MPs demand Angela Rayner U-turns on rent controls

They need to get more landlords sitting on these ‘think tanks’. It’s clear to me that the only thinking being done is by people who do not understand the challenges of being a landlord and cannot make the link between rising costs of regulation and mortgage rate increases that are leading to rising rents. They should be engaging with landlords to find solutions not sitting in ‘think tanks’ away from reality.

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I am selling my buy-to-let properties to invest my capital into more return with less regulation burden.

The UK had ultra low interest rates for 12 years making mortgages cheap and fueling house inflation. That has ended, mortgages are around 3% higher which adds £7k to an average mortgage. The home owners are quietly suffering, no pseudo help groups in their corner. Lots of crying from tenant groups who somehow think they should be exempt from the changes of the last 5 years.

Reply to the comment left by JamesB at 27/08/2026 – 06:51
This is of course correct: The average net return after tax on investing in residential property is about the same as you get from premium bonds, although there is no work and not much risk if you are investing in premium bonds. And the return on government gilts is higher than premium bonds. There is a summary of the reasons at this link:

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-16096937/Why-UK-pays-debt-rival-countries-not-just-moron-premium-ALEX-BRUMMER.html

This article says amongst other things “Almost a quarter of UK debt is index-linked to the….Retail Prices Index. ” The Retail Prices Index includes housing costs. So if the government drives up the risk and the cost of renting-out properties for landlords and simultaneously drives up rents with rent restrictions (which are in effect rent controls), as it has just done with its Renters Rights Act, then it also drives up inflation and drives up its own borrowing costs. But because the government is also causing the economy to stagnate through taxes on employment and by increasing the other burdens faced by small businesses it is also not reducing its debt pile and over the medium term this means that it will drive interest rates even higher. And this in turn means that those landlords who do not run their property portfolios through limited companies, who have BTL mortgages, but AREN’T exiting the market, now NEED rents to climb even higher to mitigate the increasing risk of escalating interest rates caused by government policy (or more accurately, failure of government policy). Of course, those landlords choosing to exit the market in advance of forecast capital gains tax increases are also decreasing supply and the increasing scarcity of rental property also drives up rents.

What a lot of renters don’t realise that it is government that is driving up rents. With its Renters Rights Act, labour has created a vicious circle of inflation: Everything about labour’s Renters Rights Act is inflationary. If the government wanted to do something NON-inflationary it could allow landlords to offset their finance costs against rents, meaning that non-incorporated landlords would no longer need such big rent increases, and it could introduce capital allowances for energy-efficiency improvements.

The lady is not for turning!

You may have heard that before!

Reply to the comment left by Fergus Wilson at 02/09/2026 – 15:10
The article at the top of this thread says “…research…..undertaken by the Autonomy Institute models three RENT CONTROL ideas [using a CPI cap] from next year. Without a policy change, the model projects that the proportion of tenancies involving loss-making landlords would rise…to 17.05% by 2031, mainly because of higher mortgage costs. With the proposed measures, that figure would be 12.48% under a CPI cap, 14.16% with moderate controls and 15.33% following a nominal freeze.”

In other words this think tank seems to think that a lot of landlords are going to sit around making a loss for somebody else’s benefit rather than doing something else. But in terms of average projected returns for the three ‘alternatives’ it also says:

“Mean post-tax rent return on equity, excluding capital gains, is projected at 2% without reform, compared with 1.81%, 1.68% and 1.52% respectively under the three alternatives.”

In contrast, today Revolut offers 4% on cash savings with instant access and interest paid daily:

https://www.revolut.com/savings/

Monzo pays about 3.5 %:

https://monzo.com/help/monzo-plus/paid-interest

So clearly without spending any time at all in a think-tank even a renter with a mobile phone and an account with one of the challenger banks can see that these three proposals are just a lie bearing no relation to the real world. In the real world the only choice that landlords have after labour’s introduction of its Renters Rights Act, (possibly Angela Rayner’s Renters Rights Act as a number of sources quote her as the principle architect of the Act) is to to put the rent up as high as they can on first letting a property; that’s the only real ‘alternative’ to selling that is out there.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies has already said that [further] rent controls would put rents up.

You cannot give people Jam Tarts if they want Cream Doughnuts!

If a landlord is making a loss then he will exit the sector!

There is now a considerable shortage of houses to rent!

Reply to the comment left by Fergus Wilson at 02/09/2026 – 17:11

Apparently this shortage of property coming to the market to rent is partly because landlords are rushing to sell properties ahead of projected rises in capital gains tax:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/capital-gains-tax-raid-why-landlords-rushing-sell-ilyas-patel-hdk2e/

https://www.property118.com/realising-gains-before-cgt-changes-the-new-reason-landlords-are-selling/

Getting more of a commodity whilst actively punishing investors for investing in it is something that only happens in fairytales.

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

But an additional problem here is that because of labour’s Renters Rights Act landlords are not just getting a poor return; they are also aware that their capital is actually at risk….under Burnham, Rayner &. Co there is an increasing risk that they will end up both paying for somebody else’s fairytale and also not being able to get their beans back.

Reply to the comment left by Fergus Wilson at 15:10
She is probably now turning – in her grave.

Reply to the comment left by Fergus Wilson at 02/09/2026 – 17:11
Jam Tarts and Cream Doughnuts are off limits to diabetics, a nice cabbage soup is all we can have.