Sadiq Khan pushes for rent controls under new devolution powers

This sounds fine Mr Kahn, I’m totally behind this…..as long as you can also cap rises to mortgage payments, insurance, building materials, utility bills, council tax, tradesmen, gas and electric checks, fuel, stationery, letting agents fees, landlord licences, ground rent, service charges, taxes and general inflation. TIA

Reply to the comment left by Decent landlord at 17/09/2025 – 10:44
You forgot the extra risks associated with the proposals in the Renters Reform Bill that will have the effect of making some tenants un-houseable in the PRS.

Perhaps if politicians and councillors talked about Tax and Council Tax controls instead…….

Reply to the comment left by Lomondhomes at 17/09/2025 – 11:50
Mr Khan needs to look at what the effect of rent controls introduced by the SNP was in Scotland. Edinburgh has a similar problem to London as so many rental properties were re-purposed from long-term lets to short-term lets, Airbnb and the like.

I have actually stayed in a short-term let in East London that I booked from a well-known online booking site. Neither the area nor the property were particularly nice but it served a purpose…one night’s cheap accommodation. The wifi didn’t work, the bed wasn’t very comfortable, the area didn’t feel particularly safe, although it may have been.

The family who rented the property out lived locally; they looked and sounded as though they might have originated from the Punjab. They were nice enough, perfectly polite even if their English was hard to understand, and the one thing that I can say that was very positive about the property is that it was very clean indeed compared to many of the cheap hotels I’ve stayed in that are now being rented out to asylum seekers. Some of those hotels I’ve stayed in are filthy….you didn’t want to look too closely under the sink or toilet.

But this short-term let I stayed in was very clean and very cheap. I had no complaints about my one-night-stay. It was very convenient for the public transport I needed in London.

The reason why landlords (including small-portfolio landlords who come from families who might have originated elsewhere) turn to short-term lets as opposed to long-term lets is that government has made long-term letting financially less attractive than short-term lets: If the Renters Reform Bill goes ahead it is actually going to make renting to some of he tenants who Sadik Khan probably wants to house (because they have the right to vote for left-wing parties?) far too risky to house in the PRS.

But those tenants now struggling to find accommodation in London or Edinburgh don’t just have the right to vote for labour. Some of them have the wit to realise that the Renters Reform Bill is a disaster waiting to happen.

Sadiq Khan is very dangerous and is not old enough to remember Rachman and the effects of subsequent rent controls on the supply of rental properties.
The current overall housing shortage in the UK is 17.5 million ,the build rate for new houses since Labour came to office is 90,000 .
There is no intention to 3D print houses ,use construction robots ,deal with the 250,000 shortage of construction workers,repair the 1 million empty houses or rectify the shortage of construction materials .
Inward migration of 650,000 people a year is not matched by deaths or emigration so Khan thinks that the answer is rent controls.
The government favours a % property tax ,regressive measures to isolate pensioners ( driving restrictions) ,restricted ,privatised healthcare and allowing them to kill themselves by stealth.
In this way they hope to free up housing stock .
Of course Lloyds Bank through their subsidiary,Legal and General through theirs and Black Rock which has bought £5 billion gbp’s worth of UK housing stock will replace small buy to let landlords but will not take on vexatious and uncreditworthy tenants.
Rent controls won’t be tolerated by these corporate landlords who will cherry pick the best tenants.
At the bottom marginal tenants will become homeless and will be driven out of London and the Southeast.
The Bond markets will give the government and our cancer ridden dying King the hard word very soon by telling them and him that no more money will be lent and for the King ,if he still lives ,to prorogue Parliament and trigger a General Election.
At that point legislation to control rents will be dead in the water.
The alternative will be an IMF bailout and civil unrest with the courts overwhelmed.

Reply to the comment left by John Gelmini at 17/09/2025 – 13:28
I think that it’s even more dangerous than you think.

Just over a week ago we saw protests in Wigan over asylum seekers living in rental houses from people who were either struggling to get accommodation locally, or who knew people who were struggling to get accommodation locally.

