Call for ‘fair rents’ system as prices rise in a ‘national phenomenon’

If the government stop adding extra costs, rents will stabilise.

Tenants are paying more and landlords are earning less. Rachel Thieves is doing rather well from the PRS.

Molly Harris is missing the point when she says: “The Renters’ Rights Act is a valuable step forward in making private renting safer and fairer – but it doesn’t address the UK’s problem of runaway rents.”

What Molly Harris is missing is that the amendments labour introduced into the bill that became the Renters’ Rights Act are reducing competition in the private rented sector and driving up rents. Labour were told that this would happen but they weren’t listening.

The New Economics Foundation says and the BBC endlessly repeats that private rents are rising.
Do their figures for rent rises include HMO rents which usually include utility bills?
Or is their figure for rent only?

The real problem is that Governments, in particular Labour, expect Landlords to absorb all of the increased costs and expenses, often caused by their policies and legislation, whilst at the same time, maintaining or reducing rents to appease renters….it doesn’t work!

Economics for Dummies – Chapter 1 – Supply and Demand explained to the hard of thinking.
Page 1, paragraph 1 – when demand is increasing, don’t screw the suppliers because prices will rise. End of subject.

Reply to the comment left by Grumpy Doug at 18/05/2026 – 10:25
Economics for Dummies –
Chapter 2 – if what’s charged for goods and services can’t keep up with inflation, there will be no goods and services

‘Its report calls for an ’emergency brake’ on rent increases, limiting rises to the lower of inflation or 2%.’

So if inflation is 5% and you can only increase rent by 2%, what happens? Let me see … landlords take their ball home (if they haven’t already done so)

These people can’t have any brain cells

Only 48.5% on rent, come on you wicked landlords 👺, there is still 51.5% more to grab. 😁

Reply to the comment left by Ray Guselli at 18/05/2026 – 10:20
This is true, and as you say, particularly of labour. George Osborne (conservative) did introduce the policy preventing landlords offsetting their interest payments against rents if they weren’t incorporated (which is an inflationary policy) although that didn’t really start to bite until interest rates went up.

But the important recent inflationary changes are the provisions in the Renters Rights Act that prevent landlords from accepting more than the advertised rent, limit landlords to one rent increase a year and then to market rent, prohibiting payment of rent in advance and making it harder for landlords to get rid of problem tenants if the courts aren’t working (thereby increasing risk). What all this amounts to is that small-portfolio landlords and their agents have had to raise rents in advance of the Renters Rights Act earlier just in case they won’t be able to do it later, especially if they are using borrowings i.e. a BTL mortgage. These requirements of the RRA mean that any property coming on to the market for first-letting needs to be advertised at a premium, so of course markets rents will rise as a consequence of the RRA.

Historically small landlords used to hold rents down a bit to decrease the risk of a void period and the properties provided by small landlords increased both supply and competition acting as a brake on rent-inflation. The SNP already proved in Scotland what happens when a government introduces rent-controls…..as soon as rent controls ended in Scotland rents jumped well above inflation: Faced either with rent controls or with the PROSPECT of ‘rent controls’, as soon as landlords are able they PUSH RENTS UP, when previously they HELD THEM DOWN and this is because, faced with increasing risk THEY HAVE TO RAISE RENTS. When governments interfere in markets they can and do make things worse for customers….government interference creates inflationary pressure, especially if the government is economically illiterate.

The ‘New Economics Foundation’ says that it has three missions:

https://neweconomics.org/about/our-missions

Number one in their ‘mission’ on this link says:

A Fast and Fair Transition
Build a fast and fair transition to a green economy through a deep and equitable transformation to address the climate crisis.

If this New Economics Foundation understood economics and genuinely wanted to achieve their number one objective this they wouldn’t be talking about rent controls. They would be talking about allowing landlords to offset their finance costs against rents and about introducing tax policies that favour energy security through domestic energy generation.

The only organisations and parties talking about applying rent-controls to the private rented sector are left-wing-reactionary parties who have no understanding of economics or how markets work. Over-interference by government makes things worse both for landlords AND FOR TENANTS.

Reply to the comment left by Cider Drinker at 18/05/2026 – 10:02
I think this is correct: Tenants don’t make the link between government interference and their rents going up.

A lot of charges got banned in 2019. There’s a summary here:

https://creditladder.co.uk/blog/who-pays-for-referencing-after-the-tenant-fees-ban

These changes in 2019 banned such things as charges for cleaning, inventory fees, admin fees and others. But those costs didn’t disappear and the only option to recover them is raising rents (for all tenants)….i.e. the clean tenants pay for the dirty tenants because you can’t charge the dirty tenants for their mess. The good tenants pay for the bad ones.

George Osborne stopped landlords from offsetting finance costs against rents in Section 24 of the Finance Act 2015….but the finance costs themselves didn’t DISAPPEAR, they went up for landlords. George Osborne’s changes meant that landlords have to increase rents to tenants to recover the extra tax they were paying at 40% and when interest rates went up the rents had to increase even more.

But a significant extra cost of the Renters Rights Act is credit-referencing as the courts aren’t working effectively yet and no-fault evictions have been banned; so the RRA incurs significant extra risk for landlords with the only way of mitigating that risk being more stringent credit-referencing. Landlords aren’t permitted to CHARGE tenants for credit referencing so the only thing they can do to recover the cost is raise rent across the board. Furthermore, under the RRA landlords aren’t permitted to DISCRIMINATE against tenants or WITHHOLD INFORMATION on the availability of a property; the effect of this is that landlords and their agents have to apply stringent credit-referencing to ALL tenants that apply….previously you could have a ‘user-pays’ policy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_pays

Now you have to have a policy that imposes extra costs upon EVERYBODY. Every tenant pays more.

Rent inflation is being driven by GOVERNMENT.

Buy to Let Investment by Individuals is being killed off by Taxation, Regulations, and eye watering fines.
If we were starting from scratch how many of us would invest in Renting properties ? Prior to 1988 You would have to be stark Raving Bonkers to invest in Property Rentals . Has the Government turned the clock back 50 years.