Now that all the main parties have released their election manifestos, what is each promising for the private rental sector if they make it into Number 10?

Here at Eclipse, before we all go to the polls, we have been taking a look at what’s on offer to residential landlords and tenants and how it will affect the buy-to-let market and we are delighted to bring you this summary of our findings.

With private rentals accounting for 21% of households in England – a figure that has doubled since 1997, according to the Office for National Statistics, this is certainly a subject which the political parties have placed some importance on as it affects many of their target voters.

The main points of note are that both the Tories and Labour have vowed to scrap section 21 ‘no fault’ evictions to give greater protection to tenants. A policy also proposed by the Green party and eluded to, although not actually included in the Lib-Dem manifesto.

The other major talking point is rent control, something which Labour, the Greens and the Lib-Dems have all stated that they will introduce in some form if they come to power on December 12th.

The Labour party seem to have the most radical proposals for rental property which are aimed at ‘putting bad landlords out of business’, however, the proposals have been met with a warning from the Residential Landlords Association who claim that Labour’s proposals would “lead to a serious rental housing crisis” with many in the industry suggesting that the policies could actually end up backfiring and causing more harm than good to the tenants they are trying to protect.

If you like to see the facts laid out for comparison then the National Landlords Association website have very helpfully listed all the key pledges from each party in a number of special articles on the subject. They include all the specific agenda items relating to tenancies as well as a more general overview of each party’s housing and economic policies which are likely to have a knock-on effect for landlords and the private rental market.

You can check them out here:

Conservatives: https://landlords.org.uk/news-campaigns/news/conservative-manifesto

Labour: https://landlords.org.uk/news-campaigns/news/labour-manifesto-end-section-21-rent-controls-nationwide-licensing-and-new

Lib-Dems: https://landlords.org.uk/news-campaigns/news/lib-dem-manifesto-compulsory-licensing-private-landlords-three-year-tenancies

 

For further commentary on the rental market proposals you may find these articles of interest:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50540436

https://news.rla.org.uk/labour-manifesto-would-leave-tenants-worse-off/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-49030885?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cdl8n2edgj5t/housing-market&link_location=live-reporting-story

 

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