I can only see one long term implication for the housing benefit cap, but no media has mentioned it

[saveus]

So, I imagine I'm missing something.

Landlord X is renting his property to tenant Y. Tenant Y pays his rent with housing benefit. Y's benefits are cut, meaning he can't stay in the house.

X has an empty house to let, at a rate which is too high for housing benefit claimants.

If this happens across the board, won't there be a large surplus of expensive rental housing meaning, that the landlords either have to reduce their rents or leave their properties vacant?

Many landlords will not be able to service their mortgages with lower rents than they are charging, so I imagine a lot of properties will come onto the market. I have no idea what that will mean though.

In some areas, possibly.

HB in private rented sector is £10b. Total sector value is £500b.

Cuts are quite small in that context.

It won't make a massive difference, many Lls won't let to HB claimants already anyway.

There will always be people that want to rent privately.

It should make rents in less salubrious areas of London fall a little because they've been kept artificially high by people on HB.

If you take the run down houses a lot of private landlords rent out mortgage payments and maintaining the property aren't applicable.

In the area where I live you'd think that we were back in Victorian England.

My friend lives in a complete shithole dump, wires hanging out of plug sockets and watter pissing through the walls when it rains.

Shelter just advised her to move there was little they could do other than write the landlord a letter stating his responsibilities.

There needs to be a commission set up to lay down and prosecute legislation on some of these leeches masquerading as decent people.