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Sir Keir Starmer has said Labour would pass new laws to prevent rental “bidding wars”, if his party wins the election.
During a special edition of BBC’s Question Time, the Labour leader said he wanted to stop landlords “ripping tenants off” by encouraging them to offer to pay higher rent to secure a property.
Sir Keir said: “We can pass legislation to say you can’t do it because it is driving rents through the roof and it’s not fair on people.”
However, pressed on how new legislation would work, Sir Keir did not give further details.
Pressed on whether private landlords would have to take the first offer they were given, he did not answer directly, saying: “We have to have a scheme in place to stop them driving the rent up and up.”
Earlier this year, Labour proposed changes to the Renters (Reform) Bill aiming at preventing bidding wars.
These included requiring landlords and letting agents to state the amount of rent payable when advertising a property and preventing them from encouraging prospective tenants to offer to pay more than this.
However, a prospective tenant would not be prohibited from offering to pay more than the advertised rent under the proposals.
This is similar to legislation introduced in New Zealand in 2021.
A survey carried out by the New Economics Foundation think tank last year suggested four in 10 households renting privately in England who had moved in the last year were paying above the advertised rent for their property.
On average, it found these renters were paying £1,200 a year above the advertised rate.
Meanwhile, competition among renters is so intense there are an average of 20 requests to view each available property, according to data commissioned by the BBC last year.
Campaigners say this increases the pressure on prospective tenants to offer to pay a higher rent to secure a property, driving up prices.
The Renters’ Reform Coalition welcomed Sir Keir’s promise to ban bidding wars.
The group’s campaign manager Tom Darling said: “In order to be effective it will need to be coupled with more regulation of estate agents, who often initiate bidding wars, pitting renter against renter, preying on our desperation for a safe, secure home in order to try to squeeze every last bit of profit they can.”
However, he said bidding wars were “only part of the problem” and renters also needed protection from rent increases during their tenancy.
He added: “That’s why we’ve called for a cap on rent hikes linked to inflation and wage growth to close this loophole.”
Labour’s manifesto also pledges to “empower [tenants] to challenge unreasonable rent increases” and immediately abolish no-fault evictions.
Legislation to prevent landlords evicting tenants without a reason was promised in the 2019 Conservative election manifesto.
However, the government ran out of time to pass the law before the election was called in May, with critics blaming opposition from some backbench Tory MPs for slowing its progress.
The party has recommitted to banning no-fault evictions in its latest manifesto, alongside reforming the court system to enable landlords to evict tenants when they have grounds to do so.
The Liberal Democrats have also pledged to ban non fault-evictions, as well as make three-year tenancies the default and create a national register of licensed landlords.
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