Landlord group blames Selective Licensing for steep rent rises
Landlords in Nottingham say costs of up to £780 per property are being passed on directly to tenants, as many had predicted.
A recently-introduced Selective Licensing scheme has been blamed for fast-rising rents in one of the UK’s busiest property markets.
Using data from Zoopla, which this week identified Nottingham (pictured, above) as one of the hottest private rental markets in the UK, a leading property owners’ group in the city has said the property licensing scheme is a key reason for a 5.4% rise in rents, a greater increase than in Leeds, Bristol, Leicester, Derby, York, Brighton, Liverpool or Sheffield.
Giles Inman, a business development manager at East Midlands Property Owners Group, has told local media that the 14-month old Selective Licensing scheme introduced in Nottingham covering 32,000 rented properties was having its predicted effect.
When the scheme went live in August 2018 many local landlords said the extra bureaucracy and costs would persuade many landlords to put up their rents.
Rogue landlords
Landlords also said they were worried that good ones would sign up to the scheme, which costs either £480 or £780 per property depending on a landlord’s accreditation status, while rogue landlords would ignore the regulations.
This appears to be coming to fruition too; half of the 32,000 properties in the city are unlicensed, it is claimed.
“There are lots of factors that are driving rent up and Selective Licensing is one of them,” says Inman (left).
“It has been a costly exercise for landlords across the city and they said additional costs would be passed on.
“Every landlord, and I speak to hundreds of them, they have all put their rents up since August last year. They have gone up because the costs have gone up. We are a business.”
Read more about Selective Licensing schemes.
