Demand surges as older landlords exit the private rented sector

Fewer rental means more demand for what is left.

More buyers is fuelled by those tenants that can afford to buy.

This leaves those that cannot afford to buy to fight over the scraps of the PRS.

The least fortunate in society are suffering at the hand s of Labour (and the Tories before them).

I’m not fully conversant with the WEF but I may need to do some reading so that I understand the great reset better.

I'm not sure I agree with:

"The industry body says without government support, many landlords will simply decide to sell up."

The government doesn't need to provide "government support". It just needs to stop attacking landlords.

At the moment unless you are an incorporated landlord you can't offset your finance costs against your rents. So this is an attack on the majority of landlords. At the moment the government is trying to make all landlords reach EPC band C without allowing most landlords to offset the costs of any additional finance and without the required capital allowances. It's all attack, attack, attack and it has been for years from labour, conservative and of course the worst offender, SNP.

Most landlords don't want or need a free ride. Just stop attacking us. Most band D properties are safe, comfortable places to live managed by responsible landlords and lots of tenants want them.

If the government wants to do something positive for landlords it could permit any landlord that's in the game for the long-haul and trying to do a good job of providing safe, comfortable accommodation for tenants to incorporate without penalty using roll-over relief. And it could introduce capital allowances for EPC improvements.

But this isn't happening even though it would make sense. What's happening at the moment is that the government is harvesting landlords to try to pay for the reduced productivity of the public sector.

The people who are actually paying for this are tenants.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 14/03/2025 - 11:05
Exactly

Without a strong capital gain which seems unlikely for the next few years, rental return is too low to justify the risks associated with a court system which is not fit for purpose. We all know that Labours 1.5 million houses are a pipe dream and the few houses that will get built will not be very affordable to rent or buy. Generation Rant can shout all they want but if housing starts to look risky there are plenty of other ways to invest your cash.

It has all been said.
The writers of the original article know perfectly well what the game is .
The government is bankrupt and £8 million gbp in structural deficit and has a balance of trade deficit of £3 billion gbp a month since 1981.
It has money for World War 3,foreign aid and pretending to build houses,wind farms and pylons.
We are 17 million houses short ,have a shortage of construction materials and a shortage of 250,000 houses.
The result will be to create a new breed of Landlord in the form of the Lloyds Bank subsidiary,the Legal and General subsidiary and subsidiaries of major investment houses.
They will cherry pick the tenants they want leaving the rest to endure homelessness or life in hostels which will eventually have to be built.
Small landlords need to sell up and move into other asset classes in a tax efficient manner or become landlords in places like Garland Texas where recalcitrant and troublesome tenants can be evicted at gunpoint by the Sherrifffor failure to pay rent ( 2 weeks late or more).

Reply to the comment left by John Gelmini at 15/03/2025 - 06:45
Whilst we have to wait for up to a year for the bailiffs, after a protracted possession regime. We do not want the guns, but automatic eviction even after two months arrears would be good.

Added to all this the delusions of Milliband who would no doubt force landlords to install heat pumps in old houses almost impossible to insulate to a level that mean it will be cost effective.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 14/03/2025 - 11:05
This industry is the only one with no government representation leaving it at the whims of ministers with little knowledge of the consequences of their policies.
Until we change that the future is potentially bleak.
We need to be as loud as Shelter , we have no media profile and therefore no voice.

Labour government ministers are intellectual lightweights lacking in commonsense or knowledge of how things work.
This speaks to Paul Cunningham's point.
However ,Starmer,Reeves and those people who went to Davos in Switzerland are in receipt of instructions from WEF and the organisation to which it is part on the desired effects of policies on housing,the private rented sector ,home ownership,de- industrialisation and nett zero.
Landlords are like the person who entered the lion enclosure at Regents Park Zoo to get closer to " Arthur the Lion" ( now deceased).
Arthur did exactly what his maker and ours built him to do...He killed and ate the intruder who was obviously mad and therefore a prime candidate to be devoured.
Landlords and their representative bodies need to collectively wake up and not expect anything good from local authorities which are 80% overmanned and incompetently run or from governments.
They should be getting themselves and their members into other asset classes and renting out properties in more tax efficient locations where possible.
The social consequences of homelessness and landlord financial implosion are down to the government deliberately engineering the situation .
Thus Prudential risk management suggests getting out of the situation and into something better or using bankruptcy as a very last resort under expert advice to salvage what remains .

Reply to the comment left by John Gelmini at 15/03/2025 - 06:45
I'm liking how Texas handles bad tenants. Hong Kong is good too, you rent, you pay, the tenancy comes up in 2 years and you either renew or move out .. that's it. Plus there are no managing agents. You agreed to rent, you pay the rent, end of.