To welcome rent controls in London

[Cameblackbenzleftwhite1]

Many other cities have them like Berlin and new York and it seems to work well. Helps people live in a city and not cleanse all the poor people out.

Daily mail foamers are hating corbyns plabs, so that probably means it's good.

I'm not convinced to be honest. It's hard enough to get landlords etc to maintain things as it is, without stopping them from asking market value for rent.

My general impression of rent controls is that it leads to people stuck in badly maintained housing thats not suitable for them because they cant afford to leave and move elsewhere.

New York is hardly known for being affordable??

Rent controlled apartments are rare in New York - I think nowadays you inherit them, but not sure. Rents are controlled in Berlin yes, and in Paris rents are low too - but all maintenance is the tenant’s responsibility, and tenants usually stay for a lifetime (or more). Not sure that UK tenants would be able to cope with such a huge culture shift.

aller, there's very few rent controlled apartments in New York though, it's not actually applied as blanket policy.

I think there's a major issue with landlording here anyway - we need proper registration and controls. Someone at work is renting an investment property in another borough and he's whining about having to do landlord registration. I'm amazed it's not done already. It's only just being rolled out in some boroughs as a trial apparently?

Proper social housing needs to be brought back and properly managed - not by power hungry gits like those in charge at K&C letting millions of reserves build up while Grenfell didn't even have dry riser points working.

I think if rent controls are bought in and flat maintenance is past onto tenants then a lot of landlords would be ok with less money. However, I agree a culture shift would be needed with longer tenancies becoming the norm ie over 5 years. More social housing is still needed though.

We used to have rent controls in the UK as well - I think until the late 80s

New rent controls in Dublin and other areas now, working very well.
You need to do something about your rental market, it's a disgrace. Tenants appear to have no rights at all in the UK?

existential - rights and rent control are two whole separate conversations but it's interesting to hear that Dublin has new rent controls.

I know it's boring but I am constantly outraged at rental and property purchase prices - the government basically decided to make London Monte Carlo, now the ripple effect of "can only buy a rabbit hutch" is all across the country! I looking at leaving at London and that seems to have become quite pointless for the extra square footage I'd get for my money (cancelled out by stamp duty) etc.

it's not a London problem anymore, it's an England problem (and before some poster comes along and tells me to move, it's a big ask to move to Newcastle when your support is in London).

We used to have rent controls here. I remember the rent officer coming round to assess if I was paying too much rent where I was living.

I am not against rent controls per se, and can see an argument for them. However, in some cities where rent controls are in place the responsibilities of the LL are different to current UK ones. For instance, as a PP said, in some places the maintenance is the responsibility of the tenant.

I think there should be clearer rights and responsibilities for both LL and tenants. Bad tenants can screw over a landlord just as comprehensively as a bad landlord can do their tenants. I would welcome measures to make it easier to tackle substandard landlords AND bad tenants.

YANBU, would be great news!

It'll never happen, there's ways around everything, if you had a property in London, you'd charge market rent rates. Anyone saying otherwise is kidding themselves

A good way to get rid of housing benefit stop rents being stupid.

I think that there should be tighter rent control AND fast-track to evict tenants who have not paid, say, 2 months rent.
The present system is too abused by either side of the fence.

Yep I worked with a guy from Berlin whose grandmother was in a rent-controlled flat there. They seem to stay in them for life but are responsible for all maintenance and upkeep, and it's checked regularly that it's done to a proper standard (certification for electrics etc).

There will be an increased lack of housing if this happens. Landlords need to make a profit. For many its retirement income or a job. They could sell up and invest the money elsewhere if they cannot make a profit. This is why rent controls were abolished in the first place - lack of property to rent. As usual it a political sound bite with no understanding of the economic realities. There is a housing shortage. Capping rents will exacerbate the problem. If investors cannot get a decent return on their investments, they get out. Also poor landlords will not maintain the properties. As for tenants maintaining properties - words fail me! Someone wanted the housing association to clean her windows in MN the other day.

For "poor" read "bad".

I think it has to happen, the current "market values" for rent have left us in total crisis, thousands homeless, whilst many properties are empty

There are tons of reasons why rent controls are a bad idea. The main one is that there are no examples of the government controlling the price of something working well in the long term. If the rate is too high then special interest groups predominate and lobby to keep the rate high which means consumers suffer (think Uber ban in London for an example). If the rate is too low then the market can't afford to provide the item at that cost so supply drops, but demand doesn't leading to lots of unsatisfied demand. Think almost any socialist economy ever for examples.

