in terms of cost, pets and anything else) is to have a competitive rental market.
All markets will result in the vendors/suppliers charging as much as the market can bear. This is just basic market dynamics that isn’t going to evaporate just because we’re talking about housing. The same rules of supply and demand are a fact, whether you like it or not.
We don’t have sufficient social housing and we aren’t getting any anytime soon. So again, this is an irrelevant point when we’re talking about the rental market now and over the next decade at least.
If you want landlords to offer reasonable rates and treat renters well then they need to be made to compete for tenants. This means having a greater supply of rental properties so that renters can actually choose. This will force landlords to adapt to keep their properties occupied and generating revenue. This is the only strategy that will work in any reasonable timeframe.
ACO_22 on
At what point do we have to get to before there are limits to the amount of properties you can own or mortgage as a person.
TeaBoy24 on
>“The majority of landlords already meet their responsibilities to tenants and have nothing to fear from these reforms.”
We have a landlord which uses a company(estate agents) to rent the property.
Good guy, awfully ric and has no clue about how much time things take like how much time it takes to care for the garden (expect the gardener to do something in a day when you need over a week to do so.. and gets stingy then). But as far as his behaviour goes and communication it’s fine.
But this quote just shows disparity between reality and on paper…
Roof needs repairs. No direct leaks which would damage us as tenants… But you are gradually getting small patches on the ceiling. Reported over a year and a half ago – with a warning that this will damage their property further and will increase repair costs exponentially. (I work within repairs and housing adaptation).
They have done nothing yet.
Bathroom window is cracked because of a bird (rip). Not an issue for us per say… But they did nothing about it and the costs for repairs also increase over time.
They have built a porch to the house who knows when before weoved in. It’s awful.
They have not insulated the foundation nor the walls. They have simply “glued” it to the side of the house. They have put an insulated entrance door into it… But an old wooden door between the non-insulated porch and rest of the house. Honestly, whoever designed or built this should have their hands smacked with a belt.
As a result it’s the only part of the house that actively moulds and they just repaint over it. Even the mould was reported over 1.5 years ago – which a friendly advice regarding the shabby state of the construction so they they won’t have to pay for the issues it will cause later. They have done nothing about it.
Also stuff like external automatic garden/entrance light not working anymore and needing replacement (we can’t access it). Nothing.
Neither he himself, nor the Estate company he hires to take care of his property.
Does any of this cause us direct and active harm? No. Can it cause us harm? Yes. Would it be fairly simple to solve if one sat down for 1 hours? Yes. Will it cost them several times more to do it later? Hella yes.
So there goes that gray area. This is likely fairly common. They do not maintain their own properties and when sh** hits the fan they act surprised and hike prices or blame it on tenants, or hike prices and disturb tenants lives far more than they would with any repair work.
Mismanagement and incompetence at its finest.
Shot_Laugh_2163 on
I don’t get this move to 2 month tenancies. If anything, I want a longer AST so I don’t have to move every 12 months. I would appreciate them being a minimum of 24 months or even 3 years. With a limit on rent increases once a year and a break clause for a tenant to end the contract if they can’t afford the rent increase.
And surely without section 21 the landlord will just pretend they want to move in or sell the property and evict that way?
nekrovulpes on
Literally anything: *happens*
Landlords: “… Ooh, ffff, we might have to raise the rent for that.”
Academic_Noise_5724 on
Capital at risk. The value of your asset may go down as well as up.
Mushroominhere on
Many have already started requesting no children or pets as soon as they heard just a suggestion it would make it harder to remove tenants if they had them
sarniebird on
So long as there are other checks and balances in place.
For example, large banks, building societies, fund managers buying properties that landlords are wanting to sell.
So in theory, we could end up with even worse situation because we’ll have massive, faceless companies who will have more clout in the market to do what they like.
And lets be honest, all of our govs, won’t matter the colour (red, blue, orange), will want to keep these conglomerations happy because they’ll be donating to politicians.
Shas_Erra on
Fifteen years of totally unregulated rental markets once again biting everyone in the arse.
Amazing_Battle3777 on
Landlords sell up, Rich or banks buy up the properties.
Furthering the wealth divide and public ownership the everyday person has.
Race to the bottom for Labour.
Geord1evillan on
Are we pretending theu would otherwise leave rents at the prices they are now?
Geord1evillan on
Meanwhile, renters are STILL paying more to rent than it would cost to buy.
Perhaps we should be looking harder at death bonds, and why we allow them to function as they do.
Charming_Ad_6021 on
Oh right. So they had no intention of increasing rent otherwise? Pull the other one.
