Renters’ Rights Act will push up rents as regulation tightens

It started out as a rental reform bill….something reasonable with reciprocal rights and responsibilities for tenants and landlords. And then a left-wing government with a significant majority got hold of it and it ended up as a Renters Rights Bill which became the Renters Rights Act, a stick to beat landlords with.

“…four in five landlords say they’ll be more choosy about who they let to, and two-thirds intend to raise rents in response to the new rules.”

Of course landlords will do this: This is because they will have to. The provisions in the RRA that stop a landlord taking an offer of rent above the advertised rent will mean that landlords always advertise high and this in turn will push up market rents. The other provisions in the RRA make a greater proportion of tenants too high risk to house.

For some landlords it will now be less risky to take money from Mears, Serco or Clearspring to house asylum seekers than to take benefits tenants. And that’s the real stupidity of the RRA. The final version of the bill was dreamed up by people who live in a socialist ivory tower, but the effect of their interfering in the market will be socially divisive and bad for tenants.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 05/11/2025 – 10:09
No situation is so bad that government intervention cannot make it worse
G. R. Steele
16 June 2011

Did anyone else see the imbecilicaly stupid article put out by the BBC yesterday on examples of the use of S21?

From memory, three cases where S21 had been issued. One landlord wanting to move in, one LL family and the third issued because the LL had died.

Of course the BBC tone was that the RRA has swept reality away when S21 is no more and all these three would have lived happily ever after in their rentals, without what they stated was the threat of eviction always hanging over them.

How utterly brain dead does anyone have to be to realise you cannot have any right to carry on renting long term when the LL has passed away and that ‘no reason given’ is not the same as ‘no fault’. Whilst there may be a little more notice for the tenant, all of those examples would be covered by grounds under Section 8. The difference is a piece of paper formally stating the reason – that is just about the only material difference and I’m pretty sure in the majority of S21 cases the tenant would have been told why, especially if they asked the LL (or their Executor in the sad case of the death).

What a sad state of affairs that the body existing off licence fees on the basis that they are informative and balanced is misleading tenants in this way so that even LLs acting within the RRA will still get the never ending accusations of acting unfairly in the future. And it might sink in soon that those who walked away from rent arrears or ASB via a LL using S21 will have a CCJ or conviction to show for the mandatory S8 they now must receive. That will no doubt fill a whole Panorama when the BBC get wind of it.

Reply to the comment left by Keith Wellburn at 05/11/2025 – 11:58
If landlords (like Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer) couldn’t be sure that they could move back in within a reasonable timeframe when they need their family homes back then they wouldn’t be able to take the risk of letting them out in the first place.

Yes, there is always a situation to resolve when a landlord dies. And there are also additional issues when the rental property is financed by a buy-to-let mortgage: The lender never takes any significant proportion of the risk.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 05/11/2025 – 12:05
Yes, it’s a given that the need for twelve months to elapse before notice can be given to reclaim the property will of course effectively mandate that these homes must be left empty for many who would have previously looked for a short term tenant. The irony is that the ability to give notice on day one under RRA would effectively mean those who suffered a delay in regaining a property under S8 could actually become a tenant to fill in a gap as short as two months. In Reeves case more than twelve months have elapsed under the tenancy so she could give the appropriate S8 on day one of the RRA coming into force in the event of being booted out of No11.

This BBC article was written in relation to settled tenants who had put down roots so my assumption was that they had been in situ at least a year. Under the RRA a S8 for LL moving in (or wising to sell) could then be served at any time just the same as the S21. The difference in the relative timescales will be down to the court system but I can’t see any more long term security under S8 correctly using the prescribed ground than currently under S21.

Reply to the comment left by Keith Wellburn at 05/11/2025 – 12:41
There are plenty of situations where a tenant might have been in situ for more than a year but where a landlord might need to know that he or she can definitely get a property back within a reasonable timeframe. That’s not only the case with MPs renting their houses out whilst they live in grace and favour accommodation. It’s also the case if a landlord has to work abroad, or even from a different location in the UK for example.

But when it comes to BTL accommodation it’s not just the landlord who need to know that he or she can get the property back: The lender also needs to know that the landlord can get the property back. And that’s why some lenders don’t let landlords let to some social housing providers.

