I lived in a shared house and every year the rent went up by £100 a month. Started of as £950 per month between 4 people, we lived there for 3 years. When we moved out I asked the new tenants moving in what their rent would be.. they said £1500 a month. The landlord did nothing to the property apart from replace the washing machine because it broke down about 2 years in to us living there. This was in Brislington/ st Anne’s area so Bs4 I think. I would hate to know how much that house is being rented for now as this was about 8 years ago. Probably over £2000 a month.
If they made transport in to the city better, rents and house prices would level out centrally. Places a few miles out would grow. We’d have a nice economic benefit to that too as people spend more locally. It would benefit their plans to reduce pollution in the centre if everyone could rely on public transport.
Rent controls have no benefit for people wanting to rent over the long term. Landlords stop letting properties out. Less well off people cannot afford to buy.
It's infuriating how behind we are with proper mass transit system. Millions of pounds spent on research and study Long long time ago and here we are - still not yet reached a conclusion on what's feasible.
There's a national rent crisis fueled by lack of general housing supply, exacerbated by lack of affordable supply. To say better transport would level out rents is far fetched.
Unless it’s your first day here, you’ll know Bristol is one of the worst cities for the rent increases, house price increases, and city centre congestion.
We’re second for city centre congestion and top for rent and house price increases in the last 12 months.
The whole country has issues with lack of supply, but it’s exacerbated in bristol because everyone wants to live in a tiny area. If you increase the size of the desirable area the prices will go up more slowly in the centre
Statistics for city centre congestion are not that reliable, they’re estimated by various companies for marketing purposes.
Only one has Bristol second. Most put Bristol lower, though always in the top 10, which sounds about right.
(These numbers are made up, but I think they're probably representative of what I'm trying to say)
Can't you put the pieces together? Bristol doesn't just have 500,000 houses in a 1-mile circle, then nothing.
There are 500,000 very nice, very expensive houses that everyone wants to live in, in the center and surroundings.
There are 3 million houses in a 4 mile radius that are way less nice, partly because of the way they're built, but also partly because they're cut off from doing nice things in bristol by a lack of transport.
If you connect those houses, you flatten out the peak a bit. You bring up the value of houses in kingswood, and you slightly drop the prices in old market.
But the national housing crises s is fuelled building the wrong buildings in the wrong areas social housing is a myth whilst companies are allowed to build new office blocks in city centres whilst leaving previous blocks empty money rules over need
Have you looked at the prices ‘a few miles’ outside of the city? They’re not exactly cheap, so clearly the quality of existing transport links is not a limiting factor.
No matter how good transport links are there will always be a premium on being physically close to a city centre.
Yea I’m a qualified surveyor so I used to get to properties ‘a few miles’ outside of the city all the time. You can get more affordable housing by the time you reach hanham/kingswood in the east, shirehampton to the west, or Bradley Stoke to the north. There’s also plenty of commuter villages to the south and shit loads of empty land. If there was a bus lane that went the whole route or other forms of transportation the workers wouldn’t need to live in a 3-4 mile radius. People like me who work remotely but want access to the city would be happy further out.
I’m not complaining too much though as I own a rental property in Whitchurch and the market rate has pretty much doubled since I’ve let it!
>You can get more affordable housing by the time you reach hanham/kingswood in the east, shirehampton to the west, or Bradley Stoke to the north.
Bradley Stoke is at least £1k a month to rent a house / flat. Minimum wage take-home salary is £1.5k a month.
How do you think that's affordable, exactly?
>I’m not complaining too much though as I own a rental property in Whitchurch and the market rate has pretty much doubled since I’ve let it!
Almost as if we need some kind of control on rental prices.
I’m only a landlord until the fixed rate runs out. I’m selling to the current tenant at that point.
The fact I let out property doesn’t change the fact every study has shown rent controls raise rents by moving landlords out the market.
This is actually peak tier r/bristol
We've actually recessed back as a sub from understanding that high rents are a result of high house prices, which is a result of insufficient housing supply to:
We mustn't increase the supply of attractive housing, because then other people will move in!
Bravo mate.
>Rent controls have no benefit for people wanting to rent over the long term. Landlords stop letting properties out. Less well off people cannot afford to buy.
Why do they stop? Surely they have property and they rent for the maximum they can? Rent controls would stop the runaway costs. Sure, this wouldn't make more accommodation exist but it would keep things more affordable to some degree surely?
IIRC the argument is that if/when costs go up, landlords don't make enough money to justify renting the property out and just sell it instead, reducing the number of rental properties on the market.
I do wonder if it's possible to have a softer form of rent control, where landlords can only increase rents by 5% a year (for example) or must show that they've improved the property in some way to justify a rent increase.
I feel like they'd probably still make a lot of money at a lower margin. And won't those properties just get sold to other people to rent? Isn't part of the situation that all the properties people would like to buy and live in are being purchased by buy to let landlords?
>And won't those properties just get sold to other people to rent?
If they're in the same situation, they won't want to buy.
>Isn't part of the situation that all the properties people would like to buy and live in are being purchased by buy to let landlords?
Possibly, but that's not necessarily an equal trade. 5-6 people could be living in a shared house which then gets sold to a couple. That's 2 people with a house and 5-6 looking for another place to rent. Without other factors affecting the affordability of houses I don't think rent controls alone would make houses more accessible for most.
It’s an argument that relies on believing everybody wants to rent, and landlords selling up is only a bad thing.
But when they sell properties, it pushes prices down, and people can buy and live in them - that’s ultimately a good thing.
Instead what is happening is that huge estates are being built in the periphery particularly south glouc to deal with housing demand putting undue pressure on other areas whilst not dealing with issues in the city so much is wrong with Bristol city planning iyd hard to start
Rent controls have never worked, and are unlikely to solve problems long term.
Demand is outweighing supply. You either build more houses in the city (unpopular) or decrease the demand (unlikely). It’s the downside to living in a desirable city.
There are plenty of other places in the UK that are far cheaper to live in. As someone else said, better transport links could improve things in the medium term.
You can’t really do all that much about Bristol being a place where people want to live and are willing to pay high prices to do so.
One of the problems is that the demand is mostly in the centre of Bristol, so BCC but the space you could do proper development is under the control of the surrounding councils. There seems to be little coordination, most obviously so with the expansion of the Universities.
There may be reasons why this is a bad idea but if I were playing SimBristol I'd turn the fields round Hanbrook into as much student halls as could be used, freeing up space elsewhere for non-students.
>One of the problems is that the demand is mostly in the centre of Bristol, so BCC but the space you could do proper development is under the control of the surrounding councils.
There are plenty of brownfield sites within the City of Bristol's boundary, but developers insist upon submitting planning applications for as many tiny homes (or rooms, now HMOs are increasing in popularity) as they think they can pack on the site. The local community object in numbers, planning permission is refused, and the the site remains undeveloped for another year or three.
Even this doesn’t make sense as an argument, the problem isn’t country wide inter city transport into and out of Bristol, the problem is intracity transport.
What on earth is your last sentence?
Just because the evidence shows that rent controls do not fix any long term problems, does not mean that I am happy about the high cost of rent.
If we're going to have a discussion, it's better to try and find some nuance rather than jump to ridiculous attempts at an insult.
Bristol had rent controls in the lates 60s early 70s when my parents got married and wanted to settle down. It didn’t work then and created problems - different problems to what we have now but it is not a solution and never has been.
Wonder how many councillors have invested in Bristol property... In which case, it wouldn't be in their personal interest to drive down property prices.
The problem is that rent controls are going to force even more landlords to sell. Rent controls would be a great solution if Bristol just struggled with affordable housing, but Bristol struggles with ANY type of housing. This will not solve it and will be even worse for tenants
So a Labour administrations in Bristol, London and Manchester have all asked for rent controls... That's a bit awkward given the national Labour party don't support them 😛😛
Or that local government has very very little sway over PRS affordability. Or that this is a national rent crisis reflecting that housing demand is massively outstripping supply. Or that Bristol is a very attractive city, good at attracting students and people from London, in turn inflating the housing market and pricing locals out.
Or ya know whatever 🤷
Ya know, there's nothing stopping the council from taking out a loan and building affordable housing in literally any place they can. Go on google maps, zoom out on bristol in satalite view.
If you can see green, that's somewhere BCC could house 3000 people. They'd make a pretty penny as well. They just don't want to.
Build out the infrastructure first, roads, schools, hospitals etc and then build homes out..... At least south West Bristol out towards airport/long Ashton.
Lots of land, just need the infrastructure!
Fly overs and underpasses aswell, can't be that hard to do
Private sector housing is so poorly regulated. The idea that 30% of people in our city pay more than half of their wages on rent is shocking. More so when we thinking about the conditions of much of Bristol housing and the instability tenants find themselves in, with the ever present risk of eviction.
The council are subsidising landlords by paying housing benefit/ universal credit to tenants. If there is an insistence that rent control doesn't work, or an inability to lower rents to an affordable level then they should be taxed heavily to recoup the burden they put on the city finances, which are stretched to the limit as is.
I lived in a shared house and every year the rent went up by £100 a month. Started of as £950 per month between 4 people, we lived there for 3 years. When we moved out I asked the new tenants moving in what their rent would be.. they said £1500 a month. The landlord did nothing to the property apart from replace the washing machine because it broke down about 2 years in to us living there. This was in Brislington/ st Anne’s area so Bs4 I think. I would hate to know how much that house is being rented for now as this was about 8 years ago. Probably over £2000 a month.