Less Avocado on toast and cancel the netflix and then they won’t need to raise rent.
SupremoPete on
They will raise them no matter what anyway. So many scummy money hungry twat landlords out there
NEWSBOT3 on
Good luck with that in the NE.
I’m seeing properties sit on the market for 6 weeks before being reduced, then reduced again, then on with another agent, then maybe being rented, or being taken off the market entirely. I see properties that want 2k/month in rent that are in flithy states and the landlord can’t even be bothered to have cleaned before trying to rent it. There’s a massive sense of entitlement among most of them that they deserve high rents, and it’s killing their ability to get any rent at all.
That’s at the 1000+ range. Below that, things are moving but even then it’s slow. The only exception is the extremely well maintained properties which rent very quickly.
On top of that there’s a ton of ex AirBnbs on the rental market right now, who want stupid money (1600+) despite being on noisy working farms, or in the middle of nowhere, poor internet etc. Again, these go nowhere as most people are smart enough to not pay that for them.
But really the biggest issue is that people don’t have the money to move right now in a lot of the country. Simple as that. Good luck increasing rents in areas where there’s very little demand as people can’t afford to move.
Popeychops on
There are always landlords who charge the most that people can afford. In my experience, others are willing to undercut this “market rate” for tenants they trust to pay rent on time, report breakage, and keep the place well.
Tenants always need protection from the former. The latter group are much more reasonable people.
trappedoz on
Now do capital gains tax, and increase the council and property tax by 100% for second and more. Let’s see who is raising what and who is holding on to what.
No more landlordism leechism would be great
Technical-Economy-56 on
Oh look, who da thunk that would happen. Shocked, just shocked.
TechnologyOk1482 on
Time to standardise and put a cap on rent prices, then. I don’t rent, but that’s a thing I can get behind. Fuck ’em.
andymaclean19 on
Then cap rents. Problem solved. Landlords can cry quietly or sell up and allow more people to win their own homes.
Annual_Divide4928 on
And I’ll continue living in my van until I save up enough deposit for my own home.
Fuck landlords… Every single one of them I’ve ever had the displeasure of being beholden to for 6 miserable months has been an absolute dongle.
I know there are probably some amazing landlords out there but my past experiences have been that bad that I will never become a renter again.
hoorahforsnakes on
If the wind changes direction, landlords will raise rent prices by 50 quid
Delicious_Opposite55 on
This is why we need rent controls. There should be limits on how much landlords can charge for rent. If they don’t like it, they can get in the sea.
Acceptable-Pin2939 on
House prices go up. Rent increase
House prices go down. Hot market rent increase.
Sun rises. Rent increase.
Means absolutely nothing.
Nulibru on
Be a real pity if that led to the revival of fair rent tribunals.
Wadarkhu on
Why not legally limit rent rises unless it’s per year to keep up with inflation or because they can prove the costs of providing the house have gone up?
apple_kicks on
Like they haven’t been doing that routinely already
Academic_Sleep5687 on
Make it harder to evict people = more risk = higher prices. How do people not understand that?
YaGanache1248 on
This should be followed by councils given the power to restrict/licence the number of properties available for short term/holiday lets, to prevent communities being ruined by second homes and locals forced out
jasterbobmereel on
Rules change, raise rents
Rules stay the same, raise rents
Costs go up, raise rents
Costs go down, raise rents
HorseBarrierRoad on
The primary thing these changes will achieve is more expensive rent. It could not be otherwise.
All risk gets priced. Absolutely every financial risk you’ll ever take. The greater the risk, the higher the price, such that more risk leads to more reward.
These changes all increase risk to landlords. You may think that’s good. You may think that’s fair. You may be right. But because they all increase the risk to landlords they will come with a higher price.
Woffingshire on
Landlords going out of their way to prove to the government that the government is right to put restrictions on what they can do.
SeaweedClean5087 on
I expect this will just put bad landlord and s out of the Game
41 Comments
[Build more – Lower rents.](https://x.com/AlecStapp/status/1765219846780752162)
The only thing that will lower rents and will make landlords angry is if you build a 20 story building next to their investment.
Otherwise any regulation is a ticking box exercise that no serious landlord will have issue with. It even pushes out the less serious landlords who dont want to jump through those extra hoops.
Result? Lower supply and more rent coming in for serious landlords.
Landlords will use any excuse to raise rents. It’s just more evidence that we should not be so dependent on landlordism for housing in this country.
Landlords, like any business, will charge the most the market can bear. The only ceiling is prices so high that properties remain vacant.
