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A landlord survey carried out by the website Rentify has revealed that more than half of landlords polled say they intend on raising rents to help cover their costs in the wake of George Osborne’s reduced tax breaks for private rental properties.
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A further 57% of landlords said they were scaling back their expansion plans and would not be buying any more properties, whilst 23% claimed to be considering putting their properties up for sale.
“These statistics are a stark reminder that if landlords aren’t incentivised to be landlords then they will just stop buying new builds,” says George Spencer from Rentify.
Labour Housing Policy
Labour campaigned for rent controls during the General Election and although this did them no favours because they lost in spectacular fashion, leadership candidate Andy Burnham still supports the idea:
“I would favour rent controls, because I think we have a dysfunctional housing market. I think the question is right that this is a huge cost that is really making a number of people, particularly in London, struggle,” he said at a hustings event on Wednesday.
Poor Families Struggling to Pay the Rent
Another candidate in the labour leadership race agrees: Jeremy Corbyn has previously described the lack of rent controls on London as a form of “social cleansing” in some areas.
“In the absence of rent control all that’s happening in central London is that families who access benefits to pay their rent cannot get enough money to pay their rent.”
However, the shadow chancellor argues that Labour need to resist the desire to try to “control and run” what happens in the housing market.
