Updating post from Reddit.
Carla Denyer is a Green Party MP for Bristol Central.
>I've put down this #RentControl amendment because spiralling private rents too often push people into poverty and homelessness. We need this to be debated and acted on in Parliament - so please ask your MP to sign up to co-propose my New Clause 7 to amend the #RentersRightsBill.
Well since I rent at below current market value does this also mean I have to raise rents so I'm aligned with other rentals in the area.
So sick and tired of the assumption all LL are money grabbing and rent properties far exceeding the local norm it's such nonsense.
The recent rises are a symptom of years of stagnation in rental increases and adjustment to the norm. High inflation and bank of England interest rate rises caused the readjustment in rental increases.
The only thing this will do is mean all LL will place the maximum allowable increase year on year leading to continuous upward pressure on rents.
Obviously it wouldn't mean you'd have to raise rents...
Kind of getting _not all men_ vibes from that.
You're kind of telling on yourself in the last sentence there; if all LLs will increase by the maximum amount, I don't think they can really complain about being characterised as money grabbing.
You misunderstood the meaning of the last sentence. It removes the choice from landlords to increase rents if/when they need as market condition change (taxs, mortgages, regulatory costs, maintenance, improvements, etc). To have to increase annually just so they are not caught with their pants down and end up running a business at a loss with no escape route.
Risk is part of business. If you can’t accept a little risk to avoid being a money grubbing POS, then you are just that.
You got one thing right, risk is part of business. Yet only a fool "accepts" risk; if you want to stay in business, you work to limit, offset or mitigate risk.
OK, but don't complain next time someone calls you a leech.
This is a community for Landlords. You can be anti-landlord in other places like /r/HousingUK/
Only an entitled POS expects a business to fail in order to provide them a cost effective solution. A problem that the LL didn't cause..your government's lack of house building drives rent up, your government creating new taxes on LL drives rent up, your government increasing interest rates drives rents up, don't blame the LL when it's the government gaining all the money...
Absoulty in the last Tenant Survey said almost half (45%) of all tenants who let from independent landlords stated they have never experienced a rent increase. Just 16% of independent landlords increase tenant rents on an annual basis. Tenants who rent from corporations were more than twice as likely to report rent increases of this regularity (38% doing so).
For some perspective, I rent in Bristol Central (Carla Denyer's constituency) and in the last 4 years my rent has risen by 38.73% with my landlord putting it up every year. Bristol has some of the highest rent inflation nationally.
God, the way I feel terrible working and living in Bristol because every month my money goes to landlady in a dilapidated house and she won't fix anything at all!
Corporations shouldn't be allowed to own residential property, in any-way imo.
Just took a look at this! Figures are really presented to make LLs look good (e.g. the big infographic says 63% of people rated landlords as 8+; but the actual text elsewhere in the article says this is only for wales). NRLA are the landlords association, remember. They're not independent, and they don't represent tenants!
The average tenant stays with an independent LL for about 4 years. Now, from this page we don't have access to the full data, but they claim that only tenants who stayed over 1 year were asked about this. But how many respondents stayed two, three, or four+ years? This is important info which is left out. Longer term stays are associated with successive rent increases.
Always worth finding an independent survey about this stuff. Organisations who have vested interests in protecting landlords (or tenants) will, obviously, be biased in the favour of Landlords (or tenants).
Edit: downvotes amassing because I don't accept the report at face value? C'mon folks. You may dislike that, but independent reports benefit everyone rather than a single side.
Issue is that's not a UK-wide study. Wales is comparatively less issue-faced than both England and Scotland when it comes to housing and who owns properties and without a study for that you can't claim accuracy with it.
And also don’t forget the lack of housing these governments aren’t meeting. If they met their targets it would help in maintaining rents.
The other surprising part to it: is if you don’t want to pay - that’s fine, the prop will go on the market and the next person will just rent it - easy.
Tbf landlords that charge below market rent tend to keep their tenants for longer. So people and agents looking at the markets perspective will be skewed because they only see those advertised which are the top end.
Most people arent lucky enough to find a landlord that charges below the market such as you so they are constantly at the mercy of the price gougers.
Some control does need to be considered. I dont know if this is the solution though
Given that almost half have never experienced a renting increase, per their source, I find it hard to believe they were all being charged market rate the whole time.
My landlady who's "leftists" is charging me "market rate" for a room that isn't upto "market rate" standards.. and there were rooms in market cheaper than what I'm paying currently. so yeah, for me it's either pay that rent or pay higher in hotel or elsewhere where i could still look for cheaper house.. so yeah, such landlords who charge the fair value of their property are low
I don't think there's an assumption all LL are money grabbing (at least from the average person - there's definitely people who think owning 2 houses when someone owns 0 is already a problem).