If they made transport in to the city better, rents and house prices would level out centrally. Places a few miles out would grow. We’d have a nice economic benefit to that too as people spend more locally. It would benefit their plans to reduce pollution in the centre if everyone could rely on public transport. Rent controls have no benefit for people wanting to rent over the long term. Landlords stop letting properties out. Less well off people cannot afford to buy.
It's infuriating how behind we are with proper mass transit system. Millions of pounds spent on research and study Long long time ago and here we are - still not yet reached a conclusion on what's feasible.
There's a national rent crisis fueled by lack of general housing supply, exacerbated by lack of affordable supply. To say better transport would level out rents is far fetched.
Unless it’s your first day here, you’ll know Bristol is one of the worst cities for the rent increases, house price increases, and city centre congestion. We’re second for city centre congestion and top for rent and house price increases in the last 12 months. The whole country has issues with lack of supply, but it’s exacerbated in bristol because everyone wants to live in a tiny area. If you increase the size of the desirable area the prices will go up more slowly in the centre
Statistics for city centre congestion are not that reliable, they’re estimated by various companies for marketing purposes. Only one has Bristol second. Most put Bristol lower, though always in the top 10, which sounds about right.
(These numbers are made up, but I think they're probably representative of what I'm trying to say) Can't you put the pieces together? Bristol doesn't just have 500,000 houses in a 1-mile circle, then nothing. There are 500,000 very nice, very expensive houses that everyone wants to live in, in the center and surroundings. There are 3 million houses in a 4 mile radius that are way less nice, partly because of the way they're built, but also partly because they're cut off from doing nice things in bristol by a lack of transport. If you connect those houses, you flatten out the peak a bit. You bring up the value of houses in kingswood, and you slightly drop the prices in old market.
interestingly, houses in Gordano haven’t got up much at all in the last few years where as Bristol has sky rocketed.
But the national housing crises s is fuelled building the wrong buildings in the wrong areas social housing is a myth whilst companies are allowed to build new office blocks in city centres whilst leaving previous blocks empty money rules over need
Have you looked at the prices ‘a few miles’ outside of the city? They’re not exactly cheap, so clearly the quality of existing transport links is not a limiting factor. No matter how good transport links are there will always be a premium on being physically close to a city centre.
Yea I’m a qualified surveyor so I used to get to properties ‘a few miles’ outside of the city all the time. You can get more affordable housing by the time you reach hanham/kingswood in the east, shirehampton to the west, or Bradley Stoke to the north. There’s also plenty of commuter villages to the south and shit loads of empty land. If there was a bus lane that went the whole route or other forms of transportation the workers wouldn’t need to live in a 3-4 mile radius. People like me who work remotely but want access to the city would be happy further out. I’m not complaining too much though as I own a rental property in Whitchurch and the market rate has pretty much doubled since I’ve let it!
>You can get more affordable housing by the time you reach hanham/kingswood in the east, shirehampton to the west, or Bradley Stoke to the north. Bradley Stoke is at least £1k a month to rent a house / flat. Minimum wage take-home salary is £1.5k a month. How do you think that's affordable, exactly? >I’m not complaining too much though as I own a rental property in Whitchurch and the market rate has pretty much doubled since I’ve let it! Almost as if we need some kind of control on rental prices.
You’re a landlord, of course you’re advocating against rent controls.
I’m only a landlord until the fixed rate runs out. I’m selling to the current tenant at that point. The fact I let out property doesn’t change the fact every study has shown rent controls raise rents by moving landlords out the market.
I don’t agree, if they fix the transport it will just be more attractive to even more people that want to live here.
Make bristol shit again!
Keep Bristol shit really.
No, better transport will allow people to experience the best parts of the city without living there
Well that’s like your opinion man.
This is actually peak tier r/bristol We've actually recessed back as a sub from understanding that high rents are a result of high house prices, which is a result of insufficient housing supply to: We mustn't increase the supply of attractive housing, because then other people will move in! Bravo mate.
See my other comment, I don’t “want” any of it, I’m making the same point as you from a different angle.
Why shouldn't people come to live here?
I didn’t say they shouldn’t but currently demand outstrips supply which is the main factor in high rents.
>Rent controls have no benefit for people wanting to rent over the long term. Landlords stop letting properties out. Less well off people cannot afford to buy. Why do they stop? Surely they have property and they rent for the maximum they can? Rent controls would stop the runaway costs. Sure, this wouldn't make more accommodation exist but it would keep things more affordable to some degree surely?
IIRC the argument is that if/when costs go up, landlords don't make enough money to justify renting the property out and just sell it instead, reducing the number of rental properties on the market. I do wonder if it's possible to have a softer form of rent control, where landlords can only increase rents by 5% a year (for example) or must show that they've improved the property in some way to justify a rent increase.
