Tenant group claims landlord exodus will improve renting but fails to mention impact on tenants

Reply to the comment left by Caley McKernan at 24/02/2025 – 09:56
I think that depends upon what anybody means by “better” doesn’t it?

I fully accept that I should inspect the gas boiler every year because of the dangers from carbon monoxide. I voluntarily used EICRS before they were compulsory in order to ensure that I was complying with other safety regulations that I already had under legislation as a landlord.

However, when the new EICR regulations came in this resulted in me having to do a lot of things that did not significantly increase the safety of my tenants and were expensive; effectively, the regulations changed and electricians wrote themselves a big cheque. I did what I had to do to comply and put the rent up.

Whenever anybody proposes “EPC band C compulsory” what happens on this discussion site is that landlords, including me, have a discussion about what they have to do to squeak past the new regulatory requirement. Upgrading light bulbs for example. Or in my case, wondering whether if I move from double-glazing to triple-glazing I can squeak through the new rules without having to install cavity wall insulation. None of this significantly reduces CO2 emissions, not even from UK. It also doesn’t significantly benefit tenants: What it does do is put up rents for tenants.

Rents go up for tenants more because if you are a non-limited-company landlord and you have to raise more finance you are penalised for doing this and so in order to avoid the penalty, faced with “rising standards” you have to raise rents EVEN HIGHER for tenants. If you are a limited company you can deduct all your finance costs but you may still find that you would have to raise rents even higher than if you had the relevant capital allowances to improve EPCs or reduce CO2 emissions.

The effect of government policy is to favour incorporated businesses over small portfolio and non-incorporated landlords and this is the trend that we are seeing in the marketplace. Larger incorporated landlords are better at maximising rents. They may also be better at complying with “higher standards” such as new EPC requirements because they can offset more of their costs.

So “better” means higher rents. That’s better if you are an incorporated landlord….it’s not necessarily better if you are a tenant that wants freedom and choice in the rental market.

I agree with Beaver’s remarks .
The reality is that ” better” always or nearly always means more cost in almost every aspect of life.
If I want to be thinner,wealthier,drive a better car ,live in a better house,go on more exciting holidays,stay in better hotels or travel in first class train carriages,eat more nutritious food then I have to pay a price in extra work,money,skills development and efficient action .
There is a 1 in 16 million chance I could win the National Lottery ( worse than the odds of being struck down by lightning).
The odds of featuring prominently in a wealthy person’s will are equally ephemeral.
However,tenants,egged on by the wokerati and champagne socialists and members of the Cabinet whose modus operandi is to lie on their cv’s,blag people down for money,suits,handbags and entertainment have come to believe that the world owes them a living.
They are full of righteous indignation about landlords or anyone with more money or property than them and have the misguided idea that they have a ” right to a house” and that it should meet their exacting standards and be ” better ” than where they are living at present.
They need to be disabused of this woke nonsense ,particularly by this website and by everyone who understands economics,supply and demand .
Small landlords need to get out of the Zero sum game of being landlords for little profit and move into other asset classes with more promise.
Then tenants can learn that there is a price for everything and thet THEY have to be prepared to pay it.

Reply to the comment left by John Gelmini at 24/02/2025 – 15:25
There is also a question over WHY tenants are being obliged to pay for this kind of thing (because they will be).

Implementing measures like “every house must have an EICR” (when there were already regulations governing safety) is presumably there to catch out the odd rogue landlord: The majority of properties were already safe. Is this really a proportionate response to the problem? Or does it just mean that a plastic consumer unit that’s never caused a problem has to be replaced with a metal one and the tenant, who was already safe and happy, now has to pay for that?

And what problem is “…every property must achieve Band C..” really designed to fix? It won’t make any significant difference to climate change or CO2 emissions. But it will reduce competition in the market and drive up rents. Is climate change what it’s all about? Or is it really there so that a “has-been-that-never-was” can pretend that he’s doing something meaningful on his crusade against landlords?

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 24/02/2025 – 15:34
There is no ” Climate emergency” as we are in the Grand Solar Minimum a natural cycle that the earth goes through every 200 to 300 years.
It last happened during the time of Charles Dickens the novelist and it was possible to drive a fully laden coach and horses across the river Thames because the ice was so thick.
This will end in 2055.
Professor Irena Zharkova of Northumbria University has examined the phenomenon extensively as has NASA.
The IPCC reports all on careful reading contain the word “IF” as in if sea temperatures rise by X or Y degrees then the ice will melt and the sky will fall in,we will be attacked by plagues of locusts and disaster will befall us.
The Climate Emergency is a massive con so the purpose of the headlong rush to Nett Zero is to extract more money out of taxpayers under false pretences and to eliminate small buy to let landlords,ICE cars under the guise of ” saving the planet” .
Making things better for tenants is a way of conning a particular voting bloc into adopting Socialist dogma for political gain.

Reply to the comment left by John Gelmini at 24/02/2025 – 15:48
Totally agree.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 24/02/2025 – 15:34
I don’t why other than a false ideology. Even if EPC “C” was applied to all houses it would make a immeasurably small impact on the climate.
So you have to ask why is the the PRS being singled out?

Reply to the comment left by Gromit at 24/02/2025 – 16:42
I think there are bigger questions than that.

The idea of being obliged to get an EPC if you want to sell a house or rent it out has never bothered me very much. It just means that somebody is obliged to provide the purchaser or tenant with more information. Some of that information is based on assumptions but it doesn’t restrict choice.

The biggest question is, why would you want to stop tenants from being able to rent for example even a Band E, or F house in a market in which there is a shortage of supply? What this actually does is to restrict tenant choice, further restrict supply and drive rents up.

If you genuinely wanted to improve energy efficiency or energy security, surely you’d put the capital allowances in to encourage investment into energy-efficient property? And if you weren’t just punishing landlords in an attempt to make yourself look more appealing to the electorate then at the very least you would allow them to offset their finance costs to invest in energy efficiency.

At the moment if a landlord is running a property outside a limited company he or she is penalised for raising extra finance. If the government wants us to invest in energy efficiency it should let all landlords (however small) to be eligible for roll-over relief and incorporate their buy-to-let holdings without penalty.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 24/02/2025 – 16:56

This Government (following the WEF agenda) want to eliminate private Landlords, so they are deliberately making things harder & harder for private Landlords. They don’t want them incorporating because that is where their corporatist buddies live.

Reply to the comment left by Gromit at 24/02/2025 – 17:17
The effect of government policy at the moment is that the numbers of incorporated landlords are increasing anyway.

It looks more as though the government is trying to harvest small landlords for tax purposes. The effect of doing this is that it reduces choice for tenants and raises rents.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 24/02/2025 – 17:22
Of course. You are right . Then land and as far as the eye can see . Is owned by the lairds again.S mall portfolio Landlords are taxed like the farmers were forced to pay rent on land that use to subsistence farm .The common land .
Tax for driving cars not banning them . Tax for cigarettes but not banning them. Remember even the original stamp duty came from anything that required stamping.
Local governments and national Government love the game of divide and rule. So, the play off is convincing the public the small portfolio private landlord is the enemy.