The UK has had a housing crisis for many years now, and it seems to have been getting worse. The rental market is failing to keep up with demand and because there simply aren’t enough available properties, rents are being pushed up. That’s given tenants a double challenge: not only are they struggling to find a property in their area, but when one does become available, it’s often out of many tenants’ reach, cost-wise. According to the latest English Housing Survey, just over a quarter of private renters say they find it difficult to pay their rent.
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But rather than accepting that when demand exceeds supply, natural market forces push up prices as people compete to secure a home, the media and frustrated tenants often blame landlords for being ‘greedy’ and only interested in letting to the tenant who can afford to pay the most rent. At the same time, landlords are also being blamed for the shortage of properties available to buy and are accused of pushing up prices when they ‘steal’ properties from homebuyers – especially first-time buyers.
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Considering that rent changes tend to track wages, not necessarily landlords costs to let, another reason that rents can continue to rise is wage growth. According to the ONS, wages are rising at over 8% (June 2023), this is allowing tenants to increase rents by offering ‘over asking price’ to secure the property. So it’s not just landlords letting properties for higher rent, tenants are supporting the increases through more competitive bidding.
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In reality, most property investors aim to buy at below a property’s ‘true’ market value, especially to long term tenants so they’re highly unlikely to be responsible for pushing up prices, and by buying more properties to let, they are satisfying a very real need for rented housing that is not yet being properly addressed by the government or housebuilders.

How bad is the housing shortage?
‍There are around a million households on council waiting lists for a home in the social rented housing sector and around 1m of the 4.6m households in the private rented sector (PRS) are on benefits. That indicates that if a million social homes could be built, it might ‘free up’ a substantial number of the PRS properties currently rented to those on benefits, which could then be let to other private tenants or sold to buyers and relieve the pressure on the market.

What’s caused the shortage of housing?
‍Since the mid-2000s, the number of new homes built each year has fallen way short of the target, which currently stands at 300,000, and there has been a significant lack of investment in social homes in particular. Although developers are usually required to designate a certain number of homes on new developments for local authority housing, it doesn’t compensate for social homes previously been built by councils and housing associations.

And the truth is that because social housing construction is not a ‘vote winner’ for local councils, it simply doesn’t get the attention that it so desperately needs. What’s much easier and more newsworthy than actually building enough homes that can be sold and rented at a price people can afford, is to blame landlords, second-home owners for snapping up stock and developers for land-banking.
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Meanwhile, with the media also jumping on every headline-grabbing story of a bad landlord they can find, the general reputation of landlords ends up being tarnished by the illegal activities of a tiny minority.

Why decent landlords shouldn’t be affected
‍Landlords who abide by the law and look after their tenants – which is the vast majority – really shouldn’t let themselves be affected by these kinds of attacks and accusations, because they have little basis. Many landlords have made a great success of their letting business over the years, operating with integrity and good business sense, and should continue to do well into the future. Just remember to take all the required steps to protect yourself and your investment, your tenants and your property.