To think rent increases “because of inflation” are immoral when many landlords own outright?

[RentRealityCheck]

I keep seeing rent hikes justified with “inflation”, even where the landlord has no mortgage and their costs haven’t meaningfully increased. At that point it feels like pure profit-taking, passed directly onto tenants who already have no leverage and with huge knock-on effects for stability, mental health, family life and society more broadly.

AIBU to think this isn’t just market forces but greed and that pretending otherwise ignores the damage being done?

I’m a landlord and have a mortgage but even if I didn’t the cost of the letting agent (to make sure everything is done properly) has gone up as has my insurance (in case they trash my property/ refuse to leave / refuse to pay etc) and maintenance bills etc. other things are affected by inflation too, not just mortgages.

Well they must live of the rent so all prices are up for them too.

Lots of landlords are selling at the moment.

my DD is looking for property in Newcastle and the number that are on sale with a sitting tenant is very high.

i was under the impression rent increases during the contract were limited but it was usually changed between contracts?

in any case, a more obvious explanation for high rents is the massive amt of demand for rental properties - my son rents in London and it’s hard to even get a viewing for rental flats.

what utter nonsense. Landlords are not in thr charity business and should be able to charge market rents regardless of how wealthy they are. It's important that landlords are attracted to the sector so that people have high quality options. Not everyone wants to buy you know .

It’s a business. Landlords set the rate. Clients accept it or they don’t.

I get your point. A non mortgaged house shouldn’t need to put rent up say £100 a month every year. If the landlords had no work to carry out and is just paying insurance, gas safety and maybe agent fee’s their bills for that house won’t of gone up £1,200 so those landlords are just jumping on the rent hike for their pockets.

Yes I know they need reserves for repairs but again how often are landlords actually carrying out repairs.

I can think back to our last property the only thing that they got called out for and would actually come out for was boiler repair in 5 years £80 part plus the gas man who was on the books. Agent fee’s 2%.

When we left they did zero work not even a deep clean and upped the rent by a few hundred. Portfolio investor overseas landlord.

I think the accidental potential output does change the intent. And I think intent is what determines morality.

Rents will go up for the same reason that gym membership, telecoms, car insurance, eating out, unemployment, buying a pint, utility bills are going to go up. Taxes and legislation . It may seem unfair if someone owns a property outright puts up rent, but if renting out a property with additional taxes and legislation risk doesn’t cover putting the same amount as selling up and investing in low risk US funds or Government bonds then they are loosing money in real terms as well as possible lengthy stressful court proceedings if people stop paying rent. I really wish people would get their heads around this.

But even if owned outright it means they have a huge amount of money tied up in the property that would be earning interest elsewhere.

Because my costs have gone up, my taxes have gone up, my mortgage has gone up and constantly I've raised the rent in line with the market to meet some of these costs.

Work hard all your life buy a house £28000 and rent it out £1000 a month anyone can do it if you both work hard for 50 years!

£280000

I wish I could agree that increases in maintenance etc are usually incremental and irregular. The maintenance charge for the building that I have to pay as a landlord has gone up by 400% in the last three years. I have absorbed this as much as I could but this year I am putting the rent up from below market rate to somewhere in the bottom 25% of market rates for the area. The tenants have complained that this is too big an increase and they want me to go on subsidising them. That's without taking into account the increased cost of repairs and maintenance that I cover for the flat itself. Landlords don't have unlimited ability to absorb increased costs either.

I agree that there shouldn't be an automatic increase of the full amount, but I also think that tenants often don't realise just how much it costs to look after a property.

Local authorities have had the ability to sell council houses to their tenants since the Housing Act 1936, but until the early 1970s such sales were limited: between 1957 and 1964, some 16,000 council houses were sold in England. The Labour Partyinitially proposed the idea of the right of tenants to own the house they live in, in their manifesto for the 1959 general election, which they lost.[10] In 1968, a circular was issued limiting sales in cities but was withdrawn by an incoming Conservative government in 1970.[7]
In the meantime, council house sales to tenants began to increase. Some 7,000 were sold to their tenants during 1970; this soared to more than 45,000 in 1972.[11]

“The lack of regulation in the housing market is appalling.”

What do you want to see regulated that isn’t?

Where I’m uncomfortable is when rent rises are framed as automatically justified every year in the same way wages might be, despite the fact that tenants’ wages often don’t keep pace and housing isn’t a discretionary product people can opt out of.

Paying for council tax can’t be opted out of either, nor can paying gas, water and electricity bills, nor can I opt out of paying for petrol if I want to keep my job. None of these things are optional, and they all rise every year despite any wage increases being lower than inflation rate. Rents are not calculated by what job and income you have, but by what they actually cost. YABU.

It isn't pure profit. That's naive.

Landlords have to pay buildings insurance. They have to pay for maintenance. They have to put money aside for wear and tear. They have to cover the time they spend sorting out issues. All of which have risen in the last year.

Yes, because the landlord has made a bad decision if it costs more in repair than can get in rent. But let's face it, that's rarely the case.

The simple answer would be to put up the rent would it not?

Someone further up the thread said properties always rise in value. They don’t. I’ve owned one for 20 years which is worth 40% less than I paid for it. Yippee.

There should DEFINITELY be legislation around how often and by how much a landlord can increase the rent - and that should extend to between tenancies too. Too many landlords unreasonably hike up their rents when a tenant vacates.

The private rental market in this country is a joke and forces too many people into unsuitable, unstable and expensive accommodation because they haven't got any other choice - because social housing is, also, a joke.

Some landlords buy properties to rent out as their retirement income. Are you suggesting that they should basically fund other people’s lifestyles by giving them below inflation rent prices, just because they own outright? That’s absolutely bonkers.

But that would be interfering in the free market.

And that rarely (if ever) ends well.

(Of course planning permissions and regulations are also interfering in the free market. However they favour the landlords, so that's OK).

Rent hike legislation would be linked to inflation or CPI in that case, which is what the OP is saying is immoral.

The UK population is expected to plateau around 75MM around 2050, although this is based on many assumptions.

That means not a lot more growth.