Tenants 'forced into bidding wars' as demand for rented homes soars

having a house should be treated as a human right um not something we have to bid for or beg for it's not just from like cowboy landlords it's from leasing agents and it's from it's all over the place and it's just penny pinching for the sake of it finding a home to rent is getting harder and more expensive once you get yourself in front of a landlord or a letting agent you feel desperate to be like please just let me get a flat we've got to live somewhere demand for rented accommodation is two and a half times higher in scotland than the rest of the uk nearly 80 per cent of the country's one-bedroom flats are let out within the first month and in some cities half the properties are gone within a week even securing a viewing for a flat one tenant said that she was in a queue of about 70 people well i've been in industry for over 30 years and i have not seen the levels of demand as it is at the moment letting agents say they've never been busier but with fewer rentals coming on the market in the first place the pool of available homes is falling fast demand is well outstripping supply many of them are planning to exit the sector they're just feeling they no longer want to be a landlord here in scotland with a shortage of properties and rising demand some prospective tenants are being asked to bid against each other and pay more than the needed competitor to secure the house or flat i was looking for a flat like it was my full-time job like as soon as the flat goes up within a week it's gone or all the viewing slots are booked up jess found it difficult enough just to get in front of a landlord when searching for a new home late last year after finally arranging a viewing she turned up to find she wasn't the only one being considered we were ushered around the flat very quickly just in and out of the rooms very fast and then we were all told to gather outside the front of the flat in a like a semi-circle around the landlords he just said what well what do you what do we do now what do you want to do everyone was looking at each other a lot um you could tell we were all sort of taken aback by it in a little bit um uncomfortable there were some people there who were clearly in like a desperate situation and really needed a place to live and they started offering you know i'll transfer you 500 pounds right now and showing them their banking on his phone and someone else chipping in and saying no i'll transfer you 700 it was it was um a little bit chaotic you see the moods in the room at the time was desperate amongst the other people that were there but how were you feeling i i sat out loud this is so uncomfortable i just walked away i could tell there were people there that they needed a place to live and then as i walked off i actually heard behind me it was sort of like a celebration that someone had gone the landlord was like oh one down desperate for a new home some have little option but to pay over the advertised cost it's incredibly frustrating but there wasn't any other solution at the time [Music] jay moved into this two-bedroom flat in aberdeen last year he shares the small space with a flatmate so this is where i work from home that's for the new job then and here it is indeed a new job a lot of time in here yeah yeah a lot of time during the application process he was asked to increase the amount he would pay in monthly rent or risk losing the place altogether when i thought i'd secured the flat for the price it was listed for they then said that someone else had bid on it and i was going but not wouldn't tell me how much they had bid and so it said that i need to increase my offer i'm not even particularly sure that that other person exists so do you feel as if you were dragged into a bidding war then yeah yeah i'm forced into one as well because i was you know i'd already given my notice from my previous place but also i'd already you know considered moving here and you know how that was going to affect where i was going to work and things like that do you feel as if especially with the energy prices going up and food prices going up as well that maybe that 50 pounds that you were forced to bid extra on this property that could have probably helped you now well it made me had to re-re-evaluate how much spending money i had for other things in the rest of the month you know have to move you know essentially that 50 pounds coming out of my food bill forcing people to bid on their livelihood you need it it's just not acceptable but the body representing scottish landlords say they're not aware of members starting bidding wars they claim tenants are offering over the odds what i'm hearing from landlords is that they're saying they're inundated with applications from tenants wanting to to rent their their flat or their house and many of those tenants are coming to those landlords saying how much more can i pay to be able to secure this property can you categorically rule out that bidding wars don't happen within scotland i can't rule that out because i don't know exactly obviously what every landlord or every lighting agent in scotland actually does if you were to ask me do you think that might become the norm in the future i would say yes i do think that could be the consequence of a lack of supply and a huge demand on the sector in the future that's not good news for anybody and we need to tackle that problem now but the heated market isn't just affecting those looking for a new home those already in tenancies are feeling the pressure too we're really hearing of a kind of crisis situation um nationally we've seen rents rise by eight percent and that's just an average within glasgow at 16 so a lot of the time tenants