Tenant fees ban has ‘already begun pushing up rents’

The tenant fees ban has pushed up rents almost ‘across the board’, it has been claimed, with only seaside towns and some northern cities escaping rent rises.

Renting platform IdealFlatmate says data from its 29,000 listings show that rents increased by 8% during the run up to the commencement of the tenant fees ban on June 1st.

The claim is made within the company’s Room Rental Index, which suggests that landlords are putting up rents as demand for rental property has increased and supply has reduced and landlords attempt to recoup the extra costs of operating rental properties since the ban.

It now costs £577 on average across the UK to rent a room in a shared house and £783 in London, the index shows.

Tenant fees ban

Cambridge and Oxford have seen the largest quarterly increases along with Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle, Leicester, Birmingham, and Nottingham, while Kingston, Lewisham and Richmond have seen the largest increases in London.

“A large degree of rental price growth in the second quarter of this year is almost certainly attributed to the introduction of the tenant fee ban,” says IdealFlatmate Founder Tom Gatzen (left).

“While a positive step towards safeguarding tenants, its implementation has seen many landlords and letting agents opt to increase rents from June onwards which seems to have had a notable impact on rental costs in a short period of time.

“But this hasn’t been the case everywhere and in the room rental space as opposed to the rental market as a whole, seasonal influences can have a big impact on the advertised price.”