Tag: Private renting

Housing: What Crisis?

Last Friday evening I took a trip out to Coalpit Heath to talk housing at a meeting of the newly constituted South Gloucestershire Liberal Democrats. The title I was working to was Housing: What Crisis?. The talk was followed by a Q&A session in which members of the […]

Tax off for good behaviour

Over the weekend the CIH and the Resolution Foundation released a useful briefing called More than a roof. The focus is largely on the way in which financial incentives could be used to improve standards in the private rented sector. The briefing provides a brief overview of the […]

Ed’s brave housing proposal

Rent regulation and three year tenancies. That’s Ed’s big housing idea for the private rented sector. It is what the people wanted. Well, quite a lot of people appear to support the idea. But even before the formal announcement has been made it is apparent that some are […]

A voyage of rediscovery

Today’s papers bring us further news of the sickness that afflicts our housing market. On the front page of the Telegraph is a piece focusing on St Vince of Cable’s warning that the housing market is exhibiting all the signs of overheating and that Mark Carney is considering […]

Tenants uniting?

For a long time we have thought of the private rented sector as the most disorganised part of the housing market. Most properties were let by small landlords who owned one or two properties. Very few landlords belonged to any form of trade association, although around half let […]

Regulatory possibilities for private renting

Last Thursday I went up to That London to take part in a seminar on Alternatives to regulation. I made a brief, somewhat speculative, presentation around the regulation of private renting, in the light of current debates about behaviour change and behavioural economics. Some of the ideas need […]

Retoxifying the rentier

The resurgence of private renting is perhaps the biggest transformation in the UK housing system over the last decade. Indeed, if you put it into a longer historical perspective it is quite remarkable. In the 1970s, in the face of seemingly inexorable growth of owner occupation and local […]