t has been a brutal year for private tenants and, as the father of a renter son, I have seen as first hand just how tough it is for young people to finding remotely affordable accommodation in London.
Few people shed tears for the landlords. But perhaps we should be just a little more sympathetic.
Latest figures from industry group UK Finance show that mortgage stress is at its most intense in the buy-to-let sector. The number of buy-to-let loans in arrears has rocketed by 59% over the past year, 28% in the second quarter alone.
Arrears of between 2.5% and 5% of the total balance have more than doubled since 2022, while repossessions, though still low at 440 in the second quarter, are up 26% on last year.
The truth is that landlords have not had much good PR since the days of Rising Damp’s Rigsby (Google it).
They have proved a fruitful cash cow for Chancellors with punishing measures such as the 3% second home stamp duty surcharge and the abolition of mortgage interest relief on buy to lets all eating into returns.
We are now probably at the stage, certainly in London, where we need to offer incentives to landlords, not keep clobbering them.
Thousands of this year’s graduates will already be scouring websites for their first pad in London as they start their careers in the autumn.
We desperately need more decent, reasonably priced rented homes for them to live in. As things stand, ever more landlords will fall into arrears and sell up. And that will only make things worse.