Supply of London rental properties at critical point

It’s does not seem possible to me to be able to understand the shift in the market that is reported by this article as the figures given only show a comparison between London and national average figures and not London figures now compared to an earlier period for London. Am I missing something?

"This puts tenants at risk of falling into the hands of rogue landlords, or novice ones who don’t have any experience in the sector." Of course there are never any rogue agents.
This piece looks like a bit of special pleading because agents can't charge often exorbitant fees to tenants and can't threaten them with eviction if they don't sign a new tenancy and pay a new fee instead of sticking with a periodic tenancy.
What may be happening, though we don't have the data, is that some landlords are saving themselves the cost of agents in order to boost their income. This, of itself, does not affect the supply of properties to the market.
As Trevor has commented the figures quoted are meaningless without explanation and analysis.

The other side think that thier are a lot of professional landlords in central london I have found the law to help professionals like me are very unfair eg AIR BNB .the should register bad tenants
Yes we have been affected by new taxation .which does not help tenants will end up commuting from outside central london
so again this will me less properties are gain for decent tenants and landlords will suffer equally.
The government needs to really rethink MR OSBOURNE tax daylight robbery
It has put unessary pressure on both side .

I agree there isn't enough info in this story to support any conclusions. How can you reach conclusions on the supply of rental property in London, based merely on the number of properties per agent? If there are only 99 properties per agent compared to 200 elsewhere, then perhaps there are twice too many agents in London, perhaps because they are able to survive as they charge too much, or % charges on high rents allow them to manage with only 99.

What we really need to know is the number of available properties per prospective tenant at different price points.

While it is going to be very difficult to buy many new BTL properties in London because of the deposit required, there seems to be little evidence of a massive shortage compared to elsewhere. There seems to be plenty of availability on Rightmove at all price points.

Reply to the comment left by Ian Narbeth at 01/03/2018 - 14:24
"This piece looks like a bit of special pleading because agents can't charge often exorbitant fees to tenants and can't threaten them with eviction if they don't sign a new tenancy and pay a new fee instead of sticking with a periodic tenancy."
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There is a very good reason the article reads like that. I used to be in the lettings industry a while back. What a sleazy business. Been to the ARLA conferences etc., including listening to David Cox speak live. All ALRA is is a company that sells products and services to the letting agent industry. Those services that they sell include government lobbying efforts. The idea that it is a regulator is ridiculous. Being in that industry really opened my eyes to what "self regulation" is really all about.

Other ways ARLA makes money:
- Selling education/training to letting agents
- Selling sponsorship of conferences
- Giving conference speech time to other entities such that they can give a sales presentation masquerading as information dissemination.
- Selling pitch space at conferences for various other vendors to flog their wares to the lettings industry
- I am sure there are plenty I do not know about

I have had to sit through all sorts of presentations where it is simply someone trying to flog their wares. Ex-Apprentice contestants (very unimpressive BTW, doesnt understand stats), bloke who apparently has a show on TV where he evicts people, the laughable people growth type corporate games stuff, all the mediocre waste-of-time nonsense you see in mediocre businesses.

Always read ARLA material from the point of view that they are a business trying to survive and grow bigger first and foremost. Then its job is to lobby government to achieve as favourable an outcome as possible for the letting agent industry in legislation. (The more profitable LAs, the more profitable ARLA.) Any attempt to present views as looking out for anyone other than ARLA and letting agents is simply not true. Letting agents are their clients, and it is their job to help them make as much money as possible. It is not ARLAs job to *effectively* regulate or fix a broken market, and they in no way make any attempt to do that. That would be a conflict of interest. Government ministers should bear that in mind when being lobbied by ARLA. Everything ARLA says should be seen through the lens of ARLA trying to protect ARLA revenue and LA profit. This is simply fact.

Which organisation recently lobbied very hard for "regulation" of the lettings industry, to include client money protection, "training" for all employees, membership of industry body, all the things that ARLA happen to sell? You guessed it, ARLA was lobbying very hard for that.

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/00897907/filing-history