Now, zoom out to the regulatory burden, a beast fed by both parties. The Tories kicked it off with gusto. In 2015, George Osborne slashed mortgage interest relief, fully phasing it out by 2020, landlords could no longer deduct full interest from taxable income, effectively hiking taxes by up to 20% for higher-rate payers. Add the 2016 3% stamp duty land tax (SDLT) surcharge on buy-to-lets, which cooled purchases by 10-15% per industry estimates. EPC rules tightened too: from 2018, rentals needed at least an E rating, with fines for non-compliance; by 2025, proposals aimed for C by 2030, costing landlords £8,000-£15,000 per property in upgrades. Right to Rent, introduced in 2014 and expanded, mandated immigration checks with £3,000 fines per illegal tenant. The 2019 promise to scrap Section 21 evictions lingered unresolved until Labour grabbed the baton, but it fuelled uncertainty, prompting a landlord sell-off wave.
Labour, far from easing the pain, has doubled down. The Renters’ Rights Act 2025, royal assent in October, bans Section 21 outright (implementation mid-2026), mandates periodic tenancies, and limits rent hikes to once yearly at market rates—with challenges via tribunals. Pets can’t be unreasonably refused, and bidding wars are outlawed. Selective licensing proliferates: councils like Southwark charge £600-£750 per property for five years, with paperwork galore. Fines for breaches? Up to £30,000, as Reeves learned. Right to Rent enforcement has “rocketed” under Labour, with penalties hitting £4.2m recently versus £596k pre-election, a 600%+ spike, per Home Office data. No wonder a 2025 Landlord Today survey cited “political pressure” as a top exit reason for 40% of landlords.
Impacts? Catastrophic for small players.
Government passes law requiring all landlords to shit gold bars and give them to their tenants.
Headline “Greedy landlords abandoning properties. Massive shortage of housing”.
I would not want to be a rental-property fire insurer in that environment.
I left engineering when the realization struck that I was spending over 50% of my time dealing with regulatory paperwork.
A sudden recollection: One of my father’s colleagues owned a couple rental properties. He’d complain endlessly about the tenants and the city/county/state rules. Back in 1968.
Fred IV: My great aunt was forced to sell her modest rooms after the 1920s Rent Act made it impossible to charge enough to keep them maintained.
Or you could argue that the regulatory beast (the bureaucracy) has fed on the life-blood of both parties. Both parties have now been discredited by their inability to stop feeding the bureaucracy.
Perhaps our best hope is a new party that will reverse the flow of dependence.
“A sham market can no more escape a black market than a man can escape from his own shadow.” – Churchill
As Nigel Lawson correctly argued for many years – taxes should be low and simple, things should not be “deductable” making taxation a mess of complexity.
I agree with abolishing Stamp Duty – that makes the tax system simpler, but not with making XYZ “deductable”. Although it is true that British tax rates are vastly too high – in several European nations the top rate of income tax is vastly lower than it is here. I do not believe that these absurdly high (40% indeed 45