Welcome private landlords, don’t scare them off, warns agent

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A Scots letting agent has slammed the country’s relentless pressure on the PRS which is driving out much-needed landlords.

Glasgow-based Riccardo Giovanacci believes the trope of the rogue landlord is deeply embedded in much of the current thinking around housing needs but that the overwhelming majority of players in the PRS are wholly supportive of cleaning up and regulating the sector. Its positive contribution to the ongoing housing crisis can seem not only to be overlooked, but to be actively denigrated and obstructed, says the managing director of Newton Letting.

Prodigious rate

He tells Scottish Housing News that although news stories suggest landlords are pushing up rents at a prodigious rate, what is not generally known is that rents in Scotland are only now belatedly catching up to those in England.

“What landlords and agents have to do is be much better and much more proactive about explaining to tenants and their representative organisations the reasons behind increases, such as the greater costs that they face,” says Giovanacci. “The only way to ease the pressure on stock – and the consequent rent inflation – is to attract more landlords into the market, but little, if anything, is being done at political levels to encourage this. Quite the reverse – the inclination seems to be to drive them out.”

Current climate

While tax incentives would be the obvious way to stem the haemorrhaging of stock, that seems unlikely in the current climate, he adds. “Perhaps what might attract more entrants to the market is the reality that there are still some good deals to be done if people are prepared to look just that bit harder and, in inflationary times, the PRS is a much better bet than keeping depreciating money in the bank.”

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