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Tips, insights, and advice to help you find, rent, and manage your next home with confidence.
Landlords hoping the arrival of a new housing minister might bring a softer touch to rental regulation look set to be disappointed. According to Landlord Today, the government's fresh appointee to the housing brief has made clear that they want rental rules to become even tougher than they already are.
Few subjects get renters talking quite like rent controls, and the debate in Greater Manchester has just grown considerably louder. With tenants voicing clear backing for capping rent rises, and metro mayor Andy Burnham weighing up what reform could actually look like, an idea once confined to the fringes of housing policy has moved squarely into the mainstream.
The House of Lords has completed another round of scrutiny of the Social Housing Bill, with the report stage debate on Monday 20 July producing outcomes of real consequence for the sector. Report stage gives peers a further opportunity to examine the bill's detail and propose changes, and on this occasion three proposed amendments were put to a vote.
Imagine receiving a letter out of the blue demanding a large sum of money for a shed, a fence or an extension you never built. That is the reality facing homeowners in England, and it has now prompted the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee to intervene directly with the Housing Minister.
Ask anyone renting in a pressured market how many homes were actually built in their borough last year, and you will usually get a shrug. The numbers exist, but they sit in technical government releases that few people outside the sector ever open.
Park homes, caravans and lodges occupy a quiet corner of the housing market, yet for the people who live in them the legal fine print matters enormously. The single most important distinction in English law is between a mobile home someone lives in all year round and one used purely for holidays.
Just when the government's housebuilding record looked like its weakest flank, a leaked plan has emerged that could reshape who actually builds Britain's homes. According to details reported in the Guardian, housing secretary Steve Reed has been working up proposals for a state-owned housing developer — a publicly backed body that could borrow at lower rates than private developers and housing associations, and put the government directly into the business of building.
Major reforms to renting are supposed to change lives for the better, yet the people they affect most directly appear largely unprepared for them. Recent reporting suggests that tenants and landlords alike are either unsure what the Renters' Rights Act changes actually involve, or lack confidence in them once they do.
Andy Burnham's win in Makerfield has turned a local by-election into a national political moment, and with speculation mounting about his future in Labour's leadership, his housing views now carry real weight. For anyone renting, letting or investing in property, that matters.
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