Category: buy to let mortgages

According to official data from the government’s latest English Housing Survey, 71% of tenants in the Private Rented Sector (PRS) have “no issues” in affording their monthly rent, despite the bleaker picture painted by some tenants’ rights groups.

The English Housing Survey, published annually by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, collected data from more than 4.6 million households who rent privately.

As a widely anticipated national survey, many speculate about the direction of results long before they are announced – we offered our predictions on the topic some months ago.

Housing cost statistics

The survey found that, on average, private renters spend a third of their household income on rent as well as other housing costs, such as bills and council tax. This is a higher proportion than independent homeowners with a mortgage and social housing tenants. 

5% of tenants had arrears. While this figure would ideally be lower still, it is still a world away from the percentage of tenants that can pay rent regularly and not build up debt to their landlords. 

Evicted for no reason?

Much of the resistance against Section 21, the no-fault eviction legislation that Labour are currently working to remove, boils down to the perception that private landlords across the nation are kicking rule-abiding tenants out of their homes en-masse for little to no reason.

However, statistics from the survey show that only 9% of tenants who had moved in during the previous three years have either been asked to leave or been evicted. Over two-thirds of those cases were a result of the landlord wanting to sell or move into the property themselves.

The fact that many eviction cases seem to have clear and understandable motivations behind them paints a different picture to the narrative that Section 21 is widely misused by private landlords, however that is not to say that a minority may be doing so. 

However, the realisation that the government buy into this narrative and are basing major policy decisions around it is a huge source of stress for landlords. The results of this survey may represent some hope that the information presented will change minds in government.

Other findings from the survey

There is one finding from the survey that indicates room for improvement, which is that 21% of PRS properties did not meet the Decent Homes Standard.

However, this was a marginal improvement compared to the pre-COVID 2019 survey, which found that 23% did not meet the Decent Homes Standard.

It’s worth noting that the Decent Homes Standard is primarily used to assess the quality of social housing. There has been criticism that its criteria for a ‘decent home’ is not optimised to account for the variety of PRS properties out there.

Regardless, it is positive news that roughly four out of five PRS properties are considered decent by these metrics.