Renters paid less to their landlords for the first time in October since the tenant fee ban came into force across England in June.
The number of tenants who saw their rent rise dropped by 8% to 50% compared to September, says letting agent trade body the Association of Residential Agents (ARLA).
Although the number of rent rises has fallen, the level is still 24% higher than October 2018 and 22% up on October 2017.
The data comes from ARLA’s monthly snapshot of the buy to let market across the UK.
The research also disclosed just 1.6% of tenants managed to negotiate a rent reduction – slightly up on September’s figure of 1.2% but historically low compared to 3.7% in October 2018 and 2.5% in October 2017.
Lettings agents reported managing an average 201 rental properties for each branch – an increase of 8 from 193 in September.
On average, agents have 72 potential tenants on their books who are actively looking for a home.
“This month’s figures show some temporary relief for tenants; however, while the number of landlords increasing rents has fallen, year on year the figure remains worryingly high,” said David Cox, the ARLA CEO.
“Even looking at the increase in the number of tenants negotiating rent reductions, which should be a positive thing, when comparing year-on-year it is less than half of what it stood at in 2018.
“For far too long, successive governments of all political persuasions have passed significant amounts of complex legislation for landlords making the buy-to-let market a less attractive investment, and this coupled with Brexit uncertainty and a looming general election has left the sector strained.
“Unfortunately, rents are likely to remain high and tenants will continue to feel the pinch.”
The tenant fee ban started in June 2019 and stops landlords charging upfront and ongoing fees to tenants.
I find this a very strange head-line. This site is I assume ‘pro-landlord’, after all it is for landlords and paid for by them, and I would anticipate the news headlines to reflect this. “Half of Landlords Put Up Buy to Let Rents” merely perpetuates the myth that Landlord are a bunch of greedy rogues, so why is it spreading this bad news message?
This is particularly significant when the actual news article goes on to say that rent increases have been “reduced”, and the other tenant charges also have reduced costs to tenants… so actually a ‘positive’ message for tenants.
This news article appears to originate from the ARLA web site, which is an Estate agents news and information site. Their corresponding headline is “Rent costs fall but offer tenants little reassurance”. Which is a bit more positive.
There are actually no ‘facts’ in their article to support “..but offers tenants little reassurance” – this part is just ‘news spin’.
I should also add that why the news mentions worrying figures of increases (50%), it does not say what the increase actually is, in terms of percentages of the rent. The average rent increase may not even keep up with inflation, in real terms rents may actually be going down. But how many ‘readers’ are going to notice this… as worthy news it is worthless, but as a headline is damaging to landlords.
There are many ‘more positive’ Landlord friendly headlines could have been put on this: “Rent rises reduced as tenants pay less costs”, “Tenants getting better deal from renting”, “Landlords take cut on profits to help tenants” …. a near endless supply of positive headline messages…
So why the Landlord negative headline on a Landlord web site? is the discrediting of Landlords so common place that we just passively accept it ‘EVEN’ on our own news feeds…. Not me.