“Estremamente inquietante”: gli affittuari avvertono il ministro del piano di sollevare le zone di pressione dell’affitto

There is literally no reason to do this save let landlords make even bigger profits. Need anyone a history reminder of James Connolly?

The argument it makes sense is only if there is no supply side problems, which there rather obviously is.

I’m getting downvoted BUT ITS BASIC ECONOMICS! Use your heads.

We have next to no apartment building anymore. House building is collapsing. Supply of rental properties is thus going to decrease leading to increased demand on existing rentals thus encouraging unscrupulous price gouging of people.

Rent pressure zones can help save people from going to poverty. Any of you arguing in favour of
repealing it need to have a good hard look at yourselves.

All landlords want more profit but the institutional landlords want certainty and stability, if we keep changing the rules then that creates risk but if we permanently set the 2% limit or even 3% that will provide certainty, especially to the big pension funds who want to see stable growth

There is no easy way out of this, the rent pressure zone system has been in place for too long and has created a two tier rental system between older long-term established renters paying below market level rent and newer entrants paying above it.

Despite what the government says the real-world rate of cost inflation around maintaining and servicing a rental building is higher than the 2% they are allowed to recoup in rent increases. There are fewer landlords investing in building buy to rents and this is causing market slowdown.

Sure if they make a new build now they can charge current market level rents but in five years time for example with inflation being what and what it is that will almost certainly be below what the market price is at the time. Long-term investors will not get on that boat.

Don’t hate the player hate the game as they say.

Price is a function of supply and demand, prices will not come down unless supply is massively increased or demand is massively reduced.

Only one can be done in the short term as building units between regulatory delays, planning delays, building times et cetera can take years.

People are looking at the housing problem through only one lens.

Rent Pressure Zones should not be removed unless a better and fairer system is put in place.

There are definitely issues with RPZs – it creates a two-tier system where current renters and older builds are protected while new renters and new builds are not. It is also a patchwork and many tenants aren’t even aware that they are within a RPZ. But the solution is definitely, definitely not to remove rental protections, which would cause profits and prices to skyrocket while housing insecurity and homelessness increases even more.

What we need is to look at better rental protections from other European countries, especially the Vienna Model.

In the Vienna Model, a Rent Reference Index sets a Max Rent for each property, based on a list of factors which, for example, could include the number of bedrooms, size, location, general income of the area, and general amenities. This RRI would be set and updated locally by elected councillors.

As we have decades of financialisation of housing, only introducing that RRI without any other protections would cause many long term tenants and those in older rentals to immediately face hikes of up to 50-100% in rent in order to reach the max rent, so we must also include a National Rent Increase Cap, which limits rises to instead happen over a number of years. In Germany, this is set at 15% iirc, but the rate would likely be lower here due to our extortionate rents.

This mix of Rent Reference Index and National Rent Increase Cap would inevitably reduce private investment in housing as it would in most cases actively reduce rents and ofc reduce profits, so a large part of the increase in housing supply going forward would need to be from non-profit housing – including universal public housing and abundant housing co-ops (the other main tenants of the Vienna Model).

TL;Dr – Do not remove Rent Pressure Zones until they are replaced with a Rent Reference Index setting Max Rent and a National Rent Increase Cap which would overall actively reduce rents while making the market more fair. Massively expand universal public housing and support for housing co-ops to make up for the shortfall in for-profit private investment as rents and profits fall.