CPI vs RPI

coachman12

AdrianC said:

<shrug> That's for the landlord to decide.

If you don't like it, ask them to change it. If they won't, walk away from the unsigned tenancy. Or swallow it, sign, and grumble.

How deep and incisive. I think I'll avoid giving that particular piece of advice. We folk who smugly own nice houses perhaps don't realise how some folk do not have the option of renting the property they want to live in because of the use of the otherwise defunct RPI as the rent increase demand by grasping landlords.
Legislation needs changing in order to make CPI the "official" figure for use in all matters, including rent increases as well as the state pension which already uses CPI.

AdrianC

coachman12 said:

AdrianC said:

<shrug> That's for the landlord to decide.

If you don't like it, ask them to change it. If they won't, walk away from the unsigned tenancy. Or swallow it, sign, and grumble.

How deep and incisive. I think I'll avoid giving that particular piece of advice. We folk who smugly own nice houses perhaps don't realise how some folk do not have the option of renting the property they want to live in because of the use of the otherwise defunct RPI as the rent increase demand by grasping landlords.

I think you just agreed with me. Either RPI vs CPI is a showstopper - in which case they need to walk away if the "grasping" landlord won't change it. Or it's not, in which case they swallow and sign.

Legislation needs changing in order to make CPI the "official" figure for use in all matters, including rent increases as well as the state pension which already uses CPI.

Let's actually put some numbers to it, shall we?

You moved in to a £1000/month tenancy in January 2013, and the rent was reassessed last month according to Dec 2019 indices.

On RPI, rent would now be £1,187.
On CPI, rent would now be £1,117.
On CPIh, rent would now be £1,118.
http://www.swanlowpark.co.uk/consumer-price-index.php?&showRPI

Yep, that's the difference. Less than 6% of the monthly rent. And you have that down as "grasping", do you?

Of course, it's all academic, because the landlords truly deserving of the word "grasping" wouldn't have let it go onto a rolling tenancy using the contractual inflationary increases anyway, they'd have pushed for regular new tenancies with totally arbitrary increases.