Angela Rayner launches £1 billion scheme to tackle evictions

Reply to the comment left by Julian Lloyd at 09/01/2025 - 10:20
Spot on, Julian. This in turn will establish higher "market rents" for an area which means that rents on new lettings and on review will be higher than they would have been.

What next? Outlaw auctions. Set a standard price for all goods and services, Soviet style?

Love the joke about Socialist hands 🙂

Reply to the comment left by Julian Lloyd at 09/01/2025 - 10:20
I wrote to my (Tory) MP at the time Osborne retained the top rate of 28% CGT for residential property gains compared with 20% for other gains, suggesting that some reduction where a landlord sells to a tenant may be sensible. I got a reply telling me why it wasn’t a good idea and how landlords would try to abuse it.

Fast forward to last summer - a desperate Sunak had the idea in his manifesto!

Reply to the comment left by Ian Narbeth at 09/01/2025 - 10:26
It's what we did with Selective Licensing. We thought Screw this, got to charge top whack cause who could have foreseen that coming, we give em new boiler & kitchen & then Council say Ooh u got £890 Selective Licensing charge cause that Landlady/Landlord down the road han't got a new boiler kitchen.
And when we charged this top whack, we found people had to pay it.

Reply to the comment left by Ian Narbeth at 09/01/2025 - 10:03
That's interesting.

So where we appear to be headed is a situation where it makes sense not to either advertise or even state the rent *in writing*. So what Angela Rayner is doing is creating a situation where you do your dealings through an agent who has 1,000s of tenants on the books, you don't *either* advertise (in writing) *or* state the rent (in writing) until somebody offers you a tenant that is prepared to commit to a certain PCM rent for a given property and has the means to pay for it. I.e. it all needs to be done verbally.

I think if you were an agent with 1,000s of tenants on his books it would be possible to maintain a database of tenants who were looking for certain properties with certain characteristics and had demonstrated the means to pay. But the trouble is, if labour creates a system where everything has to be done verbally this is a recipe for corruption. Having a system of sealed bids from tenants who had already satisfied the affordability criteria would be fairer and less prone to venality.

"must not advertise in writing, or otherwise offer in writing, the proposed letting unless. . . "
So properties will not get advertised. Agents will just ask prospective tenants what their maximum budget is. They will then inform landlords who are known to have an empty (but not advertised) property that there are potential tenants and what their budgets are. The landlord or agent will then invite a selection of those tenants to make an offer, without ever advertising it. Prospective tenants will not get the chance to see what is available for rent; they will have to just sit tight and hope that their budget results in an invitation by an agent to make an offer on a potentially unseen property.
This is only ever going to work against tenants and push rent up.

Reply to the comment left by Jessie Jones at 09/01/2025 - 13:25I think that is roughly what it amounts to but I am not sure that the property will necessarily have to be unseen. The requirement in the legislation apparently refers to a WRITTEN advertised rent or stating the rent IN WRITING. It does not say that prospective tenants cannot see the property. The agent can show prospective tenants the property and say verbally - how much are you prepared to pay?

If labour changes the legislation such that you must state a PCM rent or advertise a property for a PCM rent IN WRITING before you let the prospective tenant see the property then of course what will happen is that properties that were previously being advertised for £2,500 PCM will be advertised for £4,000 PCM and the agent will just take whoever comes closest to that rent and has already demonstrated that they can afford it.
None of these proposals is going to benefit tenants. It will be a bit like those fancy clothes shops that do not put prices on their dresses and if that bothers you then you just should not be in that shop.

Australia have this process in place but there is no way of policing it so it is a hot air PR politics amendment. Even the RRB 'Impact assessment' that was done stated within it that Australian states implemented this bid banning in May 2024 but there is no evidence of impact to date.

My tenant has just moved there and says all the rents look very high (inflated) and they had to bid up to amount to secure a place. She feels that tenants will end up paying more rent than they need to have done had the government not tampered with the free market. Labour dogma of controlling markets will end up in tears for tenants.

I am already seeing adverts here with inflated rents here. All you need to do is put the Inflated rent on the advert with the shortened word 'neg' for negotiable.

Reply to the comment left by Crouchender at 09/01/2025 - 20:09
I don't know what everybody else here does but I use an agent. When a tenancy comes towards its end the agent asks me whether I mind them starting to show tenants around and I let them do it without committing to the rent for the next tenancy. I don't ever allow the deposit to go without a thorough inspection and of course there are often works to be done during the void period; I always do these works and make sure that the property is presentable before I permit the agent to advertise.

So even if labour does ban people from bidding using the words in the proposed legislation all that will happen is that people like me will allow their agents to show prospective tenants around before they are ready to let the property with the specific instruction (A) do not advertise the property in writing (B) do not in any form of writing whether hard copy, email, text or in any form of writing tell the prospective tenants what the PCM rent is likely to be. The tenant that comes back with the highest verbal offer and proof that he or she can afford it will get the property.

Lots of agents have more tenants on their books than properties. Most estate agents don't actually want to advertise properties for sale or rent because the adverts cost them money. They only do it because it is normally in their contracts with their clients that they will advertise.

