One reason the housing market is so stacked against renters is the high cost of taking our business elsewhere, so one of the ways we can make renters more powerful is to make moving house easier.

As our research site lettingfees.co.uk discovered, a typical household could save £404 when they move once the letting fees ban comes in. But a bigger cost - in the short term at least - is the damage deposit worth up to six weeks' rent.

We estimate that 86% of renters get most or all of their deposit back, but only after they've already moved into a new home, so achieving that involves raiding their savings, or borrowing money. 

That's why today we're calling on the government to start allowing renters to transfer part of their deposit to a new home once they've paid the final month's rent.  

Most debates around housing focus on young adults, the drastic fall in their rate of home ownership and ways to boost the number of first time buyers.

Far less attention, however, is given to the vast numbers of renters who are already too old to get a mortgage and face a lifetime of renting instead. As more of them reach retirement age, the state will start paying more of their rent, and faces enormous costs unless it makes some fundamental changes to the housing market. Because politicians only operate with 5-year horizons, few are fretting about the implications of lifetime renting.

But we are, and today we publish a report co-authored with David Adler of Oxford University: Life in the Rental Market.

The steam train. The vaccine. The television. The World Wide Web. The tenancy renewal fee.

What connects them all? Each one is an incredibly successful British invention.

Yes, we may no longer have the manufacturing prowess that once sustained all corners of the country, but a certain group of entrepreneurs have exerted their creative minds to produce the £250 photocopy, and are currently raking it in.

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.

As part of our work, we want to make sure that we're doing the best we can for renters, and a big part of that is understanding your experiences and hopes for the future. 

The housing crisis is such a complex beast that there are a range of views about how to fix it - and we'd like to know what yours are too.

That's why we are running a survey until mid-August. 

If you happen to be planning a move to (or within) the London boroughs of Croydon, Ealing, Tower Hamlets or Waltham Forest, then we might be able to save you a few hundred quid.

Volunteers in these areas have compiled a comprehensive list of local letting agents and their tenant fees at www.lettingfees.co.uk. 

Tower Hamlets Renters have used their research to name and shame local agents 

Ignoring renters could cost the Conservative Party the next election, according to new Generation Rent analysis.

On current trends, a third of parliamentary seats – including 96 held by the Tories – could be decided by the renter vote in 2020, but aside from vague plans to increase home ownership, the government currently has no plans to improve the lives of renters.

Will your MP help renters?

Generation Rent is calling on London’s 73 MPs to support reforms to improve the lives of the capital’s renters. Analysis of the election results shows that 34 of them could be voted out by renters in five years’ time.

Please ask yours to meet with us.

By the next General Election in 2020, there will be enough floating voters who rent to overturn the parliamentary majority in 34 London constituencies, currently held by 13 Conservatives, 20 Labour MPs and 1 Liberal Democrat.

Inspired by Savills' findings on landlord capital gains last month, we decided to look at just what sort of money landlords in the UK are making – and how much we the taxpayer are helping them.

Introduction

As reported in the Guardian this morning, UK landlords make £77.7bn each year in rent and capital gains. This is more than Morocco’s GDP of £68.6bn (for a country of 33m people), making the industry the 61^st largest economy in the world (UN 2013).

They are also subsidised to the tune of £26.7bn in tax breaks and housing benefit. That is higher than the £25bn of cuts that George Osborne claims are needed after the election. It is also more than our spending on the overseas aid budget of £10.3bn, job seekers allowance of £4.34bn, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport’s entire budget of £6.14bn, and the £1.13bn Affordable Homes Programme put together.

The cost of landlord subsidies to Britons is £1011 per household. That is the cost of a week’s holiday for four in Majorca, a 55” HD TV, or a Boardman Road Team Carbon bike.

On Saturday our director Alex spoke at the Trade Union Congress's Big Youth Debate, where he outlined the findings of a joint survey of 18-35 year olds that Generation Rent conducted with the TUC. We found that most young renters are living in unaffordable housing, while a third of young mortgage holders are being stretched.

The full details are below: