Rental Supply Crisis Say Landlords
Tenants will continue to face a rental supply crisis as the Chancellor’s Budget has today failed to boost the supply of privately rented homes.
Following years of tax hikes on the sector, organisations including RICS, Hamptons International, Zoopla and ARLA Propertymark have warned that private sector rents are set to rise as the demand for such homes outstrips supply.
The RLA and NLA warn that this only makes it harder for tenants to save for a home of their own.
Professor David Miles, a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee has warned that “aspiring first-time buyers are hardly helped by squeezing the rental supply crisis and driving rents up.”
The RLA and the NLA had called for the Chancellor to scrap the stamp duty on the purchase of additional homes in cases where landlords invest in property adding to the net supply of housing – such as new build properties or bringing long term empty homes back into use.
In a joint statement the associations said: “The government is undermining its own efforts to boost homeownership through its attacks on the private rented sector. By choking-off supply and making renting more expensive it is tenants who are hardest hit.
“Ministers need to wake up to the reality of the damage their tax measures are doing to the private rented sector and support landlords to provide the new homes for private rent we desperately need.”
Watch: RLA policy manager John Stewart reaction to some of the announcement made in the Budget
Written by Sally Walmsley
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