Landlords warn rents will rise ‘fairly significantly’ in response to Labour’s Renters’ Rights Bill

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Landlords will likely raise rents significantly above inflation over the next year as Labour’s bill for renters reaches its final stages, a leading industry figure has warned.

The government’s Renters’ Rights Bill is due to pass later this year, bringing in a slate of reforms to the private rental sector.. They include an end to no-fault eviction notices, stopping bidding wars for tenancies and preventing landlords from demanding more than a month’s rent in advance from a new tenant.

Fixed term tenancies will also be abolished and there will be support for tenants challenging unreasonable rent increases

Measures in the bill have largely been welcomed by housing campaigners and charities, but landlords have warned it will have a severe impact on them.

Chris Norris, policy director of the National Residential Landlords’ Association, said it has left many property owners preparing to “price in” additional costs into the monthly rents they charge.

It will likely see many introduce “a fairly significant increase above [headline inflation]”, he said.

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Mr Norris also added that changes to fixed-term tenancies, alongside the ending of no-fault evictions, are key causes of “enormous concern” amongst landlords.

“We’ll lose any certainty that tenants will stay put for a fixed period of time so tenants could walk away very early in the tenancy if they wanted to,” he said. “And we’ll lose some of the mechanisms we have to end failing tenancies.”

Industry figures have long warned that an exodus of landlords from the sector is possible as a result of the Bill’s passing. Mr Norris estimates that around 30 per cent of NRLA members are considering reducing their portfolios.

But pro-renter groups have pushed back against these points, arguing that the Bill will only redress the power imbalance in the private rented sector.

Data published by the ONS last year showed annual growth in private rental prices rose to 9.1 per cent across the UK in November, from 8.7 per cent in the 12 months to October.

Paul Shanks, spokesperson for the Renter’s Reform Coalition, said: “It’s appalling that landlord groups are threatening to hike rents even more.”

He points to statistics from Zoopla which estimated 70 per cent of landlords have either no debt or a small mortgage. Meanwhile, research from housing charity Shelter showed that two-thirds of working renters are currently struggling to make their payments.