Individual landlords may not always raise rents ‘in line with the market’ or set rents at the highest they think they can still find a tenant for, but as a group and economic class they have demonstrated that they’ll charge the highest that they can still sell their product for. This shouldn’t be surprising, most businesses do exactly the same thing.
This is just ridiculous posturing by a very profitable and secure industry angry that they can’t exploit their customers quite as much as they could before.
Supply and demand. We need to lower the demand for housing if you don’t want housing to get less and less attainable. We build something around 30k dwellings a year. Population growth is negative not including migration. Net migration was around 700k last year.
This isn’t an issue of building houses have you seen the state of new builds. Regulators can’t manage the amount we’re building already we would have to 10X the amount we build to even keep up with population growth.
If anything this is just even more evidence of how tenants require total legal coverage from predatory landlords.
I’m sure there will be some commenters who own flats that they let out. I encourage you to consider that just because you’re a fair and egalitarian person doesn’t mean there aren’t people who would run this country like a slum if they could get away with it.
Like they weren’t planning on raising the rent again anyway.
The next rise is the only thing most landlords care about.
Sounds like a load of irresponsible people being rightly punished for their mistakes.
Keep raising it until what point? Renters are already struggling and won’t be able to fork out more money.
Trying to regulate the rental market into giving renters what they want is a farcical strategy that has zero chance of achieving the intended outcomes.
What will result in the best market for renters (in terms of cost, pets and anything else) is to have a competitive rental market.
All markets will result in the vendors/suppliers charging as much as the market can bear. This is just basic market dynamics that isn’t going to evaporate just because we’re talking about housing. The same rules of supply and demand are a fact, whether you like it or not.
We don’t have sufficient social housing and we aren’t getting any anytime soon. So again, this is an irrelevant point when we’re talking about the rental market now and over the next decade at least.
If you want landlords to offer reasonable rates and treat renters well then they need to be made to compete for tenants. This means having a greater supply of rental properties so that renters can actually choose. This will force landlords to adapt to keep their properties occupied and generating revenue. This is the only strategy that will work in any reasonable timeframe.
At what point do we have to get to before there are limits to the amount of properties you can own or mortgage as a person.
>“The majority of landlords already meet their responsibilities to tenants and have nothing to fear from these reforms.”
We have a landlord which uses a company(estate agents) to rent the property.
Good guy, awfully ric and has no clue about how much time things take like how much time it takes to care for the garden (expect the gardener to do something in a day when you need over a week to do so.. and gets stingy then). But as far as his behaviour goes and communication it’s fine.
But this quote just shows disparity between reality and on paper…
Roof needs repairs. No direct leaks which would damage us as tenants… But you are gradually getting small patches on the ceiling. Reported over a year and a half ago – with a warning that this will damage their property further and will increase repair costs exponentially. (I work within repairs and housing adaptation).
They have done nothing yet.
Bathroom window is cracked because of a bird (rip). Not an issue for us per say… But they did nothing about it and the costs for repairs also increase over time.
They have built a porch to the house who knows when before weoved in. It’s awful.
They have not insulated the foundation nor the walls. They have simply “glued” it to the side of the house. They have put an insulated entrance door into it… But an old wooden door between the non-insulated porch and rest of the house. Honestly, whoever designed or built this should have their hands smacked with a belt.
As a result it’s the only part of the house that actively moulds and they just repaint over it. Even the mould was reported over 1.5 years ago – which a friendly advice regarding the shabby state of the construction so they they won’t have to pay for the issues it will cause later. They have done nothing about it.
Also stuff like external automatic garden/entrance light not working anymore and needing replacement (we can’t access it). Nothing.
Neither he himself, nor the Estate company he hires to take care of his property.
Does any of this cause us direct and active harm? No. Can it cause us harm? Yes. Would it be fairly simple to solve if one sat down for 1 hours? Yes. Will it cost them several times more to do it later? Hella yes.
So there goes that gray area. This is likely fairly common. They do not maintain their own properties and when sh** hits the fan they act surprised and hike prices or blame it on tenants, or hike prices and disturb tenants lives far more than they would with any repair work.
Mismanagement and incompetence at its finest.
I don’t get this move to 2 month tenancies. If anything, I want a longer AST so I don’t have to move every 12 months. I would appreciate them being a minimum of 24 months or even 3 years. With a limit on rent increases once a year and a break clause for a tenant to end the contract if they can’t afford the rent increase.
And surely without section 21 the landlord will just pretend they want to move in or sell the property and evict that way?