You're still free to rent below current market value, and to keep raising rents by less than the maximum you could. If that's how you've operated already, this law doesn't change anything for you.
To make a (pretty silly) example: I don't worry about the law forbidding murder - I don't plan to murder, and even in an exceptional circumstance where I might decide murder is the right thing to do, I accept that restriction because it's quite nice having the people who *would* murder casually prohibted from doing this.
If you want a better reputation for LL, someone has to control the shitty behaviour of SOME LL, right?
If not all LL are money grabbing, then not all LL will place the maximum allowable increase year on year. You don't do that now, right?
I don't but fortunately my rentals arnt saddled with a mortgage so I'm fortunate to be able to offer at lower rent if I choose.
There seems to be however a general assumption that LL often hike prices but I don't agree with this and therefore the need for forced rent increase control. LL that have increased in recent years post COVID have done so because of changing interest rates and inflation. They have increased because they have previously let at below current market levels but their costs have increased so they are maintaining a modest profit or minimising a month on month loss depending on their LTV mortgages.
We don't have government interferences on food inflation or other investments but rentals seem to be a focus for regulation squeezing the modest profits and forcing many to jack it in escalating the problems of housing in the UK.
The problem is that legislation like this doesn't allow for change of circumstances of potential LL. If I'm renting below market rents but suddenly have expensive renovations and need to up rent to market value then today that's possible but in the future that might not be the case so people like me might have to decide to increase rents so that we protect ourselves.
Yeah I think the first people to advocate for legislation to control the exploitative shitty landlords should be the responsible good ones, but it always seems any measure aimed at curbing the behaviours of shitty exploitative landlords gets protested by people who say they are normal caring landlords.
That needs to change if normal people are ever going to accept that there can be ethical caring landlords - otherwise it looks like for most of them it's a business venture that exploits the poor
I truly don't understand how it exploits the poor. If rents are greater than mortgages then people will borrow and buy. If anyone feels the deposit is a stumbling block to self home ownership then rent in a HMO is far cheaper than a mortgage and allows people to save.
If your truly poor as in no job then there is a safety net system that pays rent from all of our collective taxes.
So the argument I here often is a complaint that wages and cost of living contribute to making it difficult to save up for a house deposit and I agree that's true and is considerable concern. This doesn't mean that LL should run a considerable investment at a loss to subsidise people whom have less than they do more than paying more taxes as they already do.
If a LL is a higher rate tax payer then 40% of your rent is going to the tax man to fund such things as benefits for the poor. The LL profits arnt massive and with recent interest rate rises for many is non existent. LL only potential profit is capital gains from potential property price rises after ofcourse 28% government CGT.
Whilst many people assume LL make huge profits it couldn't be further from the truth it's not an easy way to invest but many do it simply because they don't understand the stocks and shares market and perceive it rightly or wrongly as a greater risk than bricks and mortar.
Having a physical asset many view as safe so it's a preferred choice of investment for many but it certainly isn't easy or substantially more profitable particularly now anyway.
Hey - so I tried to reassure you that most people don't see all landlords as money grubbing, and point out that if you are a landlord who rents below market value and doesn't raise rent during a tenancy you're still free to do that regardless of rent control laws.
In response you're starting to...defend the entire concept of landlording.
I'm not convinced this is relevant to the thread, and tbh that feeling that you need to defend the whole concept sort of pushes me toward the idea that it somehow needs defending to be okay.
I suggest you react to these rent controls by continuing to let at below market value, if you've decided landlording is a decision you're morally okay with.
You have the option to sell
If you can't afford to keep a property then you're in the same boat as a lot of people already. Difference is you can sell the property to gain a significant amount of money back and use that for your bills. When rent rises, most renters don't have a safety net to pay those bills and that's when it becomes a real issue for people.
Selling isn't a guarantee of a profit as property can go up or down and you have costs such as CGT, estate agents fees, conveyancing costs plus the lost money in stamp duty when you originally purchased.
For renters their is a safety net system it's benefits that can be claimed. If a LL sells at a loss overall it's hard luck.
If a LL bought a property and kept it for 10 years on a BTL mortgage then decided to sell it would work out something like this.
Property prices are rising at about 2% on average ATM. So if this continues for the next 10 years then the gain is around 20% of original purchase price.
So if you bought a 250k property to rent you would pay before the increases in stamp duty 15k stamp duty so you would pay 265k plus conveyancing, 266.5k.
