A veteran Tory MP who has been a junior minister in the department responsible for housing now says the rental market is broken.
Sir Bob Neill - a former minister at the Department for Communities and Local Government and now chair of the House of Commons Justice Select Committee - made his call in response to new figures claiming that a third of private tenants say they are struggling to afford their rent.
Neill says: “These shocking findings are yet more evidence that the UK rental market is broken. Innovation is desperately needed to help keep rents down, and tenants protected.
“The government should look to ensure more professionally run, affordably priced private rentals are available to fill the gap between social rents and traditional tenancies. There is an opportunity to do just that in the Renters (Reform) Bill presently before Parliament.”
The survey in question is small - a polling firm for real estate investment company Castleforge spoke with 4,162 adults but only 719 identified themselves as private tenants.
The results suggest that rising mortgage rates have made renters feel vulnerable to their landlord’s personal financial situation, with 32 per cent claiming their rent or tenancy had been affected.
Some 42 per cent of those responding say their home needs to be refurbished to be comfortable and 31 per cent claim to have been living in poor quality or unsafe rentals in the last five years.
Londoners claim the worst condition - 55 per cent say their rental home needs renovations and 41 per cent say they have lived in poor quality or unsafe rentals in the last five years.
Michael Kovacs, a founding partner at Castleforge, says: “Private landlords that own one or two homes are being buffeted by mortgage rates, and their own financial insecurity is then passed on to tenants. Too many renters are finding themselves having to move or having to put up with delays to vital renovations.
“The findings show the vital need not just for more state sponsored affordable housing but for an expanded professional, private sector committed to keeping homes maintained and innovating to create rented homes that are affordable for typical renters.”
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MPs and councils need to stick their noses elsewhere. Too many interfering busybodies all got an opinion of what should be happening with OTHER PEOPLES’ property that they don’t own one penny of themselves.
No mention from this MP of S24 and how we cannot offset our own costs properly. Why can’t he address that? Does he even know about it? No I suspect. But hey, let’s go and get the red tape out and upset the landlord / tenant balance even further. That will help supply. Prat.
Owner occupiers live in some horrendous housing. About half of my properties were formerly occupied by owner occupiers. One had no heating and the only source of hot water was an electric shower. Another had the bath in the coal shed and only 4 electric sockets in the entire house. People had been living in these houses until the day of completion or the day they shuffled off to a care home.
Several of my other ex owner occupied houses were in a disgusting state, infested with fleas, shredded, bodily fluid soaked carpets, thick layers of grease and nicotine on every wall, etc.
If MPs want rent to be more affordable they need to stop loading us up with all the extra costs. Scrap Section 24, scrap the RRB, make Section 8 fast and functional, make energy efficiency improvements tax deductible or even better a super deduction, scrap licensing schemes or at least put a price cap on them. If we can only charge a £50 admin fee it seems somewhat unreasonable that Councils can charge closer to £1000 for far less work.
Does this crackpot not realise that his party have caused all the drama..! Osbourne started the rot and so it continues.
Local Labour run councils have compounded this by playing both politics and money grabbing, central and local government blame each other.
Overall, the tenants get a raw deal and the landlords a bigger tax bill. When the chickens come home to roost and there's riots in local B&B's it will be because illegals are in 4* hotels and they are in sh1tholes. Let Polly, Ben and the other Gingers see where the preaching politicians are....
Sir Bob is correct 😂 But the Conservatives broke it 😱
Spot on Simon!
Private message to ELLIE EDWARDS...
Ellie, I tried getting hold of you via Landlord Today for weeks. They just won't give you my message, nor pass my number nor email address for you to contact me.
I just wanted to let you know that I did employ Bayarsaikhan, your electrician, to do some work for me. He came twice. And as you said, he's brilliant; respectful, great workmanship and very good at keeping in contact.
Thanks very much Ellie for letting me have his details.
Rgds, Daniela
Thank you very much Daniela for letting me know.
I am so pleased that it worked out for you with my electrician.
The Mandatory Application licensing Scheme fee in Harrow is £1600, others just as much because they charge you an Application licensing fee then add £50. per room on top for fun.
That is much too high! Can't there be some kind of legal challenge to the costs?
All caused by his government, yes rents are high I wounder why Mr Neill, more social housing is needed but then this is where the poor living conditions are
That £1623. license app’ fee only covers one inspection visit if you at not compliant additional fees to cover extra visits required.
This is additional to the £3 / 4k work required for a traditional house to comply as they were built before they invented those rules.
That is a ridiculous amount Michael! And what happens to the money that they raise; I don't expect it is used wisely at all.
More professionalism? If they turn the PRS into a corporate only business there's only one way the costs will go.
Private landlords earn their yield on the asset and then essentially work for free re management and maintenance.
And so the saga continues....on a downward spiral... Get out whilst you're still allowed to... That's my advice folks. ⏩
😂👍🏻 That’s what I said a few days ago to an article.
Innovative thinking to provide lower cost rental units - like more social housing for instance. How innovative would that be?😏
"More professional"
ie: our mates and donors in the corporate sector who will give us a financial kickback ot with whom we are invested.
This means higher rents.
Typical Tory, absolutely clueless.
I wonder if he did economics at school:
Less regulation + less taxation = more landlords and more competition= lower rents.
More regulation + more taxation = less landlords and less competition= higher rents.
Or am I missing something? Ah- it's the tenant vote and the anti-landlord rhetoric. Being in the PRS is like being on the Titanic at the moment. Everyone's trying to bail out.
The Tories broke it. And they don't have a clue how to fix it. Or anything else for that matter. Neither do the other mainstream parties.
Most tenants vote Labour apart from people who have just left university and living in shared accommodation in London. For professional he means the financial institutions who want telephone numbers for rents.
What absolute rubbish. The poorest quality homes in my town are those owned and run by the council. The contradiction of s24 and the need to improve homes. Anyway where is the actual evidence? Who bases policy on a small sample of probably loaded questions that encourage tenants to give a negative response. How about going around to those peoples houses and actually seeing for themselves. They're all ignorant clowns.
Council housing is no peach, so why the focus on private LL properties? Money springs first to mind; the ability to swell depleted council coffers by demanding private LL's adhere to whatever new and predominantly unattainable rule and regulation they put into play, or pay up. This short sighted fix is already reaping its reward as the exodus of private landlords continues apace, leaving in its wake the burgeoning housing crisis that now confronts us. The only people who should be making decisions for and about the Private rental sector are those who know and understand fully the true nature of the entirety of its workings. Such knowledge is not learnt sitting behind a desk, five minutes into a parliamentary role. The havoc being wreaked is ample demonstration of the critical need for inclusion, not exclusion, of true experts, ie: those whose livelihoods depend on Private rented accommodation.
Rising rents are keeping roofs over tenants heads, if market rate isn't achieved then the landlord with a btl mortgage will be forced to sell, worse still when a property is repossesed by the lender they will need to sell it vacant possession to re pay the debt.... I am staggered how so many of us law abiding landlords that provide high quality homes, whilst being battered in every direction are not recognised for our contribution to the housing supply when all the governments over many years have failed to build enough houses to meet the demands of the population... simply problem - lack of supply and we urgently need a strategic plan to address the housing crisis in the short, mid and long term. Pressuring private landlords is not the solution. Incentivise us, we will step up and be part of the solution. Is anyone listening!?
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