{"id":78004,"date":"2024-06-21T10:47:50","date_gmt":"2024-06-21T10:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/21\/keir-starmer-labour-would-pass-law-to-end-renter-bidding-wars\/"},"modified":"2024-06-21T10:47:50","modified_gmt":"2024-06-21T10:47:50","slug":"keir-starmer-labour-would-pass-law-to-end-renter-bidding-wars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/21\/keir-starmer-labour-would-pass-law-to-end-renter-bidding-wars\/","title":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer: Labour would pass law to end renter ‘bidding wars’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Keir<\/div>


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Sir Keir Starmer has said Labour would pass new laws to prevent rental “bidding wars”, if his party wins the election. <\/p>\n

During a special edition of BBC’s Question Time, the Labour leader said he wanted to stop landlords “ripping tenants off” by encouraging them to offer to pay higher rent to secure a property.<\/p>\n

Sir Keir said: “We can pass legislation to say you can’t do it because it is driving rents through the roof and it’s not fair on people.”<\/p>\n

However, pressed on how new legislation would work, Sir Keir did not give further details. <\/p>\n

Pressed on whether private landlords would have to take the first offer they were given, he did not answer directly, saying: “We have to have a scheme in place to stop them driving the rent up and up.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Earlier this year, Labour proposed changes to the Renters (Reform) Bill aiming at preventing bidding wars. <\/p>\n

These included requiring landlords and letting agents to state the amount of rent payable when advertising a property and preventing them from encouraging prospective tenants to offer to pay more than this. <\/p>\n

However, a prospective tenant would not be prohibited from offering to pay more than the advertised rent under the proposals.<\/p>\n

This is similar to legislation introduced in New Zealand in 2021.<\/p>\n

A survey carried out by the New Economics Foundation think tank last year<\/a> suggested four in 10 households renting privately in England who had moved in the last year were paying above the advertised rent for their property. <\/p>\n

On average, it found these renters were paying \u00a31,200 a year above the advertised rate. <\/p>\n

Meanwhile, competition among renters is so intense there are an average of 20 requests to view each available property, according to data commissioned by the BBC last year<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Campaigners say this increases the pressure on prospective tenants to offer to pay a higher rent to secure a property, driving up prices.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The Renters’ Reform Coalition welcomed Sir Keir’s promise to ban bidding wars. <\/p>\n

The group’s campaign manager Tom Darling said: “In order to be effective it will need to be coupled with more regulation of estate agents, who often initiate bidding wars, pitting renter against renter, preying on our desperation for a safe, secure home in order to try to squeeze every last bit of profit they can.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, he said bidding wars were “only part of the problem” and renters also needed protection from rent increases during their tenancy. <\/p>\n

He added: “That\u2019s why we\u2019ve called for a cap on rent hikes linked to inflation and wage growth to close this loophole.\u201d<\/p>\n

Labour’s manifesto also pledges to “empower [tenants] to challenge unreasonable rent increases” and immediately abolish no-fault evictions. <\/p>\n

Legislation to prevent landlords evicting tenants without a reason was promised in the 2019 Conservative election manifesto. <\/p>\n

However, the government ran out of time to pass the law before the election was called in May, with critics blaming opposition from some backbench Tory MPs for slowing its progress. <\/p>\n

The party has recommitted to banning no-fault evictions in its latest manifesto, alongside reforming the court system to enable landlords to evict tenants when they have grounds to do so. <\/p>\n

The Liberal Democrats have also pledged to ban non fault-evictions, as well as make three-year tenancies the default and create a national register of licensed landlords. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Sir Keir Starmer has said Labour would pass new laws to prevent rental “bidding wars”, if his party wins the election. During a special edition of BBC’s Question Time, the Labour leader said he wanted to stop landlords “ripping tenants off” by encouraging them to offer to pay higher rent to secure a property. Sir […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78005,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/ichef.bbci.co.uk\/news\/1024\/branded_news\/bf81\/live\/eafacc80-2fac-11ef-acc1-b3f164ccdd74.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[603],"tags":[69419,3959,843,3444,15729,17631,3960,5724],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78004"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78004"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78006,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78004\/revisions\/78006"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}