Our city is facing a rent crisis
by Ian Narbeth
Landlords, especially any in Bristol, may be interested to listen in to this event: Click here
Bristol Renters Summit 2022: Wed, 2 March 2022 18:30 – 20:30 GMT
“Our city is facing a rent crisis, with rents increasing, demand exceeding supply, concerns with landlords meeting health and safety regulations and a shortage of accessible housing.
We are inviting renters and advocates to come together as One City to discuss the key issues facing the private rented sector in Bristol, and what we are going to do about it.
The event will focus on enforcement, the powers Bristol City Council have and the powers we need, such as the implications from the Levelling Up White Paper and what form of rent control we want in Bristol.”
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EPC Commercial Confusion?
Member Since August 2014 - Comments: 336
7:42 AM, 3rd March 2022, About 4 years ago
Any landlords not currently charging the full market rent will surely now raise the rent. If the council do indeed pilot such a scheme, rent increases will be capped to some unrealistic metric, such as consumer prices index, whereas mortgage rates are not similarly tied.
It would be interesting to monitor average rent prices in Bristol as such a scheme develops. Similarly, it will be interesting to monitor rental property availability. When such a scheme was introduced in Berlin, tenants became financially trapped in their current homes, as it became financial nonsense to move out to an area without rent controls, so eventually a large proportion of the properties that ought to have become available to new tenants, were being ‘blocked’ with people who didn’t really want to live there. Also, the amount of illegal subletting soared, as tenants who paid a capped amount to their landlord started to sublet their property to other tenants for far more than the capped rent.
And did any of this result in the creation of more homes? No.
Member Since August 2014 - Comments: 175
4:01 PM, 3rd March 2022, About 4 years ago
Reply to the comment left by Jessie Jones at 03/03/2022 – 07:42Agreed, the benefits of rent caps are only to the relatively few tenants who are already in a rent capped property. As with Berlin the same effect was found in San Francisco plus non rent capped tenants had to pay more rent to compensate for the reduced amount of available properties as the “lucky” tenants became hoarders and would never move out.
If we combine rent capping with the abolishment of S21 evictions then the Bristol PRS, for both landlords and tenants, will really be in a pickle.
Really the only sensible solution to a shortage of homes is to build more of them. First start with allowing LAs to build their own housing.
https://www.cato.org/blog/rent-control-econ-101-applies
https://www.cato.org/commentary/no-fault-evictions-ban-epitomizes-paucity-tory-economic-thinking#
Member Since January 2020 - Comments: 1102 - Articles: 1
4:25 PM, 3rd March 2022, About 4 years ago
Reply to the comment left by Bristol Landlord at 03/03/2022 – 16:01
Would LAs want to build more housing whilst the right to buy legislation remains in place?
Member Since March 2022 - Comments: 1
11:00 AM, 19th March 2022, About 4 years ago
We need more funding for our planning department so that plans for development are scrunitized better. Or negotiated better. We’ve seen a huge intake of Chinese and students from Hong Kong into St Paul’s and these projects were described as students accomodation. However the reality is international students in mass. Which doesn’t really help families, local people although I must note I wonder where our economy would be without the Jinping pound.