Chancellor’s Budget failed on housing

Tenants will continue to face a rental supply crisis as the Chancellor’s Budget has today failed to boost the supply of privately rented homes warns the National Landlords Association. They claim that following years of tax hikes on the private rental sector, organisations including the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, Hamptons International, Zoopla and ARLA Propertymark have warned that rents will rise as the demand for such homes outstrips supply. The Residential Landlords Association and the National Landlords Association are both warning that this will only make it much harder for tenants to save for a home of their own. Professor David Miles, a former member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee has warned that “aspiring first-time buyers are hardly helped by squeezing the supply of rental property and driving rents up.” Both organisations had called for the Chancellor to scrap the stamp duty on the purchase of additional homes where landlords invest in property adding to the net supply of housing such as new build properties or bringing long term empty homes back into use. In a joint statement, the Residential Landlords Association and the National Landlords Association said: “The Government is undermining its own efforts to boost home ownership through its attacks on the private rented sector. By choking-off supply and making renting more expensive it is tenants who are hardest hit. ” “Ministers need to wake up to the reality of the damage their tax measures are doing to the private rented sector and support landlords to provide the new homes for private rent we desperately need.”