A senior figure at the right wing magazine The Spectator has slammed landlords for blatant profiteering.

The magazine’s assistant online editor says her own rent has been hiked by nearly 30 per cent, despite unspecified maintenance issues, and that tenants as a group have been the worst hit by the cost of living crisis.

“The blatant profiteering in the rental market, driven by landlords taking advantage of the economic environment, must be curbed” writes Lisa Haseldine.

She says the situation is most acute in London where demand far exceeds supply.

Haseldine is just as critical of letting agents who, she claims, have an attitude towards tenants of “if you don’t like it, find somewhere else.”

Perhaps surprisingly the article in the magazine – once edited by Boris Johnson – goes on to heap praise on the demands made by London’s Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan, who wants the power to impose rent controls.

Haseldine writes: “Rent controls already exist in various forms around the world, in New York and Germany, for instance.”

And while she accepts that rent controls may lead to reduced investment in rental properties, she asks whether that would be such a bad thing.

“The current housing market is severely choked. Disincentivising people from purchasing property as investments would free up the market, house prices would realign and drop, thereby becoming more affordable. While the rental housing pool would potentially shrink, the pool of properties for sale would grow” she argues.

It’s a lengthy article and you can see it in full here.