Rent increase by 30% in London

[LobeliaBaggins]

To begin with, I am not British. In London Zone 3 and my landlord has just increased my rent by a whopping 30%. Is this usual? In my home country etiquette dictates a no more than 5 to 10% increase.

Is there anything I can do other than move out or beg her to reconsider? She lives in Hong Kong so I guess is trying to maximise her investment, but seems a bit crass. I am not keen on moving just now as have a lot of stuff going on professionally and personally.

Rents are going through the roof in London at present so hefty increases are becoming common. In Hong Kong it's pretty standard to increase rent at the renewal of each contract. So add those two together and your landlord's behaviour isn't really surprising. Only you can decide if it's worth paying the increase / negotiating. The rental market is so hot right now though so make sure you do your research before you go back to your landlord.

How does the 30% increase fall in line with the local market? We were previously paying over £300 less than the local market for comparable properties (not realising because we weren't looking elsewhere) - when the landlord decided to equalise the rent with the local market it was a painful shock to the system.

Citizens advice have a pretty detailed page that might be worth reading through, otherwise it may be worth contacting Shelter England for advice - their Welsh counterpart have been really helpful with me in the past.

Unfortunately rent is going up everywhere, not just London. Ours went up at the beginning of the summer, luckily not by 30% but it was still a bit painful to have that extra cost, have you tried speaking with her and telling her that such an increase is simply unaffordable? She may not understand just how big of an increase it is compared to UK standards and bring it down to a more manageable level, I'm plucking at straws here I'll admit but anything is worth a go, apologies, I wish I had better advice

Sigh. Just looked at local pages and rents appear to have rocketed everywhere.
We deal with her through an agent so I presume the agent knows what's what. I may have to suck it up for 3 or 4 months until I am in a position to move.

You need to write back in businesslike language with an argument as to why it's unjustified. If inflation is at 10% then you can understand a 10% rent increase (which is still outrageous and disgusting), but there is no justification for a 30% increase.

Most landlords are just greedy, but if she lives abroad then the chances are she's been advised by some kind of accountant or financial advisor. Fight back.

Given the interest rate rises and the tax changes to landlords, if you are paying below market rent she may have little choice. I doubt all landlords are ‘just greedy’ but they do need to cover their mortgage and tax bill.

I would do as pp suggested and discuss. It is a massive hike in one go but it may not be just due to greed.

It's happening everywhere right now. If you can't get something comparable locally I'd suck it up for a few months and see what happens to the rental market

Agents don't know everything, and they're almost as greedy as landlords. Every time they've ever written to us to say the rent was increasing, we've written back and negotiated it down to find a compromise, because we don't take shit from them. A few months ago they told us it was going up by 10% so we argued it down to 7%.

Yes we will attempt to negotiate and write back politely once we have decided what to say. We do have savings. As non-British people we know we may have to leave any time, so we have been frugal and expecting the worst since the Ukraine war kicked off!

Our landlady owns our flat outright with no mortgage, and she also sold one of her other properties last year. She still put our rent up, hence pure greed.

London rent is shooting up. It dipped during lockdown so it got levelled up and then a shortage of rental places meant it shot up again. DS got gazumped several times because he only offered the asking price for flats which were already top of his budget. Ended up offering over the asking price for a less nice place in a less desirable area, just to secure it. It's crazy.

Don't tell them you have savings, and don't say stuff like "We could technically afford it, but..." and also don't give a sob story. Just stick to the facts. A few years ago when inflation was at 2% or something, they wrote to us to say it was going up by 4% in line with the rate of inflation 🤔. We just googled it and told them in no uncertain terms. Landlords and agents get away with this stuff because they think people will be too afraid to argue. The number one thing that most tenants can do is to write back and negotiate wherever possible.

Buy-to-let landlords are supposed to budget for all eventualities. I'm not buying their sob stories about how they apparently can't afford their mortgage.

I'm a landlord. I didn't think you could increase by more than 10%?

I put mine up by 10% every three years so it's around 400-500 below the market.

If it gets to point the rent doesn't cover the mortgage then unfortunately there will be a more drastic answer. That's why btl was set at 150% profit - for buffer?

I don't think it's very fair to you OP. As long as mine covers the outgoings I don't need a set profit margin

Where I am zone 2/3 east it is happening a lot. Rents going up at that rate.
Have seen 1 beds go from 1500 to 2000 a month which is insane.
To be fair some people had negotiated down during lockdown and so have then had a big rise to get back to market rate.
But there is also a particularly greedy letting agency that deals with most properties here who is encouraging landlords to ask for that, even when they hadn't planned to.

My rent went up 7% and I felt bloody glad that it wasn't more.

Shame you are not in Scotland as the Scottish Government have just announced a rent freeze on all private properties starting from today until March 2023. Wonder if Liz Truss will announce the same.

Don't tell them you have savings, and don't say stuff like "We could technically afford it, but..." and also don't give a sob story. Just stick to the facts.

Will follow this advice. Thanks everyone.

It is actually a normal thing here to negotiate the rent increase. Shelter recommend going back to the landlord and asking for a rent increase half of what they have proposed. They may just laugh at you but it's worth a shot.

If the new rent is in line with market rents in your area, then there is not much you can do to challenge it. It really sucks. I'm already scouting out some areas a bit further out as I imagine we will have to move soon.

Update: we have negotiated a 10% raise for the next 4 months. I think I will have to plan to move out to Zone 5 or further after that as the rent she is quoting is in line with other rents, sadly.:( Rents really have rocketed.

We are still lucky compared to the poor poster on her who was considering living in her car, so I will get on with that.

I'm glad you got some middle ground so you have time to look around. Shame it couldn't be for 6 months. As much as I need my rental to look after itself I'm very mindful that is someone's home. I wold have personally tried to give you the six months but 4 is twice the notice period so could have been worse.

I hope you find somewhere more offordable longer term.

The government has made it very difficult from small landlords to operate with increasingly impossible taxes/regulations/safety/environmental/bureaucratic hoops to jump through, as well as making it very difficult to offer short term lets and evict bad tenants. I let out my flat in London for 3 years - a very nice flat in a great location at a reasonable rent, and I will never ever again do this. I never raised the rent in 3 years. But my tenants refused to leave 'because covid' and they used weird regulatory loop holes against me. The government is not on the side of small business owners. So one less landlord with a nice reasonable flat. Only large corporates will survive. This is the plan.

Hi OP. I'm sorry you have to move. I hate renting and I'm in the same boat, our rent is increasing by 25% taking it to a whopping £1850 a month for a 2 bed! I cried when I got the letter, we're barely getting by as it is. But like you, there's nowhere cheaper round here (and we don't want to move away from DD's school).

It's shit.