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

Rents should set records every month. That is how inflation works.

One of the (unintended) consequences of the RRA is that properties at the lower end of rents are likely be sold to the owner-occupier sector. This is likely because lower value properties are likely to require more work, attract poorer tenants and require the most EPC (cough) ‘improvements’. Landlords of such properties are more likely to lead the way in serving Section 8 Ground 1A Notices. The pace of evictions will increase if and when Local Authorities start to abuse the new powers afforded to them in the Act.

Where will the tenants live? Maybe Labour will save some of the homes that they’re building for migrants for UK nationals.

Is there little wonder that the government are setting fire to the student market. They need those HMOs for non-students. If a few ‘Universities’ can be lost along the way, so much the better.

The plan to get rid of private landlords is slowly but surely working.

Reply to the comment left by Peter Merrick at 10:49
And the number of homeless families is slowly but surely increasing.

Reply to the comment left by Cider Drinker at 19/05/2026 – 09:31
Rents can certainly be expected to rise with inflation but what many people don’t realise is that government policy, particularly labour government policy, is driving rent inflation. I think that there are a lot of unintended consequences of the Renters Rights Act that have come about by its final iteration occurring under a left-wing government with a labour majority.

There are some areas of life where we do need regulation…if you have a choice of only three power suppliers, one water company, or maybe half a dozen banks then as consumers we are all potentially vulnerable to exploitation. But when it comes to other areas of life consumers benefit from choice and competition. When did a government ever provide you with a good mobile phone, or a reliable car? As landlords we benefit from a choice of finance providers, and so do tenants, although less so if the government says that we cannot offset our finance costs against rents thereby driving our costs up in a way that only benefits the exchequer and doesn’t benefit households.

If a government interferes in a market it isn’t necessarily going to make things better….it may instead restrict freedom, restrict choice, reduce competition, and also increase costs. If costs increase, those cost increases don’t necessarily benefit CONSUMERS….one of the effects of competition is to ELIMINATE costs that provide no real consumer benefit.

What the private rented sector has done over the years is to provide choice. Specifically, historically small portfolio landlords have tended to hold rents down to reduce the risk of void periods and have an easier life because they weren’t greedy and not being ‘professional’ landlords were not necessarily focused on maximising rents. The investment they put into the market provided choice of a range iof accommodation and the effect of them holding rents down acted as a brake on rent inflation. Market rents are partly a function of ADVERTISED rents and the labour-RRA is inevitably going to drive advertised rents and market rents up. In fact, it has been OBVIOUS for a couple of years that the RRA will drive rents up. Labour were told this.

The RRA restricts choice. In the past I have let to tenants for short-terms (5-6 months) because they’ve been flooded out and they NEEDED somewhere to live for 5-6 months. Now under the RRA you can’t do this. As a landlord you are generally now less able to respond to market demand and there are many situations where because of the removal of no-fault evictions landlords will no longer be able to take the risk of housing some tenants that could otherwise have been housed in the PRS.

With any valuable quantity that is in short supply there is going to be upward pressure on prices. Why would anybody competent want to make it harder to fulfil that demand by making it unattractive or risky to provide accommodation, e..g for a short-term let? In fact, why would anybody who genuinely cared about consumer freedom and choice want to make it risky for any small ‘landlord’ to provide any safe accommodation? I don’t really have much difficulty with the provision in the RRA saying that I can only apply a rent increase once per annum in order that tenants can plan their lives but the truth is that like a lot of small landlords I was increasing rent less frequently than once per annum before the various UK governments started talking about rent controls or ‘renters rights’; ten years ago my agent was advising me to hold rents down a bit, now my agent advises me to put rents up (whilst I can). This is all the effect of government interference in a market that was not working badly. It shouldn’t surprise anybody if rents have been rising 6-9% across England because that is the inevitable impact of the Renters Rights Act under Labour.

Isaac Asimov is quoted as saying “…violence is the last refuge of the incompetent”. If as a private sector landlord I want to invest in putting a safe roof over somebody’s head today I’m attacked by the tax system for doing that. But if I want to invest in companies dumping ordnance on the Lebanon, Yemen or Iran, I can do that without penalty. What the PRS has seen over the last decade is a sustained ATTACK on the private rented sector. How very different things could have been if governments had altered the tax system to make it attractive to invest in accommodation that could generate and store its own energy.

We shouldn’t be penalised via the tax system for investing in safe accommodation when there’s a shortage of it. A competent government would realise that the EPC system doesn’t need to be eliminated but needs to be subjected to COMPETITION by allowing any tenant to rent any property at any EPC band, including properties below band D. If the EPC system meant something meaningful in the marketplace tenants would pay significantly higher rents for the higher EPC band properties. If they don’t want to pay those additional costs it is because they have no real value to the consumer. A competent government would introduce capital allowances and tax incentives to make properties more energy efficient, able to generate and store their own energy, without threatening to remove the competition and choice provided by the other properties.

The problem with this government is that like all incompetent governments anything is always somebody else’s fault…if this government is good at anything it’s good at U-turns. A 6-9% increase in rents as a consequence of the RRA doesn’t surprise me at all, it’s what happens when you interfere in a market that was working reasonably well. The INCOMPETENT governments, parties and organisations are those who are afraid of market delivery. The INCOMPETENT organisations are the organisations lobbying for the introduction of rent controls rather than going to the effort of working out how a market actually works. The COMPETENT governments and organisations are those who aren’t threatened by market delivery and can understand that stopping a market from helping to solve a problem is an exceptionally stupid thing to do.

