Rents are eating up a growing proportion of people’s incomes in Brighton and Hove, according to a new report.
The report blames the rise in rents on a shortage of mortgage lending and says that as a result more and more tenants are trapped in increasingly high-rent homes.
Savills, the estate agent, said that rents cost about 47 per cent of average income in Brighton and Hove. This compares with a national average of 31 per cent.
Similar rental hotspots include London, where the figure is 53 per cent, and Oxford, where it is 57 per cent.
Lucian Cook, a research director at Savills, said: “Not only are more people renting, and for longer, but the social profile of tenants is changing and broadening.
“Private renting is becoming a way of life for a much wider spectrum of people.
“And the number of tenants ‘trapped’ in the sector shows no sign of decreasing.”
The research suggested that low consumer confidence and weak mortgage lending had led to renting hotspots around the country, such as Brighton and Hove.
This was down to limits to the number of properties available.
Local factors include the geographic constraints of the Downs and the sea as well as a historically low level of new building.
In addition, Brighton and Hove City Council has recently made it harder to convert family homes into student digs.
And the licensing of shared houses has become more expensive and rigorous in the areas nearest Sussex University and Brighton University.
Savill’s are winding us up!
The more frequently the likes of Savill’s turn over a property, the more expensive it becomes and the higher any rents payable to live in it will be.
‘Churn’ became fashionable as a way of making money out of buying and selling properties and Estate Agents could not have been happier to promote this as every sale generated fees and commissions.
The lack of any capital gains tax liability on the sale of a house designated as a primary residence and ‘lived in’ – even if only to do it up and sell it on, became a viable career path, enthusiastically pursued from the early 1980’s for as long as possible and I personally know of two people who then retired on the proceeds to live in luxury in Spain.
This is why we are where we are.
Tax houses heavily that are sold within 5 years of purchase and perhaps introduce a sliding scale of taxes for house sales based on length of ownership. The result will be stable communities and reduction in speculator activity.
Nobody will support this idea, because virtually everyone fancies being ‘on the ladder’ to do it themselves! Easy money, destroying the fabric of community life and cohesion and pricing more and more people into cardboard city.