Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer picked on the buy to let and holiday home sectors as targets for future restrictions, in a speech to his party conference. 

Starmer’s speech was extremely light on detail but he told delegates that he wanted to raise the proportion of UK households in owner occupation to 70 per cent – it’s only 63 per cent right now.

He said he wanted “no more buy-to-let landlords or second homeowners getting in first” and instead felt Labour should “help real first-time buyers onto the ladder with a new mortgage guarantee scheme” and “reform planning so speculators can’t stop communities getting shovels in the ground”.

The English Housing Survey for 2020-21 says some 15.5m households are owner-occupied – suggesting well over a million new homeowners would have to be created  in the five years of a Labour government.

The Mirror newspaper claims that the Starmer target may be achieved by guaranteeing local people get first choice on new homes, and raising stamp duty for foreign buyers to prevent them buying off-plan.

Starmer’s speech yesterday came after a more detailed attack on buy to let in its current format by Labour’s shadow housing secretary, Lisa Nandy.

Nandy earlier told Labour delegates that she wanted to make social housing – properties built for and run by councils and housing associations – the second largest tenure in the UK, relegating private renting (currently second) down to third. 

Labour – currently running well ahead of the Conservatives in multiple opinion polls – says it will implement many of the policies put forward in the controversial Fairer Private Rented Sector White Paper, but will also go much further in giving additional powers to tenants.

Nandy pledges Labour will end Section 21 evictions; reduce eviction powers for landlords whose tenants are in arrears; introduce four month notice periods; examine scheme for ‘portable’ deposits making it easier for tenants to switch properties; allow tenants to have pets; permit renters to make unspecified ”reasonable alterations to a property”; create a national register of landlords; and iunitiate a legally-binding decent homes standard in the private rental sector.