3rd
Jul 2024
Generation Rent’s chief executive is claiming to have undergone “horrendous exploitation” from lettings agents.
Dan Wilson Craw’s latest piece on the Left Foot Forward website, claims: “Many of us who have tried finding a new place to live in the past couple of years have encountered horrendous exploitation at the hands of letting agents trying to wring every last drop of extra rent from the overheated market. Being asked to bid against other renters or offer multiple months’ rent up front is now commonplace.”
The Left Foot Forward website which featured his article describes itself as “a space for progressive ideas and values across and outside of parties”, the Generation Rent leader says that because of high rents “young adults trying to start a career in a city are being turned away by landlords and letting agents and forced back to their parents’ homes, missing out on valuable opportunities at a pivotal time in their lives.”
He says landlords and agents use their power to dictate the price of rents and “threaten a Section 21 eviction” for current tenants not wanting to pay higher rents, and he rejects tribunal appeals as ”Section 21 trumps everything.”
He fully supports and congratulates the Scottish government for introducing a long-term rental control system, however he is concerned about Labour’s manifesto pledge to help tenants legally challenge what are considered as unreasonable rents.
He asks: “There is a huge question of what would constitute ‘unreasonable’. Surely, rent the tenant could not afford to pay, i.e. because their income had risen at a lower rate, would count – but it would be incredibly concerning if Labour’s commitment was simply to allow the existing tribunal system to step in once Section 21 goes, leaving the landlord’s ‘finger-in-the-air’ market rent as this benchmark instead.
“What would be fairer, and prevent renters needing to go through the extra bureaucracy of challenging rents, would be to place an annual limit on how much a landlord could raise the rent by, to the lower of wage growth or consumer price inflation. This would keep rents in line with affordability.”
He does criticise Labour’s recent announcement to amend the currently shelved Renters Reform Bill to make it mandatory for landlords to “advertise a single rent figure in advance and be prevented from creating or encouraging bids that exceed that price.”
Wilson Craw writes: “It’s not by any means ‘rent control’ because ultimately landlords would set the rent when they advertise a property. And it would only tackle one symptom of the overall shortage of homes which is creating a seller’s market that invites this exploitation in the first place. But it would stamp out the worst profiteering by letting agents, and give tenants assurance that a property that looks affordable will be worth applying for.”
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