20th
May 2021
A small part of the UK far afield (one of the Channel Islands) is currently debating on whether to totally ban buy to let so as to ‘cool down’ the local house sales market.
Sam Mezec, Jersey’s former housing minister, states that first time buyers have no hope at all of getting on the housing ladder as prices are so exorbitant, he cites typical one bed cottages are put on the market at £295,000.
Jersey government’s housing division issued a report in April saying that the market as being ‘not fit for purpose’ and that ‘ownership is increasingly out of reach for residents with average incomes’.
Mezec is currently a senator sitting in Jersey’s parliament, told the local media: “We are focused more towards satisfying investors rather than people. The number of landlords has dramatically increased in recent years and the more landlords there are, the fewer opportunities there are for people to own their home.”
He continued: “This might mean tougher regulations like banning buy-to-lets in some developments and assigning a proportion of properties for first-time buyers.
“The fundamental problem is that Jersey’s housing market is an investors’ market. Homes are too often seen as a commodity. There are too few people in politics prepared to challenge the dynamic of the market and move away from it being profit-driven and instead address the issue of access to housing as a basic human right.”
He calls renting “a miserable experience” where tenants have little chance of saving up enough towards a deposit.
He gives his own experiences that many first-time buyers will or will be facing by saying: “My parents managed to buy a three-bedroom home and extend it to a four-bed home by the time they were 30. I am 30 now, with a university degree and rent. I have little-to-no prospect of being able to buy – certainly not on the scale that they were able to.”
Jersey’s rental regulations are somewhat different to the rest of the UK’s, for instance it has been reported that is an ongoing consultation process on whether the island should stop landlords from refusing to house families.
The island’s Discrimination (Jersey) Law 2013 protects citizens from discrimination on various grounds, however one article in the law is extremely pertinent to landlords which is discrimination in respect to the management of premises, potential renters or existing tenants in residential properties cannot be discriminated against if they have any children.
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