Lessons from Germany: tenant power in the rental market
Last month the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) released its report “Lessons from Germany: Tenant power in the rental market“. It examines the relative strength of protection for German renters, and how these benefits might be brought across to England.
Daniel Bentley
Daniel joined the board in February 2017. He is editorial director at the think tank Civitas, where he has researched and written a series of reports about the housing crisis. Before that he spent nine years as a journalist in the House of Commons, most of that time as political correspondent for the Press Association. He is a regular blogger on housing-related matters and has written for a range of publications, including Prospect, The Times and The Daily Telegraph.
Are banks behind your latest rent rise?
This morning, Mortgage Strategy magazine and the Daily Telegraph reported that Santander is requiring its buy-to-let borrowers to raise the rent on their tenants as high as possible.
The bank even demands that landlords get a valuation of the market rent every time the tenancy is up for renewal and then “take all steps to ensure that the review [with the tenant] takes place and leads to the maximum increase in the rent which can reasonably be achieved.”
Government consults on banning orders – renters respond
We have put in our response to the government’s consultation on banning orders – the new mechanism to prevent criminals from operating in the rental market. That’s right, they aren’t banned already.
The government has asked what types of offences should be banworthy, and set a deadline of midnight tonight.
We asked our supporters for their experiences earlier in the week, dozens of you responded, and the feedback has helped shape our response to the government.
Housing White Paper: where do we stand now?
Well, the Housing White Paper was a massive disappointment. After an exciting glimpse on Sunday of moves to “incentivise” longer tenancies, on Tuesday it became clear that those incentives were existing government subsidies for companies building new homes. Number of beneficiaries: 80,322 (not counting the companies who would have offered longer tenancies anyway).
For the 4.3 million households in existing properties? The vague undertaking to “consider what more we can do to support families already renting privately, while encouraging continued investment in the sector.” Which gives little hope to people who don’t live with their family and a lot of hope to property speculators.
Housing White Paper: Our immediate reaction
Commenting on the Housing White Paper, Dan Wilson Craw, Director of Generation Rent, said:
“Sajid Javid has the right analysis about the plight of renters, but his White Paper has failed to offer us anything of substance.
Removing criminals from the housing market
Although the 2016 Housing and Planning Act paved the way for the mass sell-off of council houses, eroded security for social tenants and watered down the affordability of new homes, it also made it possible to ban criminals from letting out properties, with new Banning Orders.
As we await the Housing White Paper to see how far the government will go to improve private renting further – and how much it will atone for the damage it caused to social housing – we are drafting our feedback on how Banning Orders will work.
Are landlord incentives the answer to tenant insecurity?
Today’s Observer declares that the “home-owning democracy”, that elusive vision beloved of the Conservatives since Thatcher, is finished.
Ahead of next week’s Housing White Paper, Communities Secretary Sajid Javid says, “We understand people are living longer in private rented accommodation”, which is the closest the government has come to admitting that their policies to help first-time buyers can only go so far.
Rate your landlord and more on Marks Out Of Tenancy
Ben Yarrow is Founder of Marks Out Of Tenancy. For more useful websites for renters, visit our resources page.
Ask anyone who’s renting, everyone’s got a story to share. Whether it’s good, bad or just plain ugly; every renter has had their own experience with a landlord or a letting agent that can give us insight into what can be expected as a potential tenant of theirs.
Now, while it can be fun to wax lyrical about rental horror stories, we wanted to figure out how this exchange of experiences could be harnessed to the benefit of generation rent – so we created Marks out of Tenancy.
Fuel poverty update: we can’t have any more delays in supporting renters in the coldest homes
Just before Christmas, as the weather got colder and government released its latest update on the fuel poverty statistics, there was still no news for private renters who need clarity about the detail of minimum energy efficiency standards in the PRS.
The statistics showed that one in five private rented households are officially fuel poor, and that the average ‚Äòfuel poverty gap’ – the amount of money needed for a household to escape fuel poverty – is highest for private renters.
Despite these worrying trends, there is, in theory at least, some light at the end of the tunnel – but delays in implementing the policy need to be quickly remedied for that to be realised.