The RRA makes an increasing proportion of tenants more high risk, not just for the landlord, but also for the lender.

I have two young, self funded, foreign students, they couldn’t rent a £30000 car without insurance and a credit card, on what planet does it make sense to let a £250000 property without even the surety of the rent?

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 05/11/2025 – 12:56
I know, I’m not disagreeing with you, virtually every aspect of the RRA has unintended consequences and my response is 13 properties sold since 2015 including the initial motivation of avoiding S24. And the current tenants in my last property will be my last tenants.

As I stated, there is the factor of going through the court system for seeking S8, just as a S21 was still reliant on court process to actually get VP and I’d guess that wait will be longer.

I am assuming at this stage that S8 ground for LL seeking VP to live in the property or S8 ground to sell will be granted in favour of the LL. My understanding is it certainly shouldn’t be a case of the courts refusing the LLs request because it might inconvenience the tenant or rely on them confirming they have another rental lined up etc – that’s why the specific ground is in there in the first place for the LL to use but perhaps I’m being too optimistic?

Reply to the comment left by Keith Wellburn at 05/11/2025 – 13:21
I don’t know whether you are being optimistic or not: Because the RRA creates additional risk for landlords and that’s why more are quite rightly being more careful over who they decide to house with its introduction.

Rachel Reeves and this government came to power promising to grow the economy. What she and her colleagues then did was to increase employers’ NI, lower the rate at which it kicks in, increase the minimum wage, and give employees employment rights on day one.

I’ve worked for big businesses, and have run a small business for years. As an employer you always find people on the margins….people who don’t have references…or have some characteristics that make them different for example. Most employers are good employers, just as most landlords are good landlords, and they’ll sometimes ‘take a chance’ on these people…give them an opportunity to show what they are capable of. But in an environment where labour has just done what it’s done many employers can’t afford to ‘take a chance’ on these people on the margins because they have become just too high risk to employ.

And it’s similar with housing: As a landlord, you occasionally also find people who are on the margins or ‘higher risk’…like the people on benefits that I used to take 20 years ago, but don’t take any more now that I know that if they lose their entitlement to benefits the benefits office can just come and get the money back off me. Or maybe before you would have taken a chance on people who have a credit rating that isn’t perfect.

Sometimes these ‘higher risk’ people seem decent enough and in an environment where before you could have ‘taken a chance’ on these people (because before you knew that you could get rid of them if there was a problem) you could give them the chance to show that they can be good tenants.

But the effect of the new proposals in the Renters Rights Act and the current mess in the courts is that now you can’t ‘take a chance’ on these people any more. ‘Taking a chance’ means taking a risk and if the risk is that you don’t get paid, they upset the neighbours, trash your house, and/or you can’t get your property back when you need to then this activity becomes just TOO high risk. It is particularly high risk for a landlord if the property is mortgaged because with a mortgaged property, as the landlord you take most of the risk, especially if you are renting at 60% LTV or above.

And so the overall effect of the RRA, just as with labour’s changes to the employment market, is that it is people on the margins of society who will suffer for labour’s ‘ivory tower’ legislation. You can’t afford to ‘take a chance’ on them: to ‘give them a chance’ to show that they can learn to be a productive and useful employee, or a good tenant or neighbour. And this means they don’t get the chance to learn new skills or be a productive community member. So these people will lose opportunities, become increasingly reliant on benefits and handouts, make the government’s economic situation even more precarious and increase the burden on the taxpayer.

The final iteration of the RRA after all those years of debate is the product of people who live and work in ivory towers and have almost no experience of business. But the people who are going to suffer for this government’s dishonesty over the real effect of their policies, their incompetence, and in some cases just their plain stupidity because they are either ignorant or refuse to learn the lessons of history, are the people who live on the margins of society who will no longer have any gainful employment or a roof over their heads.

In this environment, for some landlords, e.g. the landlords running HMOs in Portsmouth housing asylum seekers that we saw coverage of in the news this week, it’s going to be less risky to rent property to companies housing asylum seekers than to rent to people on the margins in the poorer communities: This is likely to lead to inter- and intra-community tension and makes introduction of the Renters Rights Act in its present form an act of exceptional stupidity.

Good luck in getting your property back.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 05/11/2025 – 15:02
‘exceptional stupidity’, probably, but have you considered actual mendacity?