It would appear that all three main political parties are jointly desperately buying votes from the renting fraternity by hammering landlords yet again.
The latest addition to the Labour rule book is that the tenant can challenge “unreasonable rent increases”. There is no specific guidance available to clarify unreasonable or indeed reasonable rent increases or if the ruling would apply to existing tenants or could a new applicant challenge the initial rate at inception.?
Has anyone got an idea of what is considered reasonable or unreasonable. ?
Farage is saying will reverse the tax relief removal on mortgage interest.
(I am not endorsing reform here)
Reasonable is so open to interpretation. I would instinctively say inflation plus a few percent is “reasonable”.
Issue is when landlords don’t put up rent annually then realise all of a sudden they could get 25% more and then up the rent by that sort of amount. This is unreasonable to me.
So a gradual annual increase seems fair enough.
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first there are things that parties claim before elections
then there are things parties say once they’ve won power
then there are things that they draft into bills to pass in parliament
then there are bills that are passed into law in parliament
a long way to go yet…
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Hi Mark,
Gradual increment it’s sensible rather than miss a year with no review then request a hefty increase.
Can you relate gradual to an annual % ?
I think it is the supply & demand , Landlord usually has his right to set as high as he wants at first instance, then reduce in accordance with the market react / situation, probably I can say , it’s the bid/ask .
They can challenge rent increases already through the first tier tribunal.
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I believe “reasonable” is deemed to be the market rate for the property. So, any rent tribunal would have to align the rent with the current market comparable rates.
I think the Scots are ruing the day they imposed rent controls with the subsequent withdrawal of investment in the PRS. However, I hesitate to say nobody would be stupid enough to repeat that example, as we are talking about bureaucrats and politicians here…
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as David says, rent reviews have been around for 50 years or more. your job is to assess what places are advertised for for comparable properties and charge 10-12% less.
from then on revise your rent annually based on inflation and market rate.
why 10% less?, firstly agents often put on high prices and they stand empty, second being a little under market rate tends to keep your tenants in place.
if tenants are not looking after the property or are not co operating when you need to gain access for repairs or not paying well then put a higher increase on the annual rent as you would be happy for them to move on
Surely they cannot do this!!! THE GOVERMENT WAS POWERLESS WITH THE ENERGY COMPANIES! Energy companies are still.making great profit and their increase was more than inflation!! Of course instead of challenging the energy companies the government blamed Russia for the high prices, but we were buying the same energy from the same companies nothing to do with Russia. The goverment did not challenge and interfere with the mortgage rates … The same goverment does not increase the NHS salaries for inflation.
We are the private sector and they cannot do this justfyable. Even if they entertain the idea, i would rather have my property off the market… i can simply decide to live couple of months in my own property (of course this might not work for those who have mortgages) and if 1/2 of all Lanlords decide to do this, than the market price will be much higher… we need some sort of LL union… we need to be beter organized… the goverment is pushing because the know they can…
Well I’m a tenant and have been well and truly hammered 
. Sign of the times has seen my rent go from £700pm to £850pm in a year and landlord hoping for £1,400 pm after making some light refurbs. I am now in the process of searching for another rental property in this madly competitive market 
I will have been an excellent tenant here for almost eight years …
I feel for your situation, yet will be even worse under Labour, punishing landlords even further forcing more to sell and driving up prices.
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Oh God don’t 
I can’t bear it. What with everything else on top. And I’m physically disabled
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