Some women are turning to escort work to meet basic housing costs, charities warn
Women are increasingly being forced to engage in “survival sex” because of the cost of living crisis amid worsening conditions for Britain’s most vulnerable.
Charities warn rising costs paired with years of underfunding mean women, including those with trauma and mental health issues, are having to turn to sex in exchange for housing or to meet other basic needs.
Continue reading...Sadiq Khan describes figures from City Hall analysis as a scandal, with London the worst affected region
Private landlords in England are earning £1.6bn a year in housing benefit in return for providing “non-decent” homes, in what Sadiq Khan has described as a scandal.
The capital is the worst affected region, with £500m in welfare money going on privately rented homes that are in a state of disrepair, cold, damp, lacking modern facilities or do not meet health and safety standards, according to City Hall analysis.
Continue reading...Rics monthly poll shows new buyer inquiries in UK are flat as volume of agreed sales falls further
UK house prices are expected to continue to fall despite surveyors’ expectations that the housing market will stabilise over the next 12 months, a study has shown.
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors’ (Rics) monthly survey, which measures the proportion of surveyors reporting new buyer inquiries against those saying they fell, found the net balance was -29% in March, almost flat on the -30% recorded in February.
Continue reading...Average monthly cost of owning 3-bed home is £500 a year less than renting, but the gap is narrowing
Homeowners in the UK are nearly £500 better off a year than renters, according to new research from Halifax.
The average monthly cost of owning a three-bed home for first-time buyers is now £971, which is £42 lower than the average cost of renting an equivalent property, the mortgage lender said. Renters pay on average £1,013 each month – 4% more.
Continue reading...Bill payers stand to collectively save billions if minimum standard raised to a C rating, research suggests
Raising the minimum standard of energy efficiency to a C rating for privately rented homes would save bill payers about £570 a year, research has found.
This would amount to annual savings totalling £1.75bn across the UK, according to the thinktank E3G in a report called Cutting Energy Bills and Raising Standards for Private Renters.
Continue reading...Data suggests private tenants almost three times as likely to be exposed to damp as social housing tenants
Almost a quarter of private rentals in England fail to meet the decent home standards, government figures have revealed, meaning they pose a risk to health, are in disrepair, have poor facilities, or are poorly insulated.
Data from the English Housing Survey, released on Thursday, highlights the poor state of the country’s private rental sector, with 23% of private rentals failing to meet the decent homes standard in 2021-22. That compares with just 13% of owner-occupied homes, and 10% of social housing.
Continue reading...Housing secretary says landlords have been ‘defensive’ over dangerous conditions, after death of Awaab Ishak
Michael Gove has accused social landlords of “complacency” and putting bureaucracy above tenants, as he stepped up his demands for higher standards after the death of two-year-old Awaab Ishak from long-term exposure to mould.
The housing secretary told MPs too many landlords had shown “defensive behaviour” when receiving complaints about squalor, but also admitted the extent of dangerous conditions was so great that more funding may be needed fix the problem – potentially setting up a clash with the chancellor.
He and the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, have commissioned a review of council tax, which he described as the “second-most unpopular tax in the country”. He promised more detail in the new year.
The government’s target to end rough sleeping is in doubt, with Gove describing it as “a big worry”.
Families hosting refugees from Ukraine will hear within weeks whether they will get continuing payments.
Disabled people in high-rise buildings should have personal evacuation plans, as recommended by the Grenfell Tower public inquiry, despite the Home Office rejecting the call.
Continue reading...Experts say Australia is ‘definitely still in a rental crisis’ but there is only so much people can pay
Twelve months ago, during the height of rental market demand, Carley Eder was issuing lease renewals with price increases of up to $80 a week. Now, her clients will be lucky to have tenants approve $25.
“The market has definitely shifted,” the Central Coast rentals principal said.
Continue reading...High ownership of multiple residences among state MPs has prompted accusations they are ‘blind’ to the escalating rental crisis
More than half of MPs in the New South Wales lower house own multiple residential properties, prompting concerns the state’s politicians are “blind” to record increases in rental prices.
Amid a fresh push for reform to the rental market, an analysis of MP disclosure records show landlords are disproportionately represented on Macquarie Street.
