Rents

This is just a short post to draw attention to the Office for National Statistics most recent bulletin on rents and house prices.  The average rent in GB was 9.1% higher than 12 months previously.  That is significant because of the effect on interest rates more generally.  It is a sorry tale of housing market failure.  The situation in Wales is as follows:

Average rent for Wales was £772 in November 2024, up 8.0% (£57) from a year earlier. This annual rise was higher than in the 12 months to October 2024 (7.9%). Wales’s annual inflation rate has been generally slowing since the record-high annual rise of 9.8% in November 2023.

I have a sense of the PRS market generally assuming that rents can rise by a certain amount per annum (anecdotally, there is some regularity in rent increases in the student sector, when I ask the students I teach), but those kinds of rises do need addressing.  The system of rents needs to be addressed.  We need to move away from a fixation on rent controls and whether they are good/bad – that is a binary which does not do justice to the kinds of levers which are available to the WG to affect rents.  That is somethinf ro the new year.

And finally …

2025 feels like it is going to be a bumper year for this blog.  We have the promise of new (or amending) homelessness laws, and more on building safety.  No doubt, there will be other stuff, particularly around the PRS.  There are also concerns about supported housing.  I hope you are enjoying this blog.  Please do keep me in touch with what is going on.

The blog will return on the second Friday of January.

Happy holidays