Renters (Reform) Bill (Second sitting)

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 14th November 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Ms Buck]

Sorry to gently push you, but I ask again: is your view based on an actual report or evidence base, or is this anecdotal?

Ian Fletcher: It is anecdotal; there is no empirical evidence that I can give you.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

Q I have visited probably only four build-to-rent sites, but it feels to me that you are pitching slightly above the median. It also feels to me that, exactly as you described, the quality of the product is pretty good and therefore the opportunity for there being any mis-selling of what you are getting feels more limited than in the rest of the market, where I have seen egregious cases of people being mis-sold something.

It feels to me that it is likely that your tenants will stay and all the people who I have spoken to who provide this type of accommodation give me the feeling that the type of people that you are attracting and the type of property you are offering means that people do not walk in and walk back out again very quickly. I would imagine that lots of your tenancies last considerably—when I say “lots”, I mean that a very significant percentage of your tenancies last over a year.

Ian Fletcher: You were very welcome when you visited a build-to-rent building in Newcastle.

[Eddie Hughes]

I loved it.

Ian Fletcher: There are things to encourage the sector to provide long-term tenancies at the moment as well. As you will know, national planning guidance suggests that build to rent should be providing at least a minimum of a three-year tenancy.

I suppose the concern is that these are, as you found out from the site in Newcastle, very metropolitan and very popular areas.

[Eddie Hughes]

Very.

Ian Fletcher: You could end up in a situation where somebody has taken a two-month tenancy and is just using that as an opportunity to earn some money for themselves by renting it out at weekends for hen parties or things of that nature; it is almost sort of hotel accommodation in some respects. That is the concern of the sector—that you end up with a lot of churn in that respect.

I think there is also another concern. We have heard, quite rightly, from Ben and other evidence givers about the costs of moving from the tenant’s perspective. There are also significant costs from a landlord’s perspective where you are setting up a tenancy and then that is churned very quickly.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Q In some of the evidence to the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee, Grainger, a buy-to-let house builder, suggested that the triple-lock approach should be applied, whereby landlords are restricted so that they cannot raise rents by more than the lower of consumer price inflation or CPI, wage inflation or 5%. That was Grainger’s official position at the time.

I wonder whether you would support an idea that there should be some sort of matrix that prevents landlords from increasing rents above a certain level—that was nationally known, as it were, and that could be published by the Secretary of State, so that everyone had some security about what that ceiling is.

Ian Fletcher: Those remarks are specific to a particular context.