Are most landlords under charging?

A number of my tenants have been with me for several years and have not had a rent increase. As a result of Clause 24, that is about to change. I have started to increase rents and will continue to do so next year. Annual rent rises will be the norm going forward.

Like others, I have never increased rent whilst a tenant(s) have remained in a property, including when an individual occupant in a flat share group has been replaced which does happen as individual situations do change. Obviously. When re-advertising, the market always decides the value, but as mine are the cheapest / best value for money available yet good quality/ well maintained, and I don’t use agents… I have never had a day’s void period.. Other than (1) when one HB tenant had to be evicted via courts after pocketing what the council gave him (tax payers money) and not paying any rent and (2) when another HB tenant called me out of the blue to say ‘we decided to move out last week, do you want the keys back?’. These were 2 of my only 3 HB tenants ever.

Just this last week have had two texts from councils pleading for rental accommodation for their 'clients', offering substantial incentives.

In light of Clause 24, for the political elite to suggest that there will not be any future upward pressure on rents as a direct result is clearly nonsense. I still wonder if the reality is that perhaps C24 is all part of a Tory plan to make the PRS more attractive for their large corporate BTL sponsors..

If TPTB truly want to level the playing field, why don’t they try to introduce a sales price cap ;-), as in my experience it has been the owner occupiers (equipped with v low rate residential mortgages) who just ‘GOTTA have it’ who have been doing much of the outbidding…

I have had tenants for over 8 years in some of my properties and I have never increased rents, actually that's not quite true. I had one HMO tenant that not only owed me money but consistently paid late. I raised his rent by £5pw because of the late payment situation and now he's even ahead on rent. He's been with me now for many years since I did that.

I have so far issued rent increase letters to around 25% of my tenants and it is purely because of C24. There is no other reason. The rent increases range from 5.5% up to 12.5%. For many people it will be a shock because they've never had to consider a rent rise. Having said that I have had the opportunity to discuss rent rises with a few of them and 3 told me to do it as they realise they are getting a good deal. However I perceive I will now be doing an annual 5% increase in most cases.

Reply to the comment left by "James Fraser" at "06/11/2015 - 12:56":

I have 4 properties jointly owned and like others on the site have not increased the rent annually whilst the same tenants are in occupation.

My properties are zone 2 London. I have not tended to raise rents during a tenancy when things are running smoothly in order not to rock the boat. Even on the rare occasions when I have it has never been more than 3% annualised. However, in the past two months I have introduced preset annual increases into my new (three year with "anytime" 2 month break clause after 12 months) contracts.

Interestingly, although it means that they will be paying more, tenants have actually liked this because they have been led to believe landlords will always hike rents unreasonably during the term and this way they know what to expect before signing up.

We also have only increased rents at a change of tenancy.

We have never increased rents during a tenancy. We only increase when there is a new tenant. One property in Liverpool has had the same tenant for 13 years with no rent increase. Due to c24 we will sadly be increasing this rent along with some of our other properties where they are currently below the market rate. We have 8 properties

We have a one bed apartment in Warrington £378 pm. We dropped the rent to this about 3 years ago it seemed a more realistic market rent. We have not increased the rent in 8 years of ownership! We bought as the market crashed so we will never make a profit on the capital our rental profit is offset against the capital loss around 40% of value.

I have never raised the rent of a sitting tenant. Although I'm now starting to feel the pressure to do so. I have always worked with tenants when they have had difficulties and managed to cash flow their financial difficulties, however these seem to be happening more frequently (HB/allowance mess ups, unemployment, illness etc.) . Rate rises on my WB mortgages, increasing insurance, increases in maintenance / running costs and now these tax changes that are likely to phase in just as interest rates rise.

I'm planing a big review of my position and at the moment I can't see any way to continue with a sustainable business in the long term providing good quality housing at the current rent levels. I could raise rents, drop standards or sell up.

Around here, Northeast Derbyshire house prices are nearly back to 2008 levels and rents haven't gone up in-line with inflation. The changes are likely to have a big negative impact here as there is nothing left to squeeze.

litigation is the way to go. It can not be morally or legally defensible to charge tax way above what has actually been acheived in real profit AND also then push many of us up a Tax bracket on ALL our earnings again on a mythical profit.
Thats the new paradigm and thats the big weakness in the governments policy.
They cant ignore a high court..it appears they are ignoring us and some leading economists and its through the commons now I believe ?