BTL you would need 25% deposit so 66k deposit and borrowing 200k.
5% interest only mortgage would be £10k per year. Rent on a 260k house might be 1500 per month. Yearly rent 18k minus mortgage leaves 8k. Now you need to take off income tax let's split it to 20% as a higher rate tax payer you are taxed 40% but you can claim back mortgage relief of 20%. So 3.6k in income tax takes profit to 4.4k.
Next agency fees typically between 7 and 14% plus take off 10% for repairs / maintainance so minimally 17%, £3060. So profit to LL is £1340 per year.
For 10 years this is 13.4k gain if rental is let permanently with no significant voids or tenants stopping paying rent.
So you sell at 10 year mark. Property now worth 300k. Take off your original purchase price and profit is 33.5k. So capital gain is 33.5k of which you pay 28% capital gains tax 24.1k is now your profit.
Next take off conveyancing and estate agents fees. 3.6k estate agents fee at 1% + vat and 1.5k conveyancing means gains profit is 19k. Plus your rental profit takes it to 32.4k is your final profit for all your work to rent for 10 years.
So in reality if you are a BTL investor in real terms you make around £3240 per year.
So if you left your 66k investment in a bank earning 3% you would make 1980 pounds so your actual profit per year is £1260. This equates to a monthly profit of £105. Ofcourse you did originally invest 66k so you take this off so in true terms you lost 33.6k over the 10 years. So to rent a BTL today a landlord will lose about £280 per month for the pleasure of renting to you for £1500 per month.
So looking at the true numbers I hope people can see that LL arnt increasing because they are money grabbing but because it's hard to even make a profit even if all goes well and in the present market it's more likely to be a significant loss.
So when LL increase your rent you can see from the numbers that things financially arnt stacking up.
Why don't landlords always raise rent as much as they can every year already?
Because its not always about the net rent every month?
I havent raised my rents since my current tenants have been in the property (3 years or so) because they are good tenants and raising rent by CPI or the max allowed every year would possibly cause them to leave? 1 months empty and i lose all the "cushion" i have in my rental for the year and would fall below break even - I dont make "profit" ever on my rental.
If my tenants decide to leave of their own volition or im underwater on my yearly balance sheet by a significant amount i will re-adjust the rent.
Rent controls will force my hand and not allow me to be flexible on how i operate year on year and i will push the rent as high as i can to avoid the downside risk of inflation, mortgage rates or damage to the property. simple.
Because the vast majority are. This isn’t a “few bad apples” situation. This is an entire rotten orchard with a single tree that bears edible fruit.
That's not how it works, lol.
Nobody with any sense sais it's ALL landlords. It's just people asking to be able to afford to have 4 walls and a roof, to be housed.
Their despair at not being able to be housed in the winter is not equal to your own irk of people you've never met badmouthing the group that you belong to by association.... so touch some grass, smell some coffee etc
It would be great if both sides could approach this by working together and coming up with ideas how to make everyone safer rather than squabble and wave the flag of their 'side'.
95% of LL are parasites. 5% are good people and dont use reddit.
This is a community for Landlords. You can be anti-landlord in other places like /r/HousingUK/
This just smacks of the same shit the SNP pulled after covid in Scotland. Freezing rents with minimum room to increase for 2 years while interest rates went insane.
Then sure enough all landlords needed to take the opportunity to raise the rents as much as possible when it ended because they had been soaking up the interest rates for 2yrs - or they booted tenants out and left the market for the same reason.
Government just love to say the ‘vote winning’ things. Don’t actually care if it works/backfires/hurts the ones they say they want to protect.
That's democracy.
You need to .ake the best promises to get in. You need to follow through on a lot of it so you don't lose a generation (see lib dems).
Acting on promises has never been at the top of any politicians priority list based on what I’ve seen lol.
In any case all rent controls did in Scotland was stave off rent increases - but ensure they were coming, Decrease the amount of rentals on the market and ensure that every landlord increased the rent the maximum amount on April 1st and probably will do the same April first 2025.
I’ve been a landlord for ~20 years in Scotland and I’ve never put up rent during a tenancy for any of my properties but due to the policy I put up all rents the maximum amount in April. I’ll caveat it by saying I would have put up the rent on 2 of my properties anyway as they were getting really hammered with the interest rates, but not by the max amount, just by the minimum I could get away with to offset the interest hike.
The top? Agreed, no.
An important factor to do enough for relection? Almost always.
Point is, look at what rent controls did. Reduce supply. Increase prices compared to where they would have been.
