Labour’s Plan to Solve the Rental Crisis Explained 

The issue is that either the renter or the owner must in some way pay insurance and property taxes if they want a "permanent roof" with utilities like electricity, gas and water. Because of this, many people-at least in California, where I currently reside-are living in tents. No taxes, rent, mortgages, or insurance. The number of people who tell me they live in their car that I meet amazes me. Its crazy out here!

I'm not holding my breath. The people in power have promised this 17 times already and every time they fail to keep their promises. The housing situation was already starting to become existentially bleak and unrealistic in the 2010s, let alone now, where a studio apartment costs more than a 3 bedroom did not very long ago.

Prices are too high. With rates not subsidised in ’24 and mortgage still high , currently seeking alternatives to maximize savings without an RV move or taking a loan. I’m seriously contemplating the latter.

At first i was like "short answer, they won't" Than i heard "labour is going to attack the supply side" and i remain cautiously optimistic. However - this notion of "home ownership" comes from the idea that a home is an investment - its not, its a commodity, this thinking is what got us here. If you vote for homes as an investment, the incentive is to restrict supply via the ballot. And voters on both sides need to get that through their thick skulls - especially the younger generation that still hasn't bought into this scam.

"will ineffective politicians fix something?" No

A politician saying their gonna build more houses... well. I haven't heard that before... you know, for the last 20 years. What a bunch of W⚓s.

I'm from Dublin and we're getting the same spiel. Remember, if the new houses aren't affordable on an average salary, it won't fix sh*t.

The UK is a country being looted in real time by elderly bureaucrats and the wealthy, and its incredibly sad to watch as someone whose family immigrated from there years ago. I hope Labour can do something substantial, but Starmer seems cut from the same cloth as Blair and he's a large part of the reason Britain basically has two identical neoliberal parties that work for the two groups mentioned above.

How about either: Only permanent British residents can become registered landlords. Or, Only incorporated companies registered as paying tax on that property in the UK can own property in the UK. If housing must be "capitalist" then guarantee that it all happens within the UK tax authority. This stops the money laundering, stops the empty home investment portfolios, stops the tax evasion, and stops the exploitation. But I didn't see those in Labour's review... So...

Forcing renters to make their properties higher quality, banning no fault evictions, and limiting rents = less properties, which either pushes up rents or if there are rental caps (as in the case of Austria and parts of Germany) it means that there are far fewer rental properties, and they are mostly owned by corporations and only rented to middle class locals. In Berlin, I had to pay three times the average rent because I was a foreigner (British) and because I was self-employed. Cheap apartments in Berlin are rented by middle-class Germans with employment contracts. Students, freelancers, the poor, foreigners and people with poor credit rating are unable to find apartments to rent legitimately so end up in very expensive short term accommodation, in cramped conditions with illegal landlords, or in very expensive sublets. I was paying rental prices higher than I was in London as a result. When rents are high, it's a supply side crisis. Making life harder for landlords and making it harder for individuals to purchase a buy to let property just increases the supply side crisis. The Tories idea of boosting demand is even more stupid, as helping people to get into debt or giving government subsidies to first time buyers as Cameron did just creates further inflation in property prices, meaning landlords need to charge higher rents to pay off the mortgages. The only people who win are those who have already bought a property. There is ONE solution to high rents and only one solution: build more rental properties. Labour don't have the balls do to the deregulation required to do that and their policies show they are making the same mistakes that social democrat and socialist societies like Venezeula made. Labour councils have strictest planning laws then other councils. If anything, they should take the powers away from the local councils, so that councilors aren't blocking building because they're scared of losing their jobs in the face of local NIMBY protests. High rents are not the fault of landlords, they are the fault of local councils and the post-war Labour and Tory governments with their obsessions about planning, building and environmental regulations, as well as their inflationary economic practices that are leaving everyone poor. The private sector wants to build homes, people want to buy homes and invest in buy to let properties to fund their retirement, and most renters are happy just to have a roof over their head that doesn't eat into 70% of their income. Nothing in this video suggests that the rental supply will increase, quite the opposite. You cannot overcome the laws of supply and demand any more than you can overcome the laws of nature, and their policies are exactly the same policies that have failed in the UK, in Europe and throughout the Western world for the past century. Bring back homebuilding! We need an economically literate party in government, and we have had that for generations. When it comes to the cost of living, Starmer and Sunak are just a continuation of the same regulation obsessed, Keynesian social democrats that have been running the country since the 1920s. Keep voting team red or team blue or team orange or team green and say goodbye to your hope of having children or a retirement.

