The government needs to do more to encourage people to invest in the buy-to-let sector in order to boost much-needed housing supply.
Rents are rising sharply across much of the country as demand from tenants continues to heavily outweigh supply, and the government is being encouraged to take action now to reverse the trend by supporting property investors, in light of rising mortgage costs.
Propertymark’s head of policy and campaigns, Timothy Douglas, will talk about how investment in the private rented sector can be better incentivised when he speaks at the next Westminster Social Policy Forum on Thursday, 3 November.
The forum will bring together MPs and senior government officials with property sector stakeholders to discuss the way forward following the publication of the UK government’s ‘A fairer private rented sector’ white paper.
Propertymark’s research has provided evidence of the rate at which the PRS has been shrinking and the effect of recent tax changes and proposed UK-wide reform have had on its members’ landlords.
It welcomes the revised stamp duty thresholds and is calling on the new prime minister and chancellor to consider going even further and give a 12-month exemption from additional stamp duty on purchases of buy-to-let properties to stimulate supply of homes to rent.
The introduction of additional rates are considered by Propertymark member letting agents to have had the most significant impact on the sector.
Douglas said: “Private landlords are important housing providers, but it’s a common msiconception that all of them are wealthy. We know almost half of individual landlords rent out just one investment property and many rely on that income.
“I look forward to discussing with delegates how future policy can be designed to ensure landlords and agents keep providing tenants with a place to live and to present the case on behalf of our member agents for a review and reforms of relevant parts of the tax system that we believe can help achieve that.”
Comments (3)
The telling statement is “Private landlords are important housing providers, but it’s a common msiconception that all of them are wealthy. We know almost half of individual landlords rent out just one investment property and many rely on that income”. These are what the Americans would call the “Mom and Pop” landlords. They are older, they mostly own their rental property or have a very small mortgage having bought years ago or maybe they inherited a house when a parent died and with the insecurity around pensions decided property was a better prospect. Many of these people are in the position where they could just sell up to avoid all the legislation coming their way and the aggravation of tenants. Many are in a position that if they do this the money they get will “see them out” for an easy retirement with no grief. If they all took this easy way out the PRS would lose around 2 million homes.
A fairer private rented sector – Cut the cuddly title and realise that the content of white paper is driving landlords away. The Government, Shelter, Generation rent & the media etc have been attacking private landlords consistently year on year for a decade and landlords have realised it is not the place to be as they rush to leave the market. They have attacked taxation, but this alone is not the problem. They have decimated confidence in the PRS for people to invest, moreover investors are leaving at the fastest rate ever. This was all predictable and fore-warned in property blogs. The vast majority of landlords are good decent people investing, often their life savings, to then have their investment controlled by people who invest nothing such as shelter influencing the drongoes in parliament who have no understanding of the property market. One of the most toxic changes will be loss of S21 coupled with the failed court system. In general terms landlords DO NOT evict their customers without a reason so cut the emotive “No Fault” rubbish put out political fools. But this will not change as the Conservatives and every other vote buying political party have comitted to abolish this. Look at the unprofessional Councils inciting contempt of court etc (telling tenants to stay put when there is an initial court order for the to leave) all goes to kill the system, scoring an own goal as landlords leave. Who suffers well I think they are now starting to realsie it is the tenants themselves. Shelter, Councils etc are all shooting themselves in the foot for political reasons. As a landlord I actually feel sorry for the prospective tenants who will never be able to rent as supply disappears. Hey may be Shelter, Generation Rent and the Media will start providing housing in place of bad mouthing every landlord? No your right they will not.
Couldn’t have said it better!