Tenant Rights Archives

The State Of It

The number of households renting from private landlords has doubled since the year 2000 to 4.6m but quality of housing and protection for private tenants has not kept pace.

According to Environmental Consultant Dr Stephen Battersby, there are 4 times more damp homes in the private rented sector (PRS) than in the social rented sector.

Four years after the Tories promised to reform the private rented sector tenants are as vulnerable as ever to bad landlords. ‘No fault’ evictions, known as Section 21 evictions, are in fact soaring – up 76% on last year according to the BBC. While figures are skewed by the ban on evictions during the pandemic, in the first quarter of 2022, claims and orders in private landlords’ possession cases had returned to a similar level to 2019.

This is a miserable situation for private renters in this country – paying steep sums for terrible conditions and insecurity, while the government drags its feet over promised reforms.

When the Renters Reform Bill was finally announced last year in the Queen’s Speech, long-awaited by organisations like Marks Out Of Tenancy and our colleagues at the Renters Reform Coalition, one thing that was notably lacking was details of any extra money or enforcement powers or bodies which will be put in place to back up the new rules.

Herald A Substantial Shift

In the absence of any new enforcement from government, Marks Out Of Tenancy allows renters to take matters into their own hands by providing written feedback and a score for the landlord, property and area. This gives tenants a much needed mechanism to call out sub-standard properties and problem landlords, providing desperately needed transparency and accountability in the PRS.

“A longstanding characteristic of the sector is poor information and communication,” writes Professor Alex Marsh of the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence.

He continues: “Small-scale landlordism coupled with transient tenants compounded, in many areas, by high demand means that there is a market for poor quality and the market does not discipline poor quality providers. The arrival of websites like Marks Out Of Tenancy may eventually herald a substantial shift in this dynamic: they allow the market to develop a form of memory.”

Meanwhile current enforcement falls short. Convictions of rogue landlords under the Prevention of Eviction Act 1977 remain startlingly low; a May 2022 report by Safer Housing shows that of a total of 6,930 reported offences under the act in 2020 only 23 had proceedings brought against them and only 12 resulted in a conviction.

The PRS has been left to self-regulate for too long and it simply has not worked. Landlord associations and voluntary landlord registration schemes on their own can’t regulate landlords, and overstretched local authorities can’t do any more to challenge bad landlords than they already are doing – but there is space for a regulatory force outside the market and the state.

Introducing ‘Decentred Regulation’

The UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence makes the case for ‘decentred’ regulation in response to the current crisis in the PRS in a 2020 report entitled Improving Compliance with Private Rented Sector Legislation (page 34).

The report explains: “Much regulatory thinking starts from the state – in the case of the PRS: local authorities, licensing agencies, trading standards and the police – as the core of the regulatory regime. Decentring regulation is an invitation to look more widely at the organisational landscape of a policy sector to understand what else is going on and which other organisations and social actors are acting in a regulatory capacity. Approaching regulation as “decentred” frequently signals a concern with processes of self-regulation.”

This is precisely what Marks Out Of Tenancy exists to do. As the report states, Marks Out Of Tenancy is a platform that seeks to regulate quality in the PRS via tenant feedback and rating completely independently of the state.

In the context of decentred regulation, Ben Yarrow, CEO of Marks Out Of Tenancy says:

“Imagine a scenario where a local authority had imposed restrictions on properties that can be used as Airbnb rentals – and the Airbnb platform reported back to a local authority when a property was being let without a licence. Or imagine a scenario where Checkatrade or Trustatrader reported non-compliant plumbers who were operating without Gas Safe certification. These scenarios are unlikely to occur – these companies would be hurting their own business by reporting their own customers, however Marks Out Of Tenancy differs significantly in that we have no vested financial interest in the rental transaction.”

Marks Out Of Tenancy needs help threading review data with enforcement; while a well-publicised bad landlord may struggle to find a new tenant, all the bad reviews in the world will not force them to make the necessary repairs if they are not minded to. This is where it becomes essential to work closely with existing regulatory and enforcement bodies at the Local Authority level.

For our local authority partners, we provide legally compliant, timely and accurate data from tenant reviews.

On a basic level it enables licensing and enforcement teams to find out:

Which properties are being rented
Who was acting as the landlord
How many people were living in the property
If the property needed a licence
If it was licensed at the time it was being rented
If the property complied with Minimum Level of Energy Efficiency (MEES) standards

Through the Marks Out Of Tenancy portal, housing officers are also able to open communications with the tenant who left the review.

Using pre-written templates, officers are also able to send letters through the Marks Out Of Tenancy portal, addressed to landlords of flagged properties inviting them to comply with licensing requirements, MEES legislation or even a friendly chat.