Scrap right to buy, the biggest mistake ever., then buy to let, too many people bought too many properties and had no idea how to be proper landlords. Finally, the cost of a house is insane. 30 years ago I bought a 2 bedroom flat in London for £61k, the same flat is now £340k. Insane.

Why not restrict landlords using company/companies to buy and own more than 10 properties? There are lots of this kind of landlords owing 20+ or even 50+ properties in their company investment portfolio.

Will Blairities beat Blairities? Nobody knows.

How are rent controls working out for Germany? Hint: it isn't

Build 100k houses and then import a million migrants. Sounds like a great plan!

So, absolutely nothing on the demand side then. It's impossible to build enough houses while importing an entire Leeds every year.

A recent government report shows that mass immigration accounts for a whopping 89% of the gap in housing supply versus demand.

Housing problems , yet we let in 750k more people a year

Native Britains births rates are below replacement and housing should be going down in price. This problem is manufactured and it is by design people are not buying houses.

My Gran (who I hated) spent nearly all of her money to fix her house since the landlord refuses to meet basic standards and pay for maintenance. So when the refurbishment is finally completed and she is happy with it she is kicked out and moved to a similarly poor kept house down the road.

Stop selling off the social housing with lower rents. Many of these houses eventually end up owned by private landlords with higher rents. More social housing would be built by councils if people couldn't buy the council properties with a large discount, leaving the councils to pay the full amount of money borrowed to build the property.

I'm not sure the only solution is to build more housing. How much land do we really want to pave over? I'd say we need to move more of the economy away from London. Improve transport in other regions. Reduce immigration back to a sustainable level. And disincentivize second homes and land-banking through taxes.

The only solution is to build more houses, I.e. interfere with the market on the supply side. Do not worry about this lowering prices and house values for existing owners. The prices shouldn't have risen this much to begin with. Do not even attempt to flatline the prices in order to "at least keep current value". I'm an owner occupier, and my property value has been flat for the last 7 years, and that's fine. It's even gone down a bit a few times and that's also fine - I didn't buy something where payments would become unaffordable or would make me wish I had rented instead.

Building more homes is irrelevant if the population increases at a faster rate than housing supply. Labour will increase population growth.

As a Canadian... the problem isnt only the housing. Its also the immigration. Here in canada, 2023... 147k houses built, 2023... 2.5 million immigrants! The math on those numbers doesnt exactly add up to housing affordability

Solving housing is so simple. Make multi home ownership illegal.

Nobody willing to ask why housing demand is so high despite low birth rates among Britons, or who this benefits.

So basically they have nothing by empty words

no mention of council building homes either

Lol, talks about the housing shortage but doesn't mention mass uncontrolled immigration.

One glaring admission on your part. The huge numbers associated with immigration. Over 750,000 people entering and around 250 - 300 homes built. The downward pressure has been acknowledged by government, would be nice to see address this too.That is if you want to be taken as unbiased. All the best

5:58 "This would hit Landlords particularly hard" Oh no! Anyway

Other countries like Germany may have rent controls (Berlin specifically) but the trade-off is that Berlin has one of the lowest percentages of apartments available for renters. Landlords realise they can make more money selling or holding as opposed to renting below market rates. We're currently debating property inflation a lot in Australia, but rent freezes are seen as a fringe opinion that isn't widely supported by the major parties, mostly because of how badly they appear to have faired in Berlin. I'm not sure if adding a third-generation stipulation changes this in any way, I'm not informed enough to say, but I worry that homes will slowly be removed from the 'renter's pool' should they think that rent contracts might diminish in return over time as market inflation increases, especially in London.

When we let 700,000 legal people in the country each year good luck building enough houses. If you are limiting rent then you need to control the costs. Or landlords will disappear. Make no mistake people are not buying those properties huge property companies are making it worse.

In Denmark, we have a residence obligation, which means that you, as the owner of a year-round home, have a duty to ensure that the home is occupied at least 180 days a year. If you own a year-round home, you are therefore obliged to live in it yourself or to ensure that the home is rented out for year-round living.

