Milliband promises rent controls

cepheus

UK taxpayers provide £5bn annual subsidy for buy-to-let ...

25 Nov 2013 - Taxpayers are subsidising buy-to-let landlords with £5bn a year because of loopholes that allow rental income and capital gains on property

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c7cb35e4-539c-11e3-9250-00144feabdc0.html

Private landlords gain £26.7bn from UK taxpayer, says campaign group
Generation Rent says private landlords benefit from subsidies worth the equivalent of £1,000 for every household in the country

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/feb/09/private-landlords-gain-26-7-billion-uk-taxpayer-generation-rent

cepheus

Most Tories back the Labour Party's plans for rent control http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/ampp3d/mansion-tax-most-tory-supporters-5398860

Generali

cepheus wrote: »

UK taxpayers provide £5bn annual subsidy for buy-to-let ...

25 Nov 2013 - Taxpayers are subsidising buy-to-let landlords with £5bn a year because of loopholes that allow rental income and capital gains on property

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c7cb35e4-539c-11e3-9250-00144feabdc0.html

Private landlords gain £26.7bn from UK taxpayer, says campaign group
Generation Rent says private landlords benefit from subsidies worth the equivalent of £1,000 for every household in the country

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/feb/09/private-landlords-gain-26-7-billion-uk-taxpayer-generation-rent

I asked what you think not what a couple of newspapers think.

There's quite a large gap between 5 and 27 billion squids. Which is it and why?

jamesd

chewmylegoff wrote: »

On the 10pm news at the moment. Labour will prevent private rents from rising faster than inflation. Except they won't as the policy is that you can agree a market rent at the start of the tenancy ... Sounds like landlords will just be jacking the rent up massively at the start of each new contract...

So we have fiscally illiterate take 2 after take 1 on student fees. Meanwhile we've already seen what to expect because power companies haven't been cuting prices, knowing that there will be a cap that will block them putting them back up again if labour forms the next government.

Southend1 wrote: »

I guess the theory is that if the previous tenant was renting at £600 a month then prospective tenants would not accept a rent of £900. Whether this would work in practise....

Titter politely and offer a £25 discount. The cap is CPI. which excludes housing costs, not RPI, which includes them. So the move isn't just a cap it's a planned reduction in real rents.

My rent hasn't increased at all, not even by inflation, in nine years. I don't need a "helpful" government encouraging landlords to put automatic increases in rent of CPI into tenancy contracts to ensure that my rent goes up every year. CPI was 100 at the start (end of 2005, when it was rebased to 2005 level) and 127.97 end of 2014. So that's a 27.97% higher rent now than I actually have, and of course more paid over the years as well.

Thanks Mr. Milliband for realising that the one thing I really need from you is higher rent. Sigh.

Jon_B_2

My rent hasn't increased for 5 years.

Opportunist Ed, as per usual.

I fear for the future of the UK.

CLAPTON

For people who don't understand the concept of 'unintended consequences' and know little of how real people response to financial stimulus, the idea of price caps is very attractive.

The idea being that only rich evil people suffer and the poor benefit.

In the case of the energy price cap, it's probably that the customers are already worse off than they would have been as prices haven't been reduced much.

The detail are a bit light on Ed's proposal and it may be too littered with holes but it's likely that
-all new contracts will have an annual CPI linked increase built in
-big rises at the beginning of each new contract
-tenancies limited to 3 years

But early days yet.

michaels

lawriejones1 wrote: »

It actually makes reasonable sense. The expectation must be that interest rates will go up at some point, and - whilst professional landlords make provision for this - your amateur will attempt to pass this straight on to the tenant. I've seen it happen and it's not pretty.

It is so sad that an educated person could write this.

A landlord will charge what he can to maximise his income, this doesn't always mean charging absolute top market for rent and pushing prices up every time the market moves as quality of tenants and risk of voids also needs to be factored in. No landlord will set rents based on their costs, prices are set by both supply and demand, just because it costs me more to provide my btl because I have a less competitive mortgage rate than other landlords it doesn't mean I can just charge a higher rent.

Just going back to the exact suggestion above, that faced with rising interest expenses a landlord would increase rents to compensate. Why if the landlord could increase rents now would he not do so just because his mortgage is cheap? Would he cut the rent if his mortgage costs fell?

Moby

Jon_B wrote: »

My rent hasn't increased for 5 years.

Opportunist Ed, as per usual.

I fear for the future of the UK.

Typical concentration on 'my' position. I thought Ed rreally nailed it on the Marr show today. He made Boris look a right !!!!!!!:rotfl:

padington

I think it will work too well. It really will knee cap landlords to offer a market tempting rent and then keep that locked down for three years. It may cause a slow rental market but will keep rents down.

Which in turn will keep house prices from booming too much, maybe bring on a bit of a crash. Won't be too good for the economy but will help skint renters.

padington

Moby wrote: »

Typical concentration on 'my' position. I thought Ed rreally nailed it on the Marr show today. He made Boris look a right !!!!!!!:rotfl:

I didn't see it but from reading about it, it seems it was quite a defining moment. Boris seemed to be accepting that labour would win and Ed held his own admirably.

The Tories need a small miracle now I think.