The platform continues to grow in scope and ambition, having recently secured a significant grant to fund our work for the next three years. This funding will enable tenants in the London boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth to make better-informed decisions about where they choose to rent. The platform reach will also be expanding nationally at the same time.

The Ask

A single review of a landlord and rental property can make a huge difference to the decision making process of an individual renter – but we’ve built the technology and infrastructure to impact and drive change across the whole industry. If every tenant used the platform they could force a substantial shift in the way landlords treated them.

We want Marks Out Of Tenancy to help bring about a shift in the fundamental relationship between tenants and landlords. But it requires stakeholders like Local Authorities and existing regulatory bodies to allow us in – this platform can be a valuable resource when combined with agencies with enforcement powers against bad landlords.

Marks Out Of Tenancy invites housing professionals at Local Authority level to begin looking outside of the purely enforcement and regulatory systems currently at play, recognise that trade associations or professional landlord bodies do not aid with actively rooting out the poorest quality providers, but rather, that tenants on the frontline can provide an invaluable insight into the service provided by landlords and the products they’re obligated to maintain.

Ben Yarrow is CEO of Marks Out Of Tenancy, a PropTech firm focused on improving housing conditions.

Under Corbyn, Labour announced its bid to combat high rents through old-style rent ceilings. If we look back across history we see these have had many unintended consequences. Often we have found the introduction and continuance of rent controls have done more harm than good. So should Labour continue to embrace such a policy?

We know rent legislation cannot cure housing shortages. Rather, regulations such as rent ceilings merely mitigate the effects by giving comfort to sitting tenants – at the expense of prospective tenants. All too often we see false views on rent control spill over from popular misconceptions into apparently learned debates. It is for this reason why Labour must resign rent ceilings to housing history and focus on the real problems at hand.

History shows Rent Controls are Bad

In Britain we have recognised the damage done by rent controls as far back as The Rent Act in 1957. Where at the time we witnessed expensive properties freed from such regulations. Why? Because old-style rent ceilings foster dilapidation of housing stock, encourage immobility, and distort land-use patterns. It simply makes housing worse.

Originally the introduction of rent ceilings sought to protect tenants from rent rises caused by war-time shortages. Often caused by bombing. Yet many places have seen them retained and enforced ever since. Their perception as a temporary measure were often short lived, almost always becoming destructively permanent.

Late Swedish socialist economist Assar Lindbeck once said “rent controls appears to be the most efficient technique presently know to destroy a city – except for bombing”
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An unsurprising statement when the average waiting time for a rent-controlled unit in Sweden is 11 years. In Sweden keeping rents low for a small section of renters sees tenants hold onto property they no longer wish to live in. Rent regulation incentivises lucky rent regulated tenants to sublet in the black market, often for a significant profit. One would argue this is hardly a socialist panacea.

Price Signals Allow Markets to Respond

Back in 1906 an earthquake hit San Francisco. Subsequent fires destroyed thousands of acres of buildings in the heart of the city. It resulted in 225,000 people becoming homeless. The city of 400,000 lost more than half its housing in three days. Yet market driven construction of new homes put roofs over many earthquake victims heads. In effect developers were able to respond to market demand through rising price signals.

Nevertheless, each remaining household still had to shelter 40% more people than it did before the quake. So what do you think the first local paper observed following the earthquake – a huge housing shortage surely? No, in fact the first San Francisco chronicle following the earthquake made no mention of housing shortage at all.

The market had responded and there was over three times more homes available to rent than advertised for sale. Just goes to show what can be achieved by the market without rent controls having distorting effects on new supply.

Rent Controls Deter New Construction

Contrast this to 1946, where the San Francisco population had increased from 635,000 by 200,000. All over a six-year period. By comparison, the number of dwellings had only increased by a fifth. While in 1906 the city had to shelter 40% more people than before the earthquake, by 1946 the city only had to accommodate around 10-12% more than before the war. This did not stop the Governor at the time going on record to describe the housing shortage “as the most critical problem facing California”. But what was so different?

In 1906 higher rents could signal to the market to build new construction. However, by 1946 imposing rent ceilings made this method of stimulating supply for rental homes illegal. The result? 730 houses listed for sale for every 10 homes listed for rent. The absence of a ceiling on selling homes, in conjunction with a ceiling on rents, had considerably distorting effects. It meant that prices were to rise as a large and increasing demand encountered a relatively fixed supply.

