Following the recent decision in the Autumn Statement the government is now consulting on whether to ban letting agents’ fees to tenants, to improve competition in the private rental market and give renters greater clarity and control over what they will pay.

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) will consult ahead of bringing forward legislation and a further announcement will be made once the outcome of those consultations is made public.

For clients owning residential property we will be looking very closely at what this will mean.  Undoubtedly there will be a greater push on recouping some of those costs and one such way may be by increasing rents. This will not be welcomed but in the short sighted attempt by the government to cool the buy to let market property owners cannot afford to allow returns to keep falling.

The consultations will take some time to complete and we will keep close to this proposed and unwelcome change.  It is anticipated that an outright ban would take between 12-18 months to come into effect so there will be time to provide a measured assessment of how this will impact on our residential property owning clients.