Huge victory for renters as Chancellor bans fees
There was some extra cash for “affordable” housing in Philip Hammond’s Autumn Statement, but there was only really one big story from today:
The Government is going to ban letting fees!
This is a phenomenal achievement and the result of a tireless campaign over recent years by us, Shelter, Citizens Advice, the Debrief and local renter groups around the country.
Dozens of us investigated our local letting agents to build up the case for reform on www.lettingfees.co.uk. Thousands of us signed petitions and wrote to our MPs and the government listened.
Does your MP support a ban on letting fees?
Go straight to the campaign page
We have been banging on about banning letting fees for more than two years now. The case against them keeps getting stronger.
The latest evidence is from the English Housing Survey, which revealed in July that up to 69% of tenants living in unsatisfactory homes are discouraged from moving out because of the cost of agent fees. It also suggests the scam is worth around £115m a year.*
The Redfern Review: A grown-up take on the housing crisis
Earlier this year, Labour commissioned the chief executive of the country’s biggest house builder to lead a study of the decline in home ownership – the main reason politicians are worried about housing these days.
The Redfern Review has been published today. It shouldn’t be a great surprise that its conclusions don’t fit completely with our views – there’s very little comment on the needs of private renters – but it does make an important contribution to the debate, and there’s a lot we can agree on. Indeed, it takes a more objective approach than parties and industry players have done when they’ve tackled the same subject – there’s refreshingly little dogma or evidence of Taylor Wimpey’s commercial interests at play (though it plays down builders’ profit-driven reluctance to build enough homes).
Here’s another reason to boo rising house prices
I bet you thought rising house prices just made it more difficult for you to ever own your own home.
Well, it’s even worse than that.
Rising house prices increase your risk of being evicted.
Already angry? Jump straight to our campaign page.
London’s housing costs are driving families away
Today we have called on the Mayor of London to adopt a set of policies that will speed up his efforts to end the capital’s housing crisis.
To remind him what’s at stake, we have uncovered another startling trend that is hurting the city and its people.
Every year the Office for National Statistics releases figures on internal migration – how many people move from one part of the UK to another – and people are moving out of London at an alarming rate.
The UK’s first online landlord checking service
Paul Munday is the founder of RentProfile. For more useful websites for renters, visit our resources page.
A few years ago my brother David was the victim of a rental scam. It was this experience that led us to research the scale of the problem and start to think about ways to raise awareness and maybe even prevent this kind of fraud from happening in the first place.
We realised there is a compromise when seeking a rental today: either go through a letting agent which may charge excessive fees, or use a listings site where there’s a chance of being scammed. It wasn’t difficult to find fake listings on websites. Renters told us they were daunted by paying out thousands to a landlord (who is a stranger) but did so as they had little choice.
Top 10 tips to cut your electricity bill
Thomas Karcher runs Kagoo.co.uk
With sky-high rents squeezing tenant’s budgets, bills are yet another unwelcome expense. However, it is possible to significantly reduce your electricity bill by following our Top 10 electricity saving tips.
1. Check your electricity tariff
As a tenant you are free to switch electricity suppliers without requiring permission from the landlord. Compare tariffs, duel fuel discounts and payment options to ensure you get the best deal.
Please note some agents try and tie tenants into energy deals with a preferred provider. Generation Rent would like to hear if you have been affected by this.
Property industry tries to block government’s best housing policy
With a new Prime Minister and a new Chancellor heavily modifying their predecessors’ policies on the deficit, “affordable” housing and schools, the property industry is hopeful that the government will pursue similar revisionism on its landlord tax policy.
The Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors this week called on the government to scrap the stamp duty surcharge on buy-to-let and second homes, while landlords have been in the High Court to challenge the withdrawal of mortgage interest tax relief for landlords paying higher rate income tax.
We’ve just learned that there will not be a judicial review of the government’s policy.
The London Living Rent: Winners, Losers and the Rest of Us (Part 2 – tenancies)
In September, following the Mayor’s release of some details for this London Living Rent proposal, we blogged about concerns around how genuinely affordable this new tenure would be, and what was needed to ensure it was part of the solution to London’s housing crisis.
This follow-up piece looks at what wasn’t covered in the first blog – broadly, tenancy types – and how again they might best serve Londoners just looking for somewhere affordable and secure to live.
Landlords and mortgages: what do we know?
Whenever you propose reform of private renting, the landlord lobby always says no, because “landlords couldn’t afford it”. Whether it’s asking landlords to cover the cost of letting agent fees, to apply for a licence, to charge controlled rents, or to pay tax on their loans, we’re asked to believe that they can’t afford it. Then they threaten to raise rents – as if rents haven’t already been outpacing inflation since the end of the recession.
This claim assumes that landlords are already paying large amounts of their revenue out again in costs. Some of them are, but we point out that the majority are not, because they don’t have a mortgage.
For example, an interest-only mortgage of £150,000 at 4% costs £6000 a year. Rent on the £200,000 property bought with that mortgage might get you £10,000. Two thirds of private rented properties have no mortgage, and thus have significantly lower costs and capacity to absorb new regulatory requirements.