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TODAY'S OTHER NEWS

London Mayor told: Introduce "deluded" rent controls and you'll lose votes

London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been told by a lettings industry body that he’ll lose votes if he introduces rent controls - and they won’t work anyway.

The National Landlords Association has made the claim in response to the Mayor’s new blueprint for private renting, which is likely to become part of Labour’s manifesto for the 2020 Mayoral elections in the capital.

The blueprint calls for Khan to be given the power to introduce rent controls in the capital through a London Private Rent Commission and a register of landlords.  

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Research by the NLA, conducted amongst 1,700 of its landlord members, shows that 89 per cent of them would be likely to vote against any party that proposed rent controls and 85 per cent would vote against parties proposing to remove section 21. 

Richard Lambert, chief executive of the NLA, says: “The Mayor’s strategy is at best contradictory and at worst deluded. Either he hasn’t researched how landlords’ businesses work, or he didn’t understand what he found.  Or perhaps he did, and he just doesn’t care."

 

Lambert continues: “There’s nothing beyond a few warm words about ‘incentivising continued investment’ to explain how he expects landlords to sustain their businesses in the face of an arbitrary political decision to reduce rents.  Capping and reducing rents in the way suggested in this manifesto would destroy any prospect landlords have of covering their costs or making a profit.  

“If Sadiq Khan is serious about this, he needs to tell us why rent control won’t reduce the number of private rental homes available to Londoners, as it did before, and as it has done everywhere else it has been introduced. 

“The Mayor’s blueprint won’t solve London’s housing crisis; it will add to it.  It’s just as well he doesn’t have the power to implement it.” 

Poll: Would you ever vote for a politician advocating rent controls?

PLACE YOUR VOTE BELOW

  • Paul Smithson

    Just look at the history of rent controls.

  • Mark Wilson

    The generation rent lobby cannot be underestimated. This site and NFOPP, which ARLA is part of, are supporting with vigor reform in the leasehold sector, so how can they not be supporting fairer rents for AST tenants as well? It is selective and inconsistent. Rent controls are more than likely unstoppable, like Brexit.

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    Two totally situations To try to link them like this is fallacious at best.

     
  • jeremy clarke

    He doesn't care, any way who in their right mind would vote for a failed mayor who ignores crime to concentrate on gender free toilets and banning advertising on tube stations?

  • Barry X

    here we go.....

    Thanks to the genius of Khan (and all his equality clever mates).....

    ....back to the bad-old days of the 1970s.........

    ....but at least future generations of super-rich specialist investors will be able to buy our blighted properties with sitting tenants at auction for about 30% of their open-market vacant possession value, then they can sit back or if more active types play golf and cruise the world or something, either way while waiting a decade or two for our tenants to die and THEN resell the properties that were once ours, and finally THEY (not us) will get an outstanding "return on investment" they can put towards their next Learjet or something (but obviously only part of the cost, perhaps a nicer interior design or something) so our life's work wasn't completely in vain!

    Nice.

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