Agents make a percentage of the final rent so it's in their best interest to get rents up. When there is a shortage of property and they have a lot of tenants who want them then inevitably properties will go to the highest bidder. If the properties aren't let quickly then they can still advertise the property that used to be rented out at £2,500 PCM for £4,000 PCM with a private agreement with the landlord that they can come to an agreement for example for anything above £3,500 PCM (just to give an example).

Years ago my agent used to advise me to hold rents down a bit to minimise the risk of void periods. Void periods cost them money in advertising, lost commission and time. Now they don't because of course since the SNP waved the rent-controls-chequered-flag and introduced them in Scotland the standard advice is get the rent up now because you may not be able to do it later.

Shelter actually gives guidance on how rent controls operate in Scotland here:

https://scotland.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/tenants_rights/rent_increases

The guidance it gives says that landlords can still increase the rent if it's in the tenant's contract if it includes either:

(A) a percentage that the amount can go up
(B) a way that the increase can be calculated that's outside the landlord's control, such as inflation.

So what all that means is that whilst years ago my agent used to advise small portfolio landlords like me to hold rents down a bit to maximise the chance of a long-term tenant and minimise the risk of void periods, since people like the SNP started meddling in the market the best thing to do is to get the rent up as high as possible when the property is first let with inflation-linked rises built into the tenancy agreement.

And so the effect of meddling in the market is to drive competition out of the market and to drive rents up.

Tenants won't benefit from this.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 10/01/2025 - 10:38
Not my experience that agents don’t want to advertise properties for sale after selling 15 in the past decade across half a dozen agents.

My understanding is that there are quite high monthly subscriptions to platforms like Rightmove - but it’s rare to find an agent who is not signed up (one I used dropped Rightmove and claimed their presence on social media was all they needed. I didn’t use them again and I note they are back on now). That’s not to say social media doesn’t play a part now and of course all agents need a decent website to get sellers and landlords interested to place properties - why would it cost much more to upload properties onto it.

In all cases agents asked if they could place boards on properties - that is as much if not more about advertising themselves rather than the property!

Of course rentals have changed to huge buyer demand and I have only one left which will not be re-let at any price if and when the current tenants leave. I can’t remember ever getting offers over asking rental going back to 1990. If your process of re letting is what is needed now I thank God I’m out. Surely a good agent with their finger on the pulse will pitch the price right to get the correct tenant and market rate for the landlord? Of course erring on the high side if there is doubt would allow ‘nearest offer’.

Reply to the comment left by Keith Wellburn at 10/01/2025 - 11:33
The last time I sold a BTL the agent did advertise it briefly because they were contracted to do so, but the property was sold almost immediately to an investor that the agent already knew was looking for new acquisitions in that area. Although yes, if you are disposing of properties I think that the agent will want to advertise but won't advertise much if they've already got an investor lined up.

Of course, if you're advertising a property for sale then that's a completely different kettle of fish and you can advertise if for sale at whatever price you choose and see what happens - quite possibly now that will be a sale to an AirBnB investor rather than to someone who wants to provide long-term accommodation (i.e. most small portfolio landlords).

In Scotland of course they already have a sealed bids system and they had that even before the SNP came to power. Arguably a sealed bids system is fairer and less prone to corruption. This was one thing that Scotland did better than England (in the sense of being fairer) before the SNP made pretty much everything else worse.

But advertising a property to let is already different and labour seem set to make it very different via the RRB. Just as the agent that I sold through last time already had an investor lined up, these days many agents have large numbers of tenants already signed up with them because they are desperate to rent properties near schools, work, families, transport infrastructure etc.

With respect to the renter's reform bill the proposed wording creates a disincentive to advertise any new let EXCEPT at the highest possible rent and at a rent that is way above whatever you made previously. This is a radical change to the BTL business model. I was still getting the advice from my agent to hold rents down a bit to encourage long-term tenancies less than a decade ago.

Now the situation is different...agents have already changed their advice because of the PROSPECT of rent controls. And labour are about to create a radically different business model where you shouldn't advertise or put anything in writing until you know that you absolutely have to, and then you should only advertise at the highest possible rent and build inflation-linked rent increases into the rental agreement. So the labour party is proposing to introduce legislation that will cause a dramatic increase in inflation and disadvantage prospective long-term tenants.

Anybody that needs to find rental accommodation and is divorced, widowed, needs to be near schools, transport hubs, work, healthcare facilities or is retired and drawing a non-inflation-linked pension is going to be adversely affected by the proposed RRB. The RRB is also going to adversely affect the benefits bill because none of the UK governments, local or central, have a chance of building all the properties they need to....their building targets aren't feasible and they can't afford to invest. That's what local councils are already telling central government.

The RRB as it stands doesn't benefit anybody other than a small number of large incorporated landlords because it destroys choice and competition. But it's worse than that. If you are an agent and having whittled the list of prospective tenants down to a small number that can afford the property and have provided the evidence that they can afford it, how are you then going to choose between the chosen few?

Is it going to be the prospective tenant that buys the nice meal at the fancy restaurant? The tenant who pays for the free flights or holiday? Who lets the agent stay in his fancy penthouse apartment somewhere? Or at the lower end of the scale in the rental market where the families and single-parents are competing, is it going to be the prospective tenant that just provides cash in a brown envelope that HMRC doesn't know about?

The RRB proposals as they stand won't benefit tenants. They will be a disaster for them.