Literally anything: *happens*
Landlords: “… Ooh, ffff, we might have to raise the rent for that.”
Capital at risk. The value of your asset may go down as well as up.
Many have already started requesting no children or pets as soon as they heard just a suggestion it would make it harder to remove tenants if they had them
So long as there are other checks and balances in place.
For example, large banks, building societies, fund managers buying properties that landlords are wanting to sell.
So in theory, we could end up with even worse situation because we’ll have massive, faceless companies who will have more clout in the market to do what they like.
And lets be honest, all of our govs, won’t matter the colour (red, blue, orange), will want to keep these conglomerations happy because they’ll be donating to politicians.
Fifteen years of totally unregulated rental markets once again biting everyone in the arse.
Landlords sell up, Rich or banks buy up the properties.
Furthering the wealth divide and public ownership the everyday person has.
Race to the bottom for Labour.
Are we pretending theu would otherwise leave rents at the prices they are now?
Meanwhile, renters are STILL paying more to rent than it would cost to buy.
Perhaps we should be looking harder at death bonds, and why we allow them to function as they do.
Oh right. So they had no intention of increasing rent otherwise? Pull the other one.
Less Avocado on toast and cancel the netflix and then they won’t need to raise rent.
They will raise them no matter what anyway. So many scummy money hungry twat landlords out there
Good luck with that in the NE.
I’m seeing properties sit on the market for 6 weeks before being reduced, then reduced again, then on with another agent, then maybe being rented, or being taken off the market entirely. I see properties that want 2k/month in rent that are in flithy states and the landlord can’t even be bothered to have cleaned before trying to rent it. There’s a massive sense of entitlement among most of them that they deserve high rents, and it’s killing their ability to get any rent at all.
That’s at the 1000+ range. Below that, things are moving but even then it’s slow. The only exception is the extremely well maintained properties which rent very quickly.
On top of that there’s a ton of ex AirBnbs on the rental market right now, who want stupid money (1600+) despite being on noisy working farms, or in the middle of nowhere, poor internet etc. Again, these go nowhere as most people are smart enough to not pay that for them.
But really the biggest issue is that people don’t have the money to move right now in a lot of the country. Simple as that. Good luck increasing rents in areas where there’s very little demand as people can’t afford to move.
There are always landlords who charge the most that people can afford. In my experience, others are willing to undercut this “market rate” for tenants they trust to pay rent on time, report breakage, and keep the place well.
Tenants always need protection from the former. The latter group are much more reasonable people.
Now do capital gains tax, and increase the council and property tax by 100% for second and more. Let’s see who is raising what and who is holding on to what.
No more landlordism leechism would be great
Oh look, who da thunk that would happen. Shocked, just shocked.
Time to standardise and put a cap on rent prices, then. I don’t rent, but that’s a thing I can get behind. Fuck ’em.
Then cap rents. Problem solved. Landlords can cry quietly or sell up and allow more people to win their own homes.
And I’ll continue living in my van until I save up enough deposit for my own home.
Fuck landlords… Every single one of them I’ve ever had the displeasure of being beholden to for 6 miserable months has been an absolute dongle.
I know there are probably some amazing landlords out there but my past experiences have been that bad that I will never become a renter again.
If the wind changes direction, landlords will raise rent prices by 50 quid
This is why we need rent controls. There should be limits on how much landlords can charge for rent. If they don’t like it, they can get in the sea.
House prices go up. Rent increase
House prices go down. Hot market rent increase.
Sun rises. Rent increase.
Means absolutely nothing.
Be a real pity if that led to the revival of fair rent tribunals.
Why not legally limit rent rises unless it’s per year to keep up with inflation or because they can prove the costs of providing the house have gone up?
Like they haven’t been doing that routinely already
Make it harder to evict people = more risk = higher prices. How do people not understand that?
This should be followed by councils given the power to restrict/licence the number of properties available for short term/holiday lets, to prevent communities being ruined by second homes and locals forced out
Rules change, raise rents
Rules stay the same, raise rents
Costs go up, raise rents
Costs go down, raise rents
The primary thing these changes will achieve is more expensive rent. It could not be otherwise.
All risk gets priced. Absolutely every financial risk you’ll ever take. The greater the risk, the higher the price, such that more risk leads to more reward.
These changes all increase risk to landlords. You may think that’s good. You may think that’s fair. You may be right. But because they all increase the risk to landlords they will come with a higher price.
Landlords going out of their way to prove to the government that the government is right to put restrictions on what they can do.
I expect this will just put bad landlord and s out of the Game