Council Taxes are going up way faster than rents – the media don’t seem to complain about that?

The rate of increase in rents is now slowing, and by December 2025, the yearly rise had fallen to 3.9%.
The Council Tax, eg. the average Band D bill for 2025-26 increased by 5.0% (£109) to £2,280. For 2024-25, the average increase was 5.1% (£106).

So there you have it: Rogue Council Tax, Fair Rents.

Reply to the comment left by Mr Blueberry at 19/05/2026 – 20:58
Please stop confusing us with facts, the government is not interested in facts, just propaganda.

Reply to the comment left by Cider Drinker at 19/05/2026 – 09:31
“the government are setting fire to the student market. They need those HMOs for non-students. If a few ‘Universities’ can be lost along the way, so much the better.”

So UK higher education that is critical to national interests are not being decided based on the education added value and performance rather just made unaffordable for more UK students…

Sounds like government working against the national interest again.

Reply to the comment left by Mr Blueberry at 19/05/2026 – 20:58
Most tenants, including most social housing tenants, pay council tax and yes, it’s true that whilst some services (collecting the bins, fixing pot-holes) are essential, unnecessary increases in Council Tax if councils mis-manage their finances put pressure on living costs because in the end the unnecessary costs are passed on to tenants and owner occupiers as higher taxes. All of those unnecessary costs hit normal working people and working families. Doing more than the essential activities, e.g. creating non-jobs, creates a burden that is imposed on working people. It’s not paid for by the rich, they just head off to Monaco or Switzerland.

We can expect rents to continue to rise because the Renters Rights Act reduces competition, increases risk for landlords and creates unnecessary costs that have to be applied to all tenants because there is now a requirement under the RRA not to discriminate. I.e. you can’t just apply the additional unnecessary costs to the high-risk tenants…’user pays’ just went out of the window with the labour RRA. That’s what happens if governments interfere in markets and produce heavy-handed legislation that is not proportionate to whatever the problem in the market actually is. If labour had just fixed the basic problem….protecting landlords from a situation where they might have to go to court for a year to get rid of a tenant that was exhibiting anti-social behaviour, not paying the rent, or perhaps was trashing the property, then landlords wouldn’t have been so concerned about the loss of no-fault evictions. Section 21 no fault evictions were important because of a flaw in the system that hasn’t yet been fixed. ….labour has SAID that they will fix the courts but they haven’t done it yet and the truth is that they don’t have the money. Because labour HAVEN’T fixed the problem but instead have created additional costs and risk, the labour RRA will push up rents.

There’s a constant mis-match between what labour SAYS it’s going to do and what labour actually DOES DO. They trumpet the fact that they’ve got rid of no-fault evictions but conveniently ignore the consequences (higher rents that they created by destroying competition).

In recent days there have been reports that landlords are increasingly turning to insurance because of the Renters Rights Act. That increased insurance cost covering landlords from those tenants who choose not to pay, maybe damage a property leaving tens of thousands of pounds worth of damage, will be passed on to ALL TENANTS as higher rents.

https://ifamagazine.com/renters-rights-act-landlords-urged-to-take-out-renters-guarantee-insurance-to-make-sure-they-are-covered-for-the-changes/

The increased costs of credit-checking ALL tenants to avoid the PROBLEM tenants without discriminating will also be passed on to ALL TENANTS as higher rents. Real working people don’t like this…the workers don’t want to pay for the shirkers.

What you want from local and national government is for them to stick to the essential tasks that only they can do and avoid the unnecessary, ivory-tower c**p. Collect the bins, fix the potholes. Fix the system so that you DON’T HAVE TO GO TO COURT for a year to get your property back when the tenant trashes your property, doesn’t pay the rent or terrorises the neighbours. Fix the system so that you don’t need the additional insurance or additional credit-checking expenses. A labour government isn’t necessarily going to understand this because as a group of people very few labour MPs have ever been in business. Collectively, they are incompetent and they don’t believe in markets anyway. Collectively they aren’t good at much apart from U-turns…like the labour governments of the 1970s they would probably be good at providing you with an unreliable car produced by a unionised work force with highly paid union representatives but they’re not good at much else.

The Renters Rights Act isn’t the act that the Conservative government were originally discussing. This is because as it went through a parliament that had a labour majority the labour MPs weren’t listening to the minority voices telling the labour MPs that they were going to make things worse for everybody. The labour MPs didn’t bother to listen because collectively they don’t really believe in market delivery.

The market will pay for labour’s Renters Rights Act in higher rents because labour drove competition out of the market, and that in turn will create additional pressure on the welfare budget. When governments FAIL (as labour has already done within two years of being in government because they just weren’t listening) everybody pays.

Labour….stick to the knitting. Stop landlords having to go to court to prevent them having to spend a fortune to get rid of problem tenants and pass those costs on to everybody. Stop lying about how wonderful your new RRA is because you ‘got rid of no-fault evictions’ when you didn’t fix the potholes or collect the bins.