Why stronger tenant rights mean fewer homes to rent

What use is a tenant’s stronger right to a home, if they cannot find one? Now that the Renters’ Rights Act is six months’ old, that’s the question I want this Labour government to answer.

We were promised a fairer renting market and yet fairness apparently doesn’t extend to landlords, the providers of those homes.

Now we have landlords who are more cautious, rents are more expensive and the arrangements that once helped awkward tenant cases are increasingly difficult to justify.

Ask the overseas student without a British credit history, or the pensioner with substantial savings but a modest monthly income.

The days of paying several months upfront once offered a way through an affordability assessment. Not any more.

Student accommodation issues

Then we have the tenant who needs to move quickly for work and giving two months’ notice is the statutory starting point, although a landlord can agree something shorter.

That concession matters because flexibility still depends on the very people politicians keep treating as the problem.

Of course, ending fixed terms helps tenants who previously faced being tied in but let’s revisit this ‘problem’ next summer when the student accommodation sector starts to disappear.

Critics will argue that abolishing Section 21 ‘no-fault’ evictions gave tenants greater security.

Perhaps, but the move means landlords are now more picky over who can get through the front door.

Nor does banning discrimination against benefit claimants magically make a property affordable.

Having a legal entitlement to fair consideration cannot conjure up another available home or bridge the gap between income and rent.

Except for our clown world politicians.

Landlords carry risk

The Renters’ Rights Act doesn’t force landlords to raise rents annually, impose aggressive referencing or pursue every late payment immediately.

My argument is that piling risk and expense onto a business encourages precisely the defensive behaviour tenants, and tenant campaign groups, dislike.

When recovering possession becomes a more consequential undertaking, landlords scrutinise applicants harder.

When costs keep climbing, the annual rent review becomes harder to postpone.

That’s not an issue of protecting tenants, it’s a maths problem.

Because landlord costs are increasing, mainly by stealth, with tax rises and the landlord database adding to the rent.

But increasing rent to pay for the government’s lunatic policies and taxes is deemed to be profiteering.

Either we ask tenants to contribute more so then landlord isn’t subsidising a below market rent, or the government steps in to correct its mistakes.

Landlord tax problems

The continued financial attacks on landlords do not help and tax policy compounds the pressure.

From April 2027, property income tax rates are due to reach 24%, 44% and 49%.

Alongside mortgage refinancing and ordinary running costs, that is another demand on the same pot of money.

Tenants do not have bottomless pockets, and neither do landlords.

This government seems determined to conduct an experiment in discovering which runs dry first.

Politicians caused this

Meanwhile, private landlords increasingly resemble unpaid extensions of the housing ministry, expected to deliver compliance, manage complaints and respond to antisocial behaviour.

And that’s while carrying all of the commercial risk themselves.

We all accept that there should be consequences for dangerous homes and serious misconduct.

But an enforcement system earns respect through proportionate action, not through making decent operators feel that one administrative mistake could threaten everything they have built.

Conservative governments helped construct this mess and Labour has added its own nonsense demands.

Landlord membership organisations should explain what their subscriptions have bought beyond another briefing about the next onerous obligation.

Like many colleagues, I want landlords to provide decent, flexible homes, with enough confidence to keep doing so. Tenants need that too.

Instead, ministers keep announcing protections while leaving the people supplying homes to reconcile the costs.

They cannot legislate away those costs, but they can influence who carries them.

If the result is fewer homes to choose from, tougher scrutiny and higher rents, then tenants deserve an honest explanation of whose victory they are supposed to be celebrating.

As I keep on reminding everyone: the government takes the credit, landlords take the blame and tenants get the bill.

Until next time,

The Landlord Crusader