Agree on all that. You would think that based on what happened in Scotland the anyone with any sense would know to steer clear of the whole thing.
The MP for Gaza Central living on a different planet as usual.
Didn't realise the UK occupied Palestine again.
The Green Party are stupid. They don’t know anything rent controls blew up the market last times
Socialist Economist Assar Lindbeck quote always sticks in my mind “In many cases rent control appears to be the most efficient technique presently known to destroy a city—except for bombing.”
They spend all their time being hard left but do nothing for the environment
One could say they are doing some environmental maintenance of parasites
They are a drag on society. Slowly tearing away every inch of society. They even blocked the flamingo land project at Loch Lomond 😂😂😂 no business no investment no jobs no cars just ride a horse oh wait they emit because they fart. Fucking lunacy. I seen Patrick Harvey in Partick a few weeks ago on a bike. Oh my did I laugh or what.
Very cool.
Have you looked at how they impacted Scotland? From memory I think that's the most contemporary example.
These people really are brain dead, with no understanding of economics. Any lobby group representing tenants should be fighting for more house building and less immigration, not to negatively impact landlords, given encouraging landlords to sell basically shoots the tenants in the foot.
Absolutly, but most (if not all) tenant groups are captured by left-wing activists, they let idology get in the way of solutions. Which ironlicly often ends up good news for landlords in the market.
'more house building and less immigration' would be the economically illiterate position to take. you can't have one without the other. Around half of London's construction industry is made up of migrant workers and the UK construction industry as a whole is suffering skills shortages post Brexit.
All self-inflicted and could be quickly reversed. Pre mass immigration from Eastern Europe - which pushed the incomes of tradespeople right down - there were many highly skilled people with a trade, all trained in the UK.
Yeah the housing industry and training tradespeople is notoriously “quick” to make changes.
Or we should get rid of buy to let mortgages and stop expecting tenants to pay off the landlords mortgage. If you can't afford a house, don't buy it and don't expect someone else to pay it off for you.
Why doesn't the government also propose to cap/control property prices. Based on the same parameters. Property type, size, location, local income etc. why don’t they also cap or control interest rates?
They need to do it with Curries, I can't believe the price these days.
Interest ratesnwill become a political tool, rather than economic one. That's bad.
It's relatively recent it moved over to the BoE.
RE property prices that's a far more complicated debate. In short, you'll often see on reddit that it's a giant conspiracy to align the working class interests with the asset owning class enough that they vote together, but keep them separate enough for the wealth divide to get bigger.
Personally I think people just like "feeling" rich, and high house prices do that.
I strongly suspect that such a body would give the MP in question a very nasty shock as she's very stupidy left the rent control criteria wide open.
Without realising it, she's left open the probability that the Landlord's costs can be used as a criteria for determining rent levels....
I think the criteria would follow between the Bill passing and becoming an Act. Cart/horse situation.
Good
I rent out a 2 bedroom house in the North East, I charge 960pm.
When people ask about this a lot of people can't believe I charge that for a 2 bedroom house, until I explain all of the income gets taxed at 40%, so that rent income literally pays my mortgage, tax and landlord insurance. I'm probs left with about 20 quid actual profit to myself, so not all landlords are doing this just to profit as much as they can, I could of charged more....
Is the payment to the mortgage not profit? Someone else is literally paying the mortgage…
4/5 of my mortgage is interest, so yes a profit but not much, and no one would do it if there wasn't a little profit to make the hassle worth while. My point is mortgage interest rates push rental prices up, and then for someone who gets taxed 40%+ on rental income, the price will go up further to cover that.
It's a false trope, most mortgage's are on interest only, no one is "paying off the mortgage" but they are servicing the interest on the debt.
What are you talking about? Them paying off your mortgage is them paying towards your equity position in the house. It is a profit for you
Yes, you dont. Like i said:
> most mortgage's are on interest only
Maybe use renting to supplement an actual income then rather than try gouge more money out of people because you can't afford payments? If something isn't financially viable, don't do it
I'm gonna get hate for this but simply put rent should have a tie to the mortgage costs. It should not be more expensive to rent than it is to buy as it is not a sustainable lifelong solution. Ownership empowers all citizens, renting funnels money into the hands of a much smaller group.
As such I'd propose a simple thing; that rent should be capped at the cost of mortgage repayment for the relevant property. I know that leaves the insurance costs etc on top, but the reality is that rental of a property you already own outright means it's all profit anyway + you own the bricks and mortar and their associated growth in value.
