When will landlord rights be finally recognised?

Well, colour me shocked but the Guardian newspaper has managed to impress me. Sort of. It published an interesting article, called ‘Are UK buy-to-let landlords dying out – and should we care?’ and it takes a fair and balanced view of what’s happening in the PRS.

The comments were turned off, naturally, but it highlights the issues that landlords face with tighter regulations and higher taxes which have already led to ‘tens of thousands’ of rented homes disappearing from the market.

Yes, the Bible of the Left has interviewed landlords and explained what the issues in the sector are. The overheads, increasing tax burdens and an acknowledgement that being a landlord isn’t as lucrative as it once was.

There are 170 regulations that landlords must abide by, and the newspaper gives a tacit nod to the potential impact that the EPC debacle will deliver to the country’s ageing housing stock to make rents more expensive and lead to more homes leaving the PRS.

Tenants’ union is wrong

The fact that the story came out a week after news that a new national tenants union is being launched did not pass me by.

Relying on the old trope that every landlord is a bad landlord, the Social Housing Action Campaign (SHAC) says it wants to ‘reshape the landscape’.

To what exactly? More landlords selling up? More landlords being punished with fines so large they are bankrupted?

The housing crisis is one of affordability, they say, and high rents are the reason. There’s never any joining of the dots is there? None of these people ever considers why rents are going up.

More landlord licences, more financial obligations and the result will always be an increase in rent. Crikey, even the Guardian article highlights that most landlords barely make a profit.

So, it looks like we will have yet more mouthy, know-nothing busy bodies offering solutions to problems that either don’t exist or aren’t the fault of landlords.

The only silver lining here is the intention of the union to tackle poor council and social housing. Let’s see how this pans out when the penny drops that councils, who will be the gatekeepers to improved housing conditions and enforcers of those bankrupting fines, are delivering even worse conditions.

But no one gets to fine them or turn up unannounced for an ‘inspection’.

Fixing the housing crisis

I no longer read these stories and declarations with a shake of the head, because beneath the righteous rhetoric lies an inconvenient truth that many in the housing debate still refuse to acknowledge – you cannot fix our housing crisis by hounding the very people who supply the homes that millions depend on.

In reality, if you push landlords out of the market, there will be fewer properties, higher rents, tougher tenant screening, and even less affordable housing for exactly the people the union claims to champion.

Almost every week brings another story of landlords exiting the PRS, not because they want to, but because their margins have been squeezed to the bone.

Combine that with Renters’ Rights Act which fundamentally changes tenancies and possession rights, and the sector is already being challenged, if not fundamentally reshaped.

Yet tenants’ unions and housing campaigners are blissfully unaware of the situation landlords are facing.

Unfortunately, policymakers seem intent on doubling down on policies that have already done more harm to the private rented sector than almost anything else.

The decades-long decline in rental stock has not been caused by landlords’ greed. It was exacerbated by regulatory uncertainty, punitive tax rises and a failure to address underlying supply issues.

Understanding PRS dynamics

Perhaps this year will see a change of opinion when renters and campaigners finally understand the market dynamics that sustain their homes. Landlords are not a charity. You cannot legislate investment or the building of new homes into existence.

Let’s see what happens should landlords continue to exit en masse, rent controls be introduced and supply collapse further because the tenor of public debate will be very different.

It won’t be calls for more rights for tenants, it will be pleas for some rental properties at all.

And at that point, the tenants’ union may discover that socialism, in practice, tends to disappoint its supporters – particularly when it collides with the hard realities of supply economics.

That will also mean that the rights of landlords to offer a quality, safe home will be appreciated.

The narrative that landlords are the enemies of housing affordability is simplistic and, increasingly, demonstrably wrong.

Something has changed

That message from The Guardian, a paper not known for defending the PRS, should signal that something fundamental is shifting.

So yes, tenants deserve fairness and safe housing, and all decent landlords will agree.

But fairness isn’t achieved by draining this market of its suppliers.

The solution isn’t more action against landlords. It’s having a smarter policy that invites investment instead of penalising it, creates incentives for people to buy and rent out properties, cut back punitive tax and regulatory overreach, and watch as the supply increases and rents ease. That’s basic economics, isn’t it?

Until we see that, we’re simply rearranging the deck chairs on a sinking ship, and when the water gets higher, tenants will learn the hard way that you can’t build a functional housing market by burning its builders.

Until next time,

The Landlord Crusader