Many experts in the UK property market believe that rolling out rent controls is a populist move. Instead of helping renters, it would end up hurting them as rent controls can distort the rental housing market. Rent control is not a new thing in the UK. Regardless of the form it was introduced earlier, the approach has always resulted in creating poorer quality homes for rent and in vastly diminished numbers. In some cases, it has also resulted in rent increases.

A leading figure from the UK property industry has exposed the myths behind the calls for private rent controls. The Director of Policy at the British Property Federation, Ian Fletcher, has slammed the calls for controlling private rents by London Mayor Sadiq Khan. Fletcher states that rent controls are nothing but a cost-free and populist way of putting money into the pocket of voters, and it doesn't cost the state anything. The statistics put forward by politicians supporting rent control are confusing. Whilst the Mayor says rents are rising at 16 percent, the City Hall Statistical Unit puts the figure at a mere four percent in London and 4.2 percent in the rest of the country, quoting official national statistics.

According to Fletcher, rent control will only benefit those with homes. If they are good tenants, the owners will moderate their rents anyway, as they know that keeping a good tenant far outweighs the cost of looking for a new, unknown, and unpredictable tenant. Rent controls can spell bad news for those trying to rent a home for the first time. The state-funded rent sector, touted as affordable, is always short of homes. On the contrary, the private rented sector has provided homes to more people in the past decade.

Fletcher puts forth one situation in which rent controls can work. The government must aim to offset the reduction in rented homes caused by rent controls by increasing housing elsewhere in the economy. The state must fund social housing on a large scale to counter the problem of a shrinking private rented sector. Fletcher says it is not easy to initiate such a move as he has not come across a politician who can use taxes to start a social housing expansion project.

The BPF chief has also criticized the habit of what he calls a bidding war amongst populist politicians aimed at wooing voters who rent.

The BPF chief has also criticized the habit of what he calls a bidding war amongst populist politicians aimed at wooing voters who rent.

It also opens up the nightmare scenario of politicians getting into a bidding war over rent controls, with rents driven to a level that bears no relationship to what is sufficient for investors to make a return or what it costs to fund the upkeep of private rented sector properties. One person advocates 3.0 percent rent rises, another 2.0 percent, and then another 1.0 percent. It is not hard to imagine, Fletcher concluded. As a leading operator of homes Built to Rent, we at The Ringley Group are doing our utmost not only to facilitate the building of new homes for rent but also to agree with corporate landlords not to put the rents before the happiness of the residents within.