If you don't own the property outright then the tenant is paying your mortgage for you and you gain the value of repayments + growth of property value - maintenance/insurance costs which you would have to pay anyway as the owner of the property. If you're 'owning' a rental property on a interest only BTL mortgage then you're just a mug who is acting as a letting agent for the bank and frankly that's part of the problem. Interest only mortgages are a mugs game and need to get in the sea.
Lastly rental payments need to be accepted by banks as viability for payment of a mortgage. For too long now it's been entirely possible to have a rent of £1500 a month, and to have paid it for years, but a bank will still refuse mortgages of the same monthly repayment or lower.
This would allow people to continue having property as investment, albeit with a lower ROI but this is an essential human need not shares in intel.
This would control rents and help control spiralling property costs.
This would allow renters more leeway to save to buy a property themselves.
It's the most human and humane way of dealing with the artificial housing crisis and the ridiculous costs for rents, and property in general, in the UK.
Rents are too high. Rents rise too quickly.
Property value is too high. Property value rises too quickly.
Mortgage payments are too high (but much lower than rents). Mortgage payments rise too quickly.
We don't build enough houses. The houses we do build are shoddy.
The entire system is broken.
But as an asset owner, I have deep sympathy with people who aren't as lucky as me. If you are somebody especially who accrues passive income from much poorer people in the rental market, please spare me the outrage over a hit to your revenue.
There are people out there suffering due to the spiralling rents we've seen in the last few years, and subsequently have no hope of owning their own assets one day because they are prevented from saving. You may want to keep them in that position, and you may have profited from this broken system (inadvertently or deliberately), but it is not desirable nor sustainable.
I am going to get downvoted to hell but when there are calls for rent control, please do put yourself in the shoes of those in need of affordable housing rather than simply seeing them as a source of income to boost your own lifestyle and/or savings. The rent is too damn high.
You articulate your comments well, but misunderstand the industry. There is nothing passive about being a landlord; perhaps we have the TikTok Get Rich Quick Gurus to blame for that stereotype.
The rent is too damn high because of the politicians you elect. They do not build enough homes, tax landlords on revenue instead of profit, and make it more expensive to improve properties. Additionally, they increase risks and costs by making it difficult to evict problematic tenants.
You blame the businessman for charging market rate for his services. Yes the entire system is broken. Capping rent only makes things worse; it is not a solution. Instead, it represents the epitome of scapegoating, as it attempts to shift the costs of a failing system onto a third party.
Please spare me the outrage about your sympathy. If you genuinely wanted to help, you would be renting out that spare room, utilizing vacant housing, renovating existing properties, and funding construction. Instead, you advocate for a third party to shoulder the burden alone, influenced by the media and politicians who label them as the enemy to distract from their own shortcomings.
If you can't afford to rent out a home better sell it mate or I dunno get a job. Take part in society rather than be a leach? Just an idea.
The rent is high because the only way you could afford to buy a house to rent is by taking out a mortgage lol. The tenants are paying off the mortgage, and you get a tiny bit on the side. Renting should supplement an actual income from yknow, a job. To say extortionate rent prices aren't on landlords at all is complete horseshit to try justify getting more money from renters. If your business isn't viable then you should know when to call it quits.
Good. Time to end the parasite gravy train.
First of all
-
Nobody with any sense sais it's ALL landlords. It's just people asking to be able to afford to have 4 walls and a roof, to be housed.
-
Their despair at not being able to be housed in the winter is not equal to your own irk of people you've never met badmouthing the group that you belong to by association.... so touch some grass, smell some coffee etc
It would be great if both sides could approach this by working together and coming up with ideas how to make everyone safer rather than squabble and wave the flag of their 'side'.
Bout time someone kept you pricks in line
This is a community for Landlords. You can be anti-landlord in other places like /r/HousingUK/
Good then you can start looking for a real job
This is a community for Landlords. You can be anti-landlord in other places like /r/HousingUK/
Landlords are parasites
This is a community for Landlords. You can be anti-landlord in other places like /r/HousingUK/
Good
I wouldn't get your hopes up; if Labour wanted rent controls like this, they would have rent controls. It's "good" for her electioneering, against Labour next election to sure up some of the left vote.
Oh, nice! Good to see politicians living up to positive expectations for a change. ☺️
Rent control is a consistently failed policy, wherever and whenever it has been tried.
You can't legislate away a crisis of supply without increasing supply.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, you absolutely have to increase supply, I’d never say otherwise. Selling off so much social housing was a mammoth error, when people now own three, four, five or more houses, blowing up the rental market. And that’s before you factor in the corporations who buy housing stock in bulk.