There are always a lot of headlines regarding the private rented sector. To make things easier for our readers we have done a quick round up of the most important stories from the last week!
Renters spend £1.1m more in their lifetimes
New research released by home builder Strata has revealed that the cost of renting a home over the course of your lifetime is likely to be a massive £1.1m more, on average, than if you were to buy your own property.
Understandably, rental payments are often higher than mortgage repayments for the same property and so it makes sense that the lifetime cost of paying rent is also higher. In research released by the Land Registry the average price for a first time buyer home is £212,079 with a 16% deposit. Roughly £7,900 of purchase fees and other costs such as stamp duty are included with solicitors’ bills and moving costs which, assuming buyers rent for an initial nine year period, means they would spend nearly £432,000.
That is compared with the research estimate that renters spend on average £909 per month on renting, this would amount to a lifetime total of £1.6m.
House price growth remains steady
Halifax has released its latest data detailing the housing market trends and figures for the three months to August 2018 and it shows a steady increase in house price growth, which was at 3.7% when compared to the same period the previous year.
Monthly price rises were slower at just 0.1% but once again remain steady in comparison to some price drops previously. Average house prices barely changed at £229,958.
Russell Galley, managing director of Halifax, said: “House prices picked up in August, with the annual rate of growth rising from 3.3% in July to 3.7%. With the average house price now £229,958 prices in the three months to August were also 1.9% higher than in the previous quarter. While the pace of employment growth has recently slowed, a low unemployment rate and a gradual pickup in wage growth are helping to support household finances.”
Calls for a property MOT
There have been increasing calls from MPs in recent weeks to introduce some type of property MOT system that would require landlords to have their properties checked over once a year to ensure that they are safe and inhabitable.
A report released by MPs stated that “poor conditions are a problem at both ends of the market and conditions get worse the longer tenants are in their property, indicating that poor property management rather than old housing stock is the root cause.”
It recommends that landlords look to have their maintenance performed by professionals or agents that are able to provide continuous services that allow tenants to get regular property updates to ensure good standards within the property.
The likelihood of such a measure being adopted by the government is, as yet, unclear as the popularity for such proposals is not yet known. Dr Julie Rugg, one of the paper’s authors, said “’We need to see a fundamental rethink of the role renting plays in our housing market and a comprehensive strategy to ensure it meets the needs of all those who live there,”