The change might benefit the first few people as supply side changes take time but contracts won't be renewed and houses will be sold to owner occupiers meaning you'll need a big deposit to buy.

The next huge issue is that mo new housing is created by this. Shifting property from renters to owner occupiers doesn't supply more capacity against the demand, and indeed might actually reduce extra capacity (houses) being built if price controls are tight enough.

This hasn't been thought through. A bit like people who complain athat council tenants with an inheritable lifetime-and-beyond low rent place can buy at a discount to market price. They don't realise the market price would never apply as someone is living there who can't be moved out on an inheritable lifetime-and-beyond tenancy. You might as well let them buy it, capitalise the below market rent as a price discount and use the capital freed up for other purposes.

Corbyn's policies take us away from free markets for trade which are the most efficient mechanisms ever discovered for delivering supply against demand. Bugger with price signals and the market can't deliver its bounty as effectively.

Nice in theory, but in an otherwise free market and pressurised market upwards, something else has to give. That will either be the availability of properties to rent declines, or the quality of rental housing stock declines further, as landlords make less profit on the property and thus try to recoup some of those losses by investing less in upkeep and maintenance. Either of those scenarios would be bad for renters.

Even though there's an inherent class tension between landlords and renters, you have to think about them being part of the same socio economic ecosystem. Hit landlords, and it's going to have a consequential effect on renters. An all round fair system, with standards of decency in legislation, encouraging of letting a room, increasing the housing stock, incentivising housing co-ops etc would be far more effective.

We did indeed have rent controls right up until 1988. I think it's high time they were brought back. Rents are not at the level they are due to market forces anyway but particularly in London and also for the lowest three deciles elsewhere set by housing benefit. This is principally paid as a top up to working households and every year £10 billion of it goes to private landlords. So to claim that rent controls will distort the market is silly - the market is currently grossly distorted by public money going to landlords. If rent controls were at least set at a rate where this top up became unnecessary (ie where households were paying out a maximum of 65% of their income after subsistence allowance (this is how hb is calculated)) then we might have a clearer idea of what the market is really up to.

Also, empty properties are not caused by rent controls but by speculative behaviour ie letting a house lie empty to catch the next wave of price increases because for a long time these increases have been so massive that rental income looks like small change. This is why we now have three times as many properties lying empty as we did twenty years ago.

High rents are a symptom of a wider problem. The key issue is the lack of affordable housing where people want to live. If you make owning a private rental less attractive where do the tenants go? Some may become owner occupiers but what about those who will never be able to buy or don't want the commitment?
You can expect social housing providers to take up the slack in London when the waiting lists are already years long. So where do the tenants go if landlords find rent controls uneconomic?

Yes I believe that BubblesB , I know of someone who wanted their housing association to come and unblock their sink, and was unhappy when they were told it was their responsibility. Also used to know a guy who owned a house with his brother that they rented out, and the tenant asked them to go and change a lightbulb.

I think the lack of housing is more of a problem and also lots of landlords won't rent to people on housing benefit (due to their mortgage conditions)

I would worry if rent controls were brought in as that lots of landlords would simply try to sell up leading to eviction. This may lead to lower house prices as more housing would come onto the market to buy (not rent). Some renters may able to afford to buy, but I am afraid that most wouldn't be able to get a mortgage therefore they would be trying to rent in an increasingly small rental market.

Anne "Also, empty properties are not caused by rent controls but by speculative behaviour ie letting a house lie empty to catch the next wave of price increases because for a long time these increases have been so massive that rental income looks like small change"

this. Don't get me started on Cadogan and their 900 empty properties or whatever it is.

also people keep asking - where will everyone go? government has to take back responsibility for social housing. I presume JC is not floating the idea of rent controls without govt taking on housing again? (I haven't read the whole speech but I really hope not, lol).

I feel like the narrative around this is very polarised - like when the papers scream about "huge" rises in corporation tax when it was cut relatively recently. And I'm not sure the average Jane benefitted from that very much anyway.

Realistically, if we do rent control here, it will only be something like limiting % increases over five years or whatever?