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Continue reading...RICS report says rise in repossessions will add to supply while soaring interest rates price buyers out of market
Homeowners will struggle to make mortgage repayments and repossessions will rise next year as soaring interest rates and falling prices mark the end of the UK’s 13-year housing market boom, according to a sobering report from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS).
The number of inquiries from potential homebuyers fell for a fifth month in a row in September, while sales fell to the lowest level since May 2020 when the housing market all but ground to a halt during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, it said.
Continue reading...It’s a landlord’s market, as hundreds queue to rent properties with negotiable prices that many simply can’t afford
Peak housing bodies are calling for nationally consistent rental laws to crack down on bidding wars putting pressure on tenants in a shrinking market.
Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania have introduced reforms to ban rent bidding – the process of negotiating the price of a rental by advertising a property within a “range” or without a fixed cost.
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Continue reading...Mortgage market meltdown has left many amateur landlords facing a stark choice: to raise rents or sell up
Britain’s amateur landlords have benefited from years of runaway house price inflation, while intense competition among tenants has sent rents soaring. Now, thanks to the meltdown in the mortgage market triggered by last week’s disastrous mini-budget, many face a financial cliff edge.
Figures shared with the Guardian show that the number of new buy-to-let mortgage deals available has plummeted by 55% in less than a week as lenders frantically pulled products and in many cases increased prices.
Continue reading...Sir Bob Kerslake calls on government to protect at-risk tenants as it did during pandemic
The former head of the civil service has warned of a looming “catastrophic” homelessness crisis caused by the cost of living unless the government reintroduces the eviction ban that protected tenants during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Sir Bob Kerslake, who chairs the Kerslake Commission on Homelessness and Rough Sleeping, said a failure to act “could see this become a homelessness as well as an economic crisis and the results could be catastrophic; with all the good achieved in reducing street homelessness since the pandemic lost, and any hope of the government meeting its manifesto pledge to end rough sleeping by 2024 gone”.
Continue reading...Property managers are being advised to provide notices to leave when issuing fixed-term leases
Queensland’s housing department says “best practice” advice given by the state’s peak real estate body that would see every renter issued with notice to leave at the start of their lease is “disappointing” and “not in the spirit” of rent reforms.
But the tenants’ union is calling for the state government to go further, urging them to restrict the issuing of “Form 12s” and make it harder for renters to be removed without reason.
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Continue reading...A North Adelaide studio apartment has been ridiculed online, with some likening it to ‘your first custom house in the Sims’
Convenience: in every sense of the word, 4/201 O’Connell Street has it.
Ablute without ever having to take your eyes off the television, or interrupting your dinner party conversation.
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Continue reading...Agent says tenants must ensure ‘adequate ventilation’ after record-breaking rains spread mould earlier in the year – even as bitter cold arrives
Tenants in Sydney have been told by their real estate agency it is “critical” they regularly open windows during winter to restrict the spread of mould.
CobdenHayson emailed tenants on 1 June with recommendations “to help you prepare for the winter season”.
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Continue reading...Renters are cutting back on other essentials, falling behind on payments and facing eviction
Andrew Amuso, a single father of a seven-year-old child in Phoenix, Arizona, has lived in the same apartment for eight years.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, his rent was about $900 a month. Last year, it was increased by $276 a month to $1,176 a month, and he has received a lease renewal this year with another large increase, to $1,585.65 a month.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Many tenants aged over 65 are already struggling, Independent Age research finds
Almost two-thirds of tenants over 65 have cut back on their general spending as a result of the cost of living crisis, and campaigners are warning that older people who do not own their homes are particularly vulnerable to rising bills.
Research shared with Guardian Money by the charity Independent Age puts the spotlight on the struggles of older tenants who are battling to keep up with rising household costs.
Continue reading...Queensland Council of Social Services says social housing waiting list could blow out by 10,000
The Queensland and federal governments are trading blows over the state’s housing after another report on the crisis.
A new report from the Queensland Council of Social Services (Qcoss) says more than 50,000 households are currently on the waiting list for social housing.
Continue reading...Shelter says a private tenant is handed notice every seven minutes despite government promise to ban practice in April 2019
More than 200,000 private renters have been served eviction notices without doing anything wrong in the three years since the government first promised to ban the practice, housing campaigners have claimed.
Every seven minutes a tenant has been landed with a no-fault eviction notice since Theresa May’s Conservative government first committed to scrap them in April 2019, according to research by Shelter, the housing charity.
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