I’ve been thinking this for a while now, but this country has one more government to convince me to stay. I’m sick of living in a country where I feel no hope for the future. Working people are given a particularly rotten deal in this country, I’ll take my skills and taxes elsewhere. That is unless Keir Starmer can convince me to stay. To be honest I don’t have much hope for that happening.

Con way will only increase house prices and put more of a risk of a housing crash

I live in Portugal and we had a rent control until 2011 (that still exists for tenancies before 1989). The result was innabited houses literally falling in pieces, because landlords couldn't afford the necessary repairs because the rent was so low. To evict here is quite hard. I'm affraid that banning no-fault evictions will have the same effect. As a result, it is hard to find homes to be rented and rents prices had ever been high. Many landlords rent illegaly, withouth declaring it's income to the state, because of the high bureocracy and high taxes, also The only good part of this report is builiding more housing. The rest of it will have bad results

Thanks for the video, Appreciated

Housing, environment, transport, immigration.. how many of our issues would we begin to actually fix when we finally admit that an ever increasing population is a catastrophe?

Please can TLDR consider the recent work of Nick Bano in ‘Against Landlords’ in their future analysis of UK housing issues, in particular the central argument that supply is not simply about building houses, but rather also about releasing houses from landlordism and into ownership by the majority.

No they won't fix anything, they're too scared of rocking the boat and dumpstering house prices because it tends to be their richer supporters who give the most donations.

It is completely absurd to ignore the "Demand" elephant in the room. We add more people year on year than we can afford to put up. Nearly half of all social housing in London is occupied by non ethnic Brits. Why on earth are we being taxed to pay for folk who have no right to be here, when we can't afford houses ourselves? Mental. Supply side most new builds are mid to high range houses, built for developers profits, that cost more than the people who actually need housing can afford. Reduce demand by closing the borders and start building sustainable hosing stock. It'll take a long time to balance out but thats the mess weve been left with

Starmer never goes "into much detail" on any if his policies.

We cant have 600k net every year and fix a housing crisis.

5:53 "Others would argue that rent controls would hit landlords particularly hard." This is the _desired effect._ We need to reduce the number of landlords. Renting is the only option left because more properties than ever are owned by fewer people, and the costs of renting are _obscene._ These "lords of the land" are extortionists. I mean that very literally, as they leech off of the hard work and money of people who need shelter but can't afford it due to the pathetic wage increases we've seen since 2010. Even the quality of homes has dropped thanks to landlords refitting former houses into "HMOs", meaning that the places people live are even more cramped, uncomfortable, and inhumane. What we need isn't mere housing reform. We need a landlord abolition. Shelter should be a right, not a diminishing privilege. Every person born should be granted a place to stay, forever. That can't happen while landlords own so much and withhold empty properties to maximise profits. And that's just the start. Housing prices are next.

Build more houses Ban any foreign investment including landlords Massively reduce migration Only these will help, anything less won't fix anything

As a planning officer myself, it is always frustrating to hear how we are the ones holding things up. The housing crisis is due to mass uncontrolled migration. Its simple supply vs demand. So long as we keep having this extreme unsustainable migration policy the housing market will continue to be broken regardless of how many state interventions are made.

They will make it worse with their "immigrants welcome" signs.

300 000 young men from abroad needs housing first

It is the supply side that needs fixing. All the renting reforms are going to do is drive out good landlords, and make it a more commercial operation - it’s those big commercial landlords who are the worst ones in my experience.

You bring in people from abroad and your local people can't purchase a home, which means they cannot have children, so you have to bring in more people.

Maybe don't allow in over a million people a year and developers might be able to catch up to demand.

The Tories have built a lot of houses and provided a lot of jobs, Labour are very conservative when it comes to construction and they don't actually want anybody to work or be too well paid. We say there aren't enough houses but that's only because immigration has increased so much under the Tories, there's nothing conservative about them.

We need to sort out the rules around freeholds and leaseholds if we are going to allow more building to be created.

House builders do not want to increase the number of houses built per year as it keeps house prices up. Also labour shortages in the future workforce, as they all want to be internet stars, will have a bigger problem for constructions. If land is purchased for house building planning should have to be applied for within 12 months and construction start within a further 12 months rather than builders building up huge land banks and trickling in new homes to keep up demand.

