MPs claim EPC upgrades are no excuse for landlords to hike rents

🤣🤣🤣. And government overspending is no excuse to put up taxes??? Unbelievable!

And increases in the cost of living are therefore no excuse for MP’s to have salary increases….

More IDIOT MPs demonising Landlords – which is why I’m selling up

“ The motion says: “The Renters’ Rights Bill is a positive first step in addressing the power imbalance between tenants and landlords”

What about addressing the risk and financial imbalance between tenants and landlords?

Who takes all the financial risk – the LL. Who gets the financial reward – the Tenant. That’s alright then – a win-win according to these buffoons. Bit of a worry that they’re running the country…

Labour and Green MPs to landlords: “We expect you to spend the equivalent of three to five years’ profit from your properties and not put up your rent. You may not have anything to live on for five years but who cares?”

Reply to the comment left by Ian Narbeth at 29/07/2025 – 12:26
So despite what the post says about landlords, I’m a landlord, I’m not not ‘mortgage free’ and I have to face facts. As a non-incorporated small portfolio landlord I can no longer offset my interest costs against rents and this fact has meant that in recent years I have had to increase rent more than would otherwise have been the case because of the combined effect of George Osbornes change in policy and increasing interest rates: These are real world facts that I don’t control.

The post is correct that Justice Minister Sarah Jackman has already confirmed in Parliament that landlords can legally factor in the cost of improving a property’s EPC rating when setting ‘higher market rents’ (with the exception that it was Sarah Jackman that confirmed this, not Sarah Sackman).
So this is just a fact that anybody who lives in the real world has to face…like the fact that increasing employers national insurance and the minimum wage at a time when many businesses are leveraged is likely to send many businesses to the wall and will not produce economic growth.

A lot of labour and green MPs don’t like facing the facts and they don’t live in the real world. The fact is that forcing landlords to meet EPC band C and banning landlords from accepting offers of rent above the advertised PCM rent are both going to drive up market rents.

And it is also a fact that some of the proposals in the RRB are going to clog up the courts and make the higher risk tenants even higher risk for a landlord than they were. A landlord’s only options when faced with high-risk tenants are:

(a) Don’t rent to high-risk tenants.
(b) Increase the rent to high-risk tenants to reduce the risk.
(c) Take out rent protection for high risk tenants and pass the cost of the insurance itself on as a rent increase.

The government has withheld the Justice Impact Assessment of the Renters Reform Bill demonstrating what effect it would have on the courts:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/buy-to-let/labour-urged-publish-renters-rights-impact-assessment/

My prediction would be that along with the other factors in the RRB driving up rents, the proposals in the RRB will also increase the cost of rent protection insurance for those landlords still considering housing the economically less secure tenants.

if the tenant signs to say they don’t want the upgrades so there is a 5 year exemption, then yes I wont need to up the rent for EPC improvements.
Sorted.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 29/07/2025 – 12:55
makes you wonder it if is best to tell tenants that you can only confirm the rent once the risk of letting to them has been assessed by the insurers first.

Advertise a let as rent between a range £X – to £X, to be confirmed only once a full assessment has been made specific to the applicant.

That how car insurance works!

Reply to the comment left by Reluctant Landlord at 29/07/2025 – 12:57
Then you won’t have been forced to meet EPC band C: But in a free society it is reasonable that the tenant should have the right to request that the Band D property remains free of the EPC ‘upgrade’ in order that they can continue renting at the lower rent. Of course, society would be even more free if a tenant was free to rent band E or F properties as well.

The more left-wing politicians don’t really believe in a free society, or people having ‘rights’. The name was changed from ‘Renters Rights Bill’ to ‘Renters Reform Bill’. But it was never about renters needing rights so much as being about a bunch of left-wing control-freaks needing an electorate that perceived it was dependent upon them.

What most tenants want is a warm, comfortable and safe home with a condensing gas boiler, and that’s what most Band D properties in the PRS are.

But some of the Band F properties that owner-occupiers live in have modern condensing gas boilers and are still safe, comfortable and reasonably well ventilated (which is healthy).

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 29/07/2025 – 12:55I suggest that options b and c are redundant.