Rents increase and rent arrears increase - seems a bit mad

In a normal world, landlords charge as much as they can get, full stop. There’s no point trying to charge more than that because you will get lots of voids or rent arrears, which would reduce the average rent actually collected to less than what it should have been/what landlords could have got away with charging in the first place.

From the BBC:

People hoping to find a property to rent are going to ever greater lengths to secure a home. As well as having to put up more cash in advance, they’re offering landlords CVs for their children and photos of their well-behaved dogs.

That’s because a shortage of available homes is pushing up monthly rents, deposits and leading to bidding wars.

The Missing Homes Conundrum making an appearance there, we note. If a landlord sells up, that’s one less home to rent and one household less looking to rent somewhere, as one ex-tenant household is now an owner-occupier.

From The Telegraph:

Landlords will lose thousands of pounds in rent as the cost of living crisis pushes the number of households falling into arrears to an 11-year high – and a third more than during the pandemic.

Nearly one in 10 tenant households in England will fall behind on rent this financial year, according to the Centre for Economics & Business Research think tank. That is equal to 407,000 families, who will be at risk of homelessness.

In which case, the Court should just order that the arrears be waived and the future rent set at a lower and ‘affordable’ amount.