are trapped in unsuitable housing because they can't afford to move on anywhere or they're kind of priced out of their communities and having to move somewhere that's only even marginally cheaper priced out that's how jillian feels after two years she feels she has no choice but to leave her glasgow neighborhood after her landlord upped her rent by 23 percent yeah so the 23 in itself isn't a huge amount more but given the fact that everything else is going up and we're already trying to take on more shifts and find more money to cover our other costs and it's just going to be a bit of a stretch with everything considered what reason were you given for the price going up the reason that we were given for our rent going up was that our landlord has so many properties that's struggling to manage them he's going to give them to a letting agent and the letting agent wants to increase our rent by 80 so by his logic we're getting a bargain by only going up by 23 so it's not tied to the fact that the cost of having that flat is going up it's because everybody else is charging more so he can justify charging more this is a neighborhood you love a neighborhood you want to live in it must be a shame to leave it it's really sad that we're facing the prospect of being forced out of not just where we live but our community we've got friends who live there i've lived there for seven years i run a business in the area we really feel that we're part of the community and it's it's it feels very disempowering and frustrating that we're being forced out of that because somebody wants to make more money but with demand far outstripping supply the average monthly rent has increased by 8.5 percent in the past year and those looking for properties need to move fast a year ago the time to lead figures and which is from when a prop placed in the market and a tenancy being secured where in the region of about 35 to 40 days that's decreased by over 45 percent now and we're into the regional 20 days on average obviously i have properties maybe the three or four beds which are in highest demand you're turning them around within 10 to 14 days across the country it's an increasingly similar situation in dundee 80 percent of properties are gone within a month rising to more than 90 percent in glasgow both south lanarkshire and renfrewshire are experiencing similar demands well at the moment all one bed flats in west lothian were snapped up within the month but what's causing all of this and could the markets get even worse one thing that we are strongly hearing from landlords is that there's a fear that they have at the moment of new legislation that the scottish government's introducing through the scottish parliament that's effectively going to make them more wary about renting in the future there are several measures the scottish government are looking to implement to enhance tenants rights by 2025 including offering more protections against evictions introducing rent controls and establishing a new regulator to monitor standards in the private rented sector there are landlords out there who are committed to providing good quality accommodation for a fair rent but sadly there are others who will take any opportunity to hike the rent as much as they possibly can what i want landlords to understand is that responsible landlords who are committed to behaving fairly and respecting their tenants uh well-being and welfare have nothing to fear if you look at a country like germany for example they've had a system of rent controls in place for decades and they have an even bigger private rented sector in terms of the proportion of the housing stock than scotland does it's the abusive and exploitative landlords who have reason to worry decent responsible landlords and their tenants do not but these reassurances are doing little to put landlords minds at ease what we're hearing from our members is that many of them are planning to exit the sector they're just feeling they no longer want to be a landlord here in scotland and they're taking the opportunity when the tenant gives notice to put their property in the market and sell it with the possibility of the rental pool shrinking even further councils are looking at measures to increase the number of properties available with forty thousand homes vacant across the country the empty homes partnership said these could be key to plugging the letting gap bringing more homes back into use you're bringing more supply back into use now you have to be careful in saying this is the magic answer to everything it's not it's part of the solution to the housing supply challenges that we have we need more social affordable homes but we also need to think about what do we already have what existing assets do we have that we can bring back into use to help scotland's housing emergency government and local authorities say they are considering all solutions but in the meantime hundreds if not thousands of people are struggling to find a place to call home it's the wild west right now you can just buy any flat and let it out for whatever you want in whatever way you want and this just shouldn't be the case if being a landlord is your job you should have a duty of care forcing people to bed on their livelihood and where they live is an unacceptable it's like asking people to bid on water you need it it's just not acceptable a lot of us are trying to cut back on unnecessary expenditures or try to take on extra shifts to earn more money to cover all the other costs that are going on but housing isn't a luxury we've got to live somewhere

Channel: STV News

Views: 38,190

Keywords: housing, property, rental, scotland tonight

Id: xtJTxAh0cXI

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 10 2022