£5,257,896 – the total rent paid by Teddington tenants a year!!

In the last few months, politicians in Westminster have decided to step into an area which affects many of us - property. Anyone who rented property in the 1970s and 1980s knows the difficulties of tenancy agreements from that era which allowed the tenant the right to stay in the property for life. In some cases, tenancies could be transferred to their children, rents could not be increased and tenants could not be removed. One of the suggestions by the Labour Party is rent controls. With more than 4.4 million people renting 3.4 million properties in England alone, it was clear that this could be a policy that was purely playing with the sentiments of these tenant voters.

Under the current legislation, tenants are already in a position to challenge rent increases that are unreasonable and they have the advantage of giving two months’ notice to the landlord (when the tenancy is a rolling agreement, i.e. periodic tenancy) . But do rents need capping? Well, in Teddington, there are 3,851 people renting properties. The average rent of a Teddington property in 2008 was £2,067 per month. If Teddington landlords had raised the rents in line with inflation, (which sounds very fair to anyone), as inflation has been a total of 19% since 2008, the average rent in Teddington should be today £2,067 + 19% = £2,460. At this moment in time, the average in Teddington is £2,380... And those figures are being repeated all around the UK.

However, restricting rent rises in the future could put more properties back on the market for sale as it would destroy the confidence in the housing market. In turn, this would reduce property prices. With less property available to rent, and a lack of interest from potential investors (due to the poor yields) this policy would end up creating a shortage of affordable housing.


With the not-insignificant increase in renting in Teddington over the last ten years,16.43% of property being rented in 2001 to 22.4% in 2011, it is clear that the changes to the law of tenancy agreement made in the Housing Act 1988 resulted in benefits to both landlords and tenants. The law has made it easier to rent a property and at the same time, the Assured Shorthold Tenancy gives the tenants a right to quiet enjoyment of the property for a period of time. Yes, the total rent paid by Teddington tenants is an awful lot of money, £5,257,896 a year in fact, but as rents are free to move up, but just as important down, why fix what aint broke?

Rebecca Smith
http://www.rebeccasmithpropertyservices.co.uk/