The long running experiment with rent controls and an eviction ban north of the border may yet continue for years to come.
The political allies behind the measures - the Scottish National Party and the Scottish Greens - have agreed to continue their loose alliance until 2026.
Arguably the most significant policy pushed through as a result of the alliance, which has been in place since 2021, has been the controversial rent controls and eviction ban, both of which have been in place since mid-2022 in Scotland.
Under the form of proportional representation used to elect the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood, the Greens are required to give the ruling SNP an absolute majority for key votes.
In return, the SNP has accepted some policies which it had not agreed in its own election manifesto.
Over last weekend, ahead of the announcement that the alliance would stay for three more years, Scottish media reported some SNP figures as saying the deal was “killing us” and that some Green ministers were “embarrassing”.
One SNP member of the Scottish Psrliament - Fergus Ewing - has previously called the Greens "fringe extremists" and has now said in a Scottish national paper that they should "never be anywhere near government".
Reiterating his call for a re-vote on the deal, the MSP says: "The Greens are seen as primarily responsible for a whole series of policy disasters over the last two years. It’s time to end this dreadful deal before it brings us down."
And Robin Harper, a former leader of the Scottish Greens, has recently quit the party calling its current leadership “careless and cocky” and “arrogant and abrasive.”
Current Green co-leader Patrick Harvie is the architect of the rent control and eviction ban policies.
In June the Scottish Parliament agreed to another six month extension to rent controls, taking them up to March 2024.
This means that most in-tenancy private rent increases would continue to be capped at 3.0 per cent and, alternatively, private landlords could apply for increases of up to 6.0 per cent to help cover specific increases in costs in a specified period where these costs can be evidenced.
Evictions will also be banned for a further six months for most tenants, except in several specified circumstances: increased damages for unlawful evictions of up to 36 months’ worth of rent would continue to be applicable.
Harvie says that over the period from 2018 to 2020, 63 per cent of social rented households and 40 per cent of private rented households did not have enough savings to cover even a month of income at the poverty line, compared to 24 per cent of households buying with a mortgage and nine per cent of households owning outright.
“Consequently, rented sector households entered the cost of living crisis in a more vulnerable position than owner-occupiers” he told the Parliament recently.
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Turkey’s voting for xmas
SNP and the Greens don’t seem to have any idea at all on how to sort things out in the property market. Hope it stays up north!!! . But then again down Gove keeps switching snd changing his mind. But Devil u know than the Devil u Don’t - so the sayin goes.
Rent controls are coming to England.. Grove is abolishing AST's.. Tenants will be sitting tenants most are likely to appeal even below inflation te increases to the rent accessment office when they can't be evicted. Why not? The rent accessment office will be overwhelmed and the goverment will bring it the same lazy policy it has with Housing Benefit.. Rents will be fixed based on property size.. Decent landlords (the vast majority) who maintain and upgrade their properties will get the same rent as slum landlords.. The slum landlords will make more money and expand their portfolios... Then the government will turn around and say "oh look at all these slum landlords.. How disgusting.."
Gove is Scottish too. I wish he’d go back up to Scotland and stop messing our country up.
Scottish or not Scotland doesn't deserve that moron.
Agree! I just meant someone must love him there that’s all.
Someone I don’t know who…
We dont deserve 2 idiots!
PS … suspect rent controls are coming your way!
Gosh!
I totally agree with Sandra - and remember, Gove was elected in an English constituency, so no evidence he is loved in Scotland apart from his mum and dad.
Rent controls aren't working - Scotland has the highest rent rises in the Uk over the last year. But hey, ho, if we keep going with the same policy maybe the result will change!
Landlords who still rent to families are stuck with a 3% rent increase, or up to 6% provided their costs increased by at least double that.
I really can't understand why any Scottish landlord would willingly take on a long term tenant that they can't get rid of and can't protect themselves against future cost increases.
I am now 100% student tenants and thus able to get current market rents on every change over but it's more work and expense than families - but unfortunately families are just too much risk with little Patrick Harvie in charge of rent increases.
Surely the penny will drop soon, not with politicians but with families who just can't find anywhere to rent at any cost?
I feel so sorry for the Scottish landlords, I can see a tsunami of evictions and sales when the ban is over 😱😱, they are just delaying the inevitable.