The small-boats/asylum seeker issue is really difficult. Having companies like Serco rent out houses in the PRS may well be the only possible option given how expensive it is to accommodate people in hotels, or on barges. It may perhaps be something that just has to be accepted. Although it’s easier to accept if you’re not living next door.

However, in the same way that government has made it more attractive for landlords to turn to short-term lets rather than provide the long-term accommodation that is required, in introducing the Renters Reform Bill the government risks making housing asylum seekers far less risky than housing many other people; benefits tenants, self-employed people, people working in the ‘gig-economy’ for example all might be too risky to house if the RRB goes ahead in its present form.

This is a really STUPID thing to do and it is very dangerous indeed; it’s likely to promote right-wing extremism. The effect of this stupidity is most likely to be seen in places like Wigan or possibly even some of the less-well-off London boroughs.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 17/09/2025 – 13:37
I morally dont agree with renting property to Serco for asylum seekers but I can absolutely see the attraction. You are 100% correct that it is a lower risk option for landlords.
– No need to comply with EPC targets
– Guaranteed premium rent for 5 years
– No need to worry about selective licencing, EICR, Gas safety etc
– No risk of fines for non compliance
– Serco do all tenant damage repairs
– No need to worry about section 8 and our pathetic legal/court system

It’s a 2 tier system.

The victims and losers will be British tenants who are legally allowed to be here. They will be homeless and priced out and supply continues to fall.

Only downside for the landlord is housing asylum seekers will result in devaluation of the asset and area which will probably take decades to recover from it – if ever.

Reply to the comment left by Suspicious Steve at 17/09/2025 – 15:17
But good luck getting it back in decent condition after those 5 years.

Reply to the comment left by Suspicious Steve at 17/09/2025 – 15:17
This isn’t something that I can do because neither my lender nor my insurer would allow it.

But I think you get my point. For some landlords the effect of the Renters Reform Bill will mean that renting to companies like Serco, Mears or Clearspring will be less risky than renting to people who might have been on the social housing waiting list for maybe two years.

I won’t feel the effect of this in my area….I can’t do it and I don’t really care whether other landlords do it.
But part of the reason I don’t care is that I don’t live anywhere near a house that’s likely to be rented out and my daughters are now grown up. If my daughters were in their teens then I’d want to know that there were security and other safeguards in place to ensure that my e.g. 14-year-old daughters weren’t going to be solicited for sex.

Asylum seekers aren’t likely to be housed where I live because the amount the Home Office spends on them will mean that they are more likely to be housed in places like Wigan…or maybe some of the poorer areas in London. And nobody should be either surprised, or even overly judgemental if that causes concern for the poorer families in those areas, just because we aren’t affected.

We saw a disturbing right-wing march in London last weekend. There isn’t much to choose between extremists from the left or right…Stalin was as bad as Hitler and right now Vladimir Putin is behaving very much as Hitler did. The difficulty with left-wing extremists is that the idiocy that comes out of their mouths, their inability to learn the lessons of history, and their blind pursuit of left-wing dogma is all at the expense of social cohesion.

There might not be any choice but for the Home Office to put asylum seekers into PRS accommodation, somewhere: It’s not an idiotic decision by any means. But the Renters Reform Bill is due to come into force in September or October. It will mean that many renters become too high risk for landlords to house. And that really is idiotic.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 17/09/2025 – 13:37I wouldn’t disagree.
We already have 2 million homeless people and with not enough housing and landlords selling up and investing elsewhere plus migrants being taken out of hotels and being given apartments and flats,in some cases new ones we are going to see a doubling of homelessness to 4 million while illegal migrants are put up in the hotels that remain,barges and converted offices and industrial units.

We are overpopulated to the tune of 50 million people based on our optimum population size of 35 million established by Harold MacMillan in 1953 via secret survey prior to the advent of the ” Assisted Migration Programme ” to Australia under which Britons who were surplus to requirements were sold to the Australian Government for £2695 gbp ,a lot of money for the 1960’s ,65 years ago.