If you’re a private renter, chances are you have seen your rent increase in the last month or two just as the general cost of living soars. In a market dominated by wealthy landlords and - currently in England - no such thing as rent caps, the renting situation, particularly in London, is going utterly wild.
It's particularly bad at the moment because mortgage rates are rising, with the Bank of England raising interest rates from 0.75% to 3% earlier this month and experts warning they could reach 6% by Spring as mortgage lenders re-price their products in the wake of Kwasi Kwarteng's 'disastrous' mini budget back in September. Add that to the fact many landlords are considering selling up their properties due to tax changes and the return of stamp duty on buy to let, the demand for rented flats continues to soar beyond supply. Naturally, a supply shortage means that those who've stuck around can really charge what they like, or may feel forced to raise rent to offset their own increased expenses.
Speaking at the National Landlord Investment show earlier this month, property expert Russel Quirk said, ‘Investor participants in all sectors will often lament the particular asset class that they are involved in and, clearly, we would all like our investments to be even more lucrative, no matter how well they are doing.’
But what’s the actual impact on renters in the private sector? For many, myself included, forking out a couple of extra hundred a month is troubling amidst the cost of living crisis, but it also seems the lesser of two evils when you consider the horror stories coming from people who are being priced out of their flats and forced to find somewhere new to live these hostile times. A twitter thread by journalist Lou Newton is going viral because of the outrageous things she’s witnessed while looking to find a room to rent in London, and, well, it’s a harrowing state of affairs.
‘A woman who owns a one bed flat was renting out her only bedroom. The ad explained how she would sleep on the sofa in the open plan kitchen/living room. It was £1,200pcm,’ Newton wrote.
‘I was asked to blind bid for a room. All offers had to be over £1,100pcm and the room went to the highest bidder.’
‘I did a virtual viewing for a house without a kitchen. The landlord explained how he'd "converted a room into a cooking area"... there was a microwave and a plug-in hotplate in the cupboard under the stairs that he couldn't stand up in because it was so small. It was £850pcm.’
She came across one man who was renting a room for just £5 a month, in exchange for ‘company’ – a growing trend first reported in Cosmopolitan in 2017 – and was asked to send a video of herself ‘explaining my cooking habits and what TV shows I like’ to another landlord, like an audition.
The horror stories continued in the comments. One user wrote that she’d been to see a flat with some friends but had been told by the landlord to expect him to popping in every now and then to crash on the sofa.
‘As he was only renting [out] the rooms he still felt entitled to access to the remainder of the house as he pleased,’ she said.
The options are clear: cough up far more than you can afford for adequate accommodation, or settle for dangerous or untenable living conditions. And as these stories indicate, many are forced to do both.
The landscape is bad everywhere, but particularly in London where a grand per month on a room is a legitimate bargain. I’ve always been lucky in renting in London, up until my most recent flat (where I live alone) never paying for than £650 in a shared house. Now my rent is double that, and going up even more.
But just leaving the city, as so many suggest, isn’t a viable option when your job, friends, family and home is here. London might increasingly be a playground for the rich, but it’s also home to millions, to those born here, like me, and those from elsewhere who’ve made it one.
As housing journalist Vicky Spratt, whose campaign with The Debrief got letting agents fees banned in 2016, writes in her book Tenants, housing is not just a commodity for rich landlords, and having somewhere to live is a basic human right. Wealthy landlords, and the government, must remember that.