I know a guy who owns 250 two bedroom houses which he rents out every month for up to £1000 per month, in the past all of those houses would have been first time buyer houses, but greedy landlords like him have bought them all and pushed up the prices and put them out of reach for young couples who are trying to get a start in life for a reasonable price.

These policies are good minus the rent control, rent control murders housing production

As someone who rented up until shortly before Covid hit, I could not save up for a deposit because the rent took up more than half of my (full time) wage. Bearing in mind, this was the lowest rent place I could find in the area and was a house-share that by government standards would be classed as 'overcrowded'. As I understand, things have become a lot worse since then. Thankfully, I finally managed to get on the housing ladder due to being gifted part of an inheritance. Unfortunately, most people are not that lucky and I was very late (being in my 40's) getting on the housing ladder myself as it is. If I had not had that lucky break, I might well have been homeless by now. As things stood at the time, I could only just afford the place I live in right now and it still has a lot of problems that need fixing. I dare say that if the same thing happened today (with the same amount) I would be needing a mortgage rather than buying outright which I would not be able to obtain.

no, my council has been labour for 40 years and they have not built houses and still blame maggy

Can’t tackle the housing crisis without tackling rampant mass immigration. 500,000 a year, unless you plan on building a Birmingham every year we wont build our way out of this.

The renter's reform bill fundamentally was compromised from the tory's initial plans so saying they are genuinely seeking meaningful rental reform is absurd at this point.

Nobody wants to rent, and nobody likes how horrible the market is. We all want to own our own houses and be able to live in peace, but the amount of deposit you need to put down and then ontop all the proofs you need and then the interest rates, it's all just too much for most young people.

Building more homes won’t fix anything if people can’t afford to buy them or pay for future mortgage payments. What’s to stop investors from buying many of the properties like they do now? I think rule that houses can only be sold to people from that city/area, in some developments, need to be implemented. So many Londoners coming up north and buying out people from the north (usually have more money for a house since they were saving to buy in London but then gave up when they couldn’t afford it or didn’t like the place anymore). It’s a joke.

I don't anything along those lines happening anytime soon. Most mps own houses they let they are not likely to vote against their own interest...

The only way to actually fix this is to sort out the commodification of housing. You need to tax it HEAVILY (LVT for example) and make it less appealing as an investment option. This includes small and large companies looking to scoop up properties as part of an investment portfolio. Housing is for living not investment

The problem is foreigners buying property as investments, sometimes they're not even being used to house people. The investment artificially makes the economy look like it's growing, while the majority of people suffer from increased cost of housing. Several countries limit or prevent foreigners from buying property to benefit the citizens first (as it should always be). The UK is so bad for this that the London property market is a hub for international money laundering. And this is just scratching the surface.

The more you bash landlords the more you'll have a shortage of rental accommodation which means prices will be even higher.

People blame 'planning restrictions' but that's not the full story. Local councils have to have a 5 year housing supply. Councillors (not planners) frequently stop development at the behest of NIMBYs. Unless steps are taken to stop housing being an investment, then no matter how many homes are built, little will change.

UK's obsession with houses is one of the major issues, but how else could it be when leasehold is a scam.

Cut stamp duty. It’s a disgrace of a tax. There should be outrage at it

saying that some form of rent control would make it impossible for landlords suggests that the only way to preserve the private rented sector is to allow private rents to become unaffordable. That doesnt seem like much of a solution to me

It's need to be harder for companies to guy properties. That is the crux of the argument.

Labour will increase illegal immigration causing even more pressure on supply.

The problem is that we have moved housing from what it should be (a place to be safe, keep your stuff, and where you feel most comfortable using the restroom), into investments. People now buy houses with the expectation that they can profit from it. And this is often being done in bulk by people with large amounts of money and influence. So there are now politically powerful people who have no interest in seeing housing prices fall. It is in their interest if most people are unable to afford to buy a house since it would make their existing properties worth less. Until we stop treating houses as primarily an investment we will never see housing as affordable for the majority of people. Once again the problems of society are being caused by a small group of the wealthy who are hurting society in order to make themselves richer.

Without tackling immigration this plan to build millions of homes is completely moot.