Well, thats the first of many we have under sale offer yesterday. Hell mend them. They can sort out the massive housing mess they’ve created!
Simon
Feel sorry for the tenants. Landlords stuck with unprofitable tenants can sell up but tenants have no Plan B - and the Scottish government doesn't even have a Plan A!
The students letting sector is still highly profitable in Scotland, but only if the property can be let to them.
Unless the SNP and Greens are driven out the evictions ban and rent cap will continue. Their noxious brand of ‘communism’ has effectively sequestrated private assets. State sanctioned theft, period.
The only way to avoid the harm threatened by the SNP and their little Green helpers is to avoid the risk of ending up with long term tenants on unprofitable rents.
This means avoiding families in particular but the penny hasn't yet dropped with those families who are suffering from the harm done to them by those who claim to want to help them.
The PRS worked fine until Shelter and their cronies started to interfere to protect the tiny minority of rogue tenants at the expense of the vast majority of decent tenants and landlords.
Well … watch what you wish for Harvie. That’s the first of our portfolio sold this week and we’ll be continuing to remove all of ours from the rental market.
We’ll just leave this problem right at your door at Holyrood, but I suspect you’ll be turfed out soon anyway then you’ll ride around all the media interviews making millions. Champagne socialists the lot of you.
Like Nicola Sturgeon, throw a grenade at Scotland then walk away and let others deal with the fall out. Oh, and go round making millions on her “wisna me” tour!
I have 2 properties in Scotland and I’m in a Scottish landlord group. The rent controls are not working. In the run up, most landlords started increasing rents ahead of the controls having not done so in the past for long term tenants.
Some are now looking to sell their worst performing properties. And there’s a shift away from long term tenants. The landlords I know, are increasingly interested in renting to students and professional couples who are not expecting to stay there for more than a couple of years. The turnover of tenants, allows the landlords to charge the rent they want. The ones selling their properties (already started) are looking to either invest in HMOs or to invest south of the border because it doesn’t make good business sense anymore to invest in the current market.
Long term tenants will increasingly find themselves being evicted for the purpose of selling the property. Rents will routinely go up by the 3 percent a year where, in the past, landlords did not increase rents of long term tenants.
The rent controls are a disaster for long term renters, and anyone wishing to move will now find the next place unaffordably expensive. This is all being driven by the current measures which are supposed to be aimed at making life better for renters.
None of this is news to most landlords but it does seem to be beyond the intelligence of politicians to understand this for some reason.
The thing is young couples will stay in a small place. Put of having a family until they can’t anymore so will have to stay in inappropriate properties. There will be nowhere else to go!
Well summarised. It would appear educations not for every politician!
England's future under Labour.
GET OUT NOW
Most of my properties are let to students, who stay about 1 to 2 years. They are all in England. I have international students or usually 3rd year or masters students, so they stay about a year. Rents are not just increased but the tenants are offering higher than the advertised rent. However, my worry is that the fixed rate mortgage for one of my properties is ending at the end of 2024 and the rate will go from 1.79% to something like 6%, as the high base rates are here to stay for at least 2 to 4 years. I am planning to sell 2 to 3 properties next year but it all depends on the prices. This may help to reduce the mortgage.
John Chart muses:
In England rent controls were introduced in about 1915 during WW!. They stayed until
1988 for virtually all tenancies and after 1988 for existing controlled and regulated tenancies.
So - here is the precedent which suggests that controls could subsist for 70 + years !
After 1915 LLs gradually saw the value of their investments dwindle to about one third of vacant possession value when stuck with tenants whose historic rents hardly moved. If the TT was elderly with no live-in heirs - perhaps 50 - 60% of VP value. I well remember those days (1970 s - 80s).
Dealers enjoyed rick pickings at auctions ! I know - I was there. !
What difference is Rent Controls when the State has taken Control of your Private Property and installed Sitting Tenants. So the only way to get Tenants out is to Sell, that says it all they want us out bad for the big boys to take over and no way back ever.
When you sell you are definitely out permanently with the huge costs / taxes etc involved.
Imagine that’s the only way of getting your Property vacant again is too loose it.
Who said the Devil you know is better, not Possible when its Mr Gove.
Should try being a landlord in Scotland!
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