This meant many landlords ended up selling at inflated market prices, rather than renting to tenants with a price ceiling. Rentals effectively become almost impossible to find. At least at legal rent levels. Rich people with money still found plenty of homes to buy. Ceilings on rent provide the rich an advantage to satisfy their housing needs. Restrictions on rent only make this condition worse. We must also recognise that during this time incomes in San Francisco had doubled in comparison to levels before the war. This allowed people to pay more in rent even though legally they did not have to, exacerbating the proliferation of the black market.

Rent Controls Reduce Mobility and Increase Unemployment

Research by Joseph Schumpeter on unemployment recognises the correlation between lack of labour mobility and structural unemployment. In turn, rent controls artificially create more pressures on cities, notably because inhibiting rent increases puts a brake on the natural drift out to towns. We know more people leave London for the rest of the UK, than move from other places in the country to the capital. This is primarily due to relative affordability.

Studies from San Francisco by Stanford University shows rent control limits renters’ mobility by 20% and lowers displacement, which comes at the expense of a reduction in rental housing supply by 15%. Rent controls lead to a less mobile workforce, more structural unemployment, and less supply. No doubt hampering the economy and increasing state borrowing unnecessarily.

Rent Controls are Denigrated Across the Political Spectrum

Notwithstanding the above, rent control is considered the least contentious area of economics and is widely denigrated by economists from around the world. The agreement cuts across the political spectrum, from Hayek and Friedman agreeing on the “right”, to architect of the Swedish Labour Part’s welfare state Gunnar Myrdal on the “left”. It has literally been no longer a debate within the profession for a considerable length of time.

Rent Stabilisation is Ineffective

Maureen Corcoran has reflected on Germany’s rent regulation through its local rent index, arguing regulation improves affordability and transparency. But we have seen since Germany has moved to stricter rent control, with a 5-year rent ceiling, finding new rental property has become increasingly difficult. Rent stabilisation typically has more flexibility and freedom around having an ability to change tenant than old style rent ceilings. For example, if you make repairs, you can increase rents. Labour has mooted such types of control in the past, but we know these too still do more harm than good.

In New York rent stabilisation has ‘luxury de-control’, akin to the 1957 Rent Act in the UK. If a rent gets to a particular level, then it can leave the rent stabilisation regime all together. Professor Ingrid Ellen of NYU argues that outside of Manhattan rent stabilisation does not have that big of an effect on the market. She argues apartments can often be as close as $200 a part in terms of median market rental levels, in comparison to rent stabilised rents. This suggests even modern versions of rent ceilings remain ineffective for the most part.

The Evidence is Overwhelming: Rent Ceilings are Bad

Developers essentially end up wanting to build less, which can’t be a good thing. The rules in New York meant you typically did not have rent stabilised levels on new lettings, which was one way the rules tried to avoid such an issue. But still, what you saw in post-war New York was the conversion of a lot of rental apartment blocks into condominiums for home ownership. Once again, resulting in a net loss of rental stock. Lower supply means higher prices.

Thankfully, recent studies continue to put the rent control question to bed. In August 2020 by Thao Le, Edward Coulson, and Lily Shen published ‘Tenant Rights, Eviction, and Rent Affordability’. The paper demonstrated that for every one-unit increase in the toughness of rent control, evictions are reduced by almost 9%. It found rental housing costs becomes 6% more expensive where tenants have more protection against landlords through regulation. While a higher Tenant-Right Index is also negatively associated with a decrease in housing supply and an increase in the homeless rate. When we put ideology before evidence, empirically we see rent controls lead to worse outcomes.

Gauche Caviar?

Hanchen Jiang, Luis Quintero, and Xi Yang recently released their paper ‘Does Rent Regulation Affect Tenant Unemployment? Evidence from New York City’. It found that often the beneficiaries are those who are more well off and such regulation denotes a significant transfer of wealth to those on higher incomes. Rent-stabilised tenants are empirically more likely to be unemployed than private market-rate tenants, particularly if you are white and highly skilled. To what extent this could ever be seen as a progressive outcome still remains to be seen.

If Labour is to continue to encourage the proliferation of rent-controlled property it should achieve this through the construction of new social housing. Not blanket market distorting rent regulation. Rent control is great if you get it. However, it merely comes at the price of greater inequality for future generations.

Rent ceilings offer no cure to the housing shortage, and in combination with a planning system currently disconnecting local housing supply from local demand, demand-side rent regulations merely create more problems than they solve.

Christopher Worrall

Editor of Red Brick. He is currently an Investment Manager at Guild Living, a Non-Executive Director of Housing for Women, and is on the Labour Housing Group Executive Committee.

Chris also co-hosts and produces the PricedOut UK Podcast.

He writes in a personal capacity.

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