I don’t know how difficult it would be to achieve, but it seems to me that the best thing to do is build enough council houses for all the renters who need them and put private landlords out of business. The needs of private landlords and renters clash too strongly to ever be resolved. If you give landlords what they want, renters suffer; but if you give renters the level of protection they need, landlords will sell their properties to owner occupiers or turn them into holiday lets.

Will they fix housing? No Ultimately too few new houses are being built, too little is being done to get empty homes occupied again and there are too few controls to stop individuals and companies snapping up properties for rental purposes.

The fact that UK government is talking about doing anything is amazing. In New Zealand both parties have basically done nothing for years 😢

Building more homes won’t solve the problem when you bring in a million people into the country every year and have very loose credit conditions. The only way to solve this is to normalise credit conditions, so that landlords are forced to sell off their real estate assets. Basically, you have to pop the bubble.

Sir Kid Starver's Labour couldn't even fix itself a sandwich.

To think I came here 7 years ago for some good Brexit drama and Orrdddaaa, seven years later, I still rely on your reporting. Thanks for all your hard work.

The mindset of housing as an investment is a sickness in this country. We really should have been chasing higher wages and low housing costs to ensure we maximise our individual autonomy but we chose the alternative and now the countries butt cheeks are puckered up waving in the air, ready for anyone with a fat enough wallet to come in and take advantage of its residents.

This is an imported problem. The UK has declining birth rates.

Posturing and nibbling around the edges. Homes are not affordable because wealth has moved upwards. Homes are in short supply because wealth has moved upwards, social housing is no longer replaced and we are not building enough houses - especially houses of the right type. Private rentals have increased because wealth has moved upwards. The affordable homes quota has not been met because builders control politicians. There is no access to state funded low interest, long-term mortgages and banks are allowed to profiteer. There is no attempt to make use of brown field sites and renovate older buildings because of the extraction of easy profit by builders. Planning regulations are outdated, not being tough enough to force the installation of solar panels on all new builds, mitigate urban sprawl, provide enough schools and health services in new areas. Governments are too weak to tackle this and are still faffing around for easy votes.

"make it easier to build houses" scares me considering modern homes are already cheaply made crap that falls apart in 10 years

Without rent controls, mass housebuilding and stopping high immigration nothing is going to change.

Preventing landlords putting up prices in the short term will just encourage them to price in any risk at the start of any tenancy. It sounds like a good idea but not sure it will have the desired effect. The only solution is MORE HOUSES! A government owned social housing project that is legally bound to build houses would force the other housebuilders to build whilst they still have profitable sites to work on. It would add urgency to an industry that is currently incentivised to build slowly for a greater profit.

There are now so many ‘green’ conditions attached to house building that it’s impossible to make them affordable.

Mr. Ditkovich would be proud.

The main issue is we see housing as an investment instead of a right.

There should be increased housing tax for owning more than 2-3 houses

This sounds like it will make building apartments less profitable creating less demand from buildinders to create new homes. So the this will create a slow down on the supply side.

Bring back Fair Rent Tribunals, Extend 'Right to Buy' to private landlords with more than 3 houses, fund mass council house building, end 'Buy to Rent' mortgages and strengthen tenants rights. In the end we want to reduce the private rented sector to the small size it was in the 70's and 80's. I have no faith in Labour to do any of this under it's present leadership.

the only solution is to stop importing cheap immigrants from third world countries. in what universe can you import 400-700k people per year and expect housing/ schools/ NHS to simply catch up? by doing this wage suppression will also be reduced considerably

A million solutions, none of which will ever be pursued by Labour!

Rent control will make cheap rents go up just before it becomes law. I know the rent I charge is low but I haven't raised it because I can do so at anytime. If it were to be fixed for a future period I'd bite the bullet and tell my tenants I'm putting it up now to a more commercial level before the legislation comes in. How about the government freezes my £3.4k council tax bill? That bill never fails to grow

I think most young people agree, the solution is not to waste our money renting its to leave the country and go somewhere better. If the gov isn't careful they are going to end up in the same situatuon as Italy

There is no "housing crisis". It's an _immigration_ crisis which _every Gov refuses to address_ . More people, suddenly arriving, require more accommodation and services.

One pushup for every like this gets.