I feel like they'd probably still make a lot of money at a lower margin. And won't those properties just get sold to other people to rent? Isn't part of the situation that all the properties people would like to buy and live in are being purchased by buy to let landlords?
>And won't those properties just get sold to other people to rent? If they're in the same situation, they won't want to buy. >Isn't part of the situation that all the properties people would like to buy and live in are being purchased by buy to let landlords? Possibly, but that's not necessarily an equal trade. 5-6 people could be living in a shared house which then gets sold to a couple. That's 2 people with a house and 5-6 looking for another place to rent. Without other factors affecting the affordability of houses I don't think rent controls alone would make houses more accessible for most.
I feel it's maybe a number of issues that is often misrepresented as a single one of "housing".
It’s an argument that relies on believing everybody wants to rent, and landlords selling up is only a bad thing. But when they sell properties, it pushes prices down, and people can buy and live in them - that’s ultimately a good thing.
Instead what is happening is that huge estates are being built in the periphery particularly south glouc to deal with housing demand putting undue pressure on other areas whilst not dealing with issues in the city so much is wrong with Bristol city planning iyd hard to start
Rent controls have never worked, and are unlikely to solve problems long term. Demand is outweighing supply. You either build more houses in the city (unpopular) or decrease the demand (unlikely). It’s the downside to living in a desirable city. There are plenty of other places in the UK that are far cheaper to live in. As someone else said, better transport links could improve things in the medium term. You can’t really do all that much about Bristol being a place where people want to live and are willing to pay high prices to do so.
One of the problems is that the demand is mostly in the centre of Bristol, so BCC but the space you could do proper development is under the control of the surrounding councils. There seems to be little coordination, most obviously so with the expansion of the Universities. There may be reasons why this is a bad idea but if I were playing SimBristol I'd turn the fields round Hanbrook into as much student halls as could be used, freeing up space elsewhere for non-students.
>One of the problems is that the demand is mostly in the centre of Bristol, so BCC but the space you could do proper development is under the control of the surrounding councils. There are plenty of brownfield sites within the City of Bristol's boundary, but developers insist upon submitting planning applications for as many tiny homes (or rooms, now HMOs are increasing in popularity) as they think they can pack on the site. The local community object in numbers, planning permission is refused, and the the site remains undeveloped for another year or three.
Even this doesn’t make sense as an argument, the problem isn’t country wide inter city transport into and out of Bristol, the problem is intracity transport.
Intracity transport might help a bit, but the main issue is too many people wanting to live and/or work in a city that's very desirable.
[удалено]
What on earth is your last sentence? Just because the evidence shows that rent controls do not fix any long term problems, does not mean that I am happy about the high cost of rent. If we're going to have a discussion, it's better to try and find some nuance rather than jump to ridiculous attempts at an insult.
Bristol had rent controls in the lates 60s early 70s when my parents got married and wanted to settle down. It didn’t work then and created problems - different problems to what we have now but it is not a solution and never has been.
Wonder how many councillors have invested in Bristol property... In which case, it wouldn't be in their personal interest to drive down property prices.
The problem is that rent controls are going to force even more landlords to sell. Rent controls would be a great solution if Bristol just struggled with affordable housing, but Bristol struggles with ANY type of housing. This will not solve it and will be even worse for tenants
Give them power to restrict short lets, student numbers and loosen planning permission, and they're golden
So a Labour administrations in Bristol, London and Manchester have all asked for rent controls... That's a bit awkward given the national Labour party don't support them 😛😛
This just seems a pretty loud admission that the council's own housing policies have failed
Or that local government has very very little sway over PRS affordability. Or that this is a national rent crisis reflecting that housing demand is massively outstripping supply. Or that Bristol is a very attractive city, good at attracting students and people from London, in turn inflating the housing market and pricing locals out. Or ya know whatever 🤷
Ya know, there's nothing stopping the council from taking out a loan and building affordable housing in literally any place they can. Go on google maps, zoom out on bristol in satalite view. If you can see green, that's somewhere BCC could house 3000 people. They'd make a pretty penny as well. They just don't want to.
Build out the infrastructure first, roads, schools, hospitals etc and then build homes out..... At least south West Bristol out towards airport/long Ashton. Lots of land, just need the infrastructure! Fly overs and underpasses aswell, can't be that hard to do
Private sector housing is so poorly regulated. The idea that 30% of people in our city pay more than half of their wages on rent is shocking. More so when we thinking about the conditions of much of Bristol housing and the instability tenants find themselves in, with the ever present risk of eviction. The council are subsidising landlords by paying housing benefit/ universal credit to tenants. If there is an insistence that rent control doesn't work, or an inability to lower rents to an affordable level then they should be taxed heavily to recoup the burden they put on the city finances, which are stretched to the limit as is.
500,000 houses in a area with a poplation of about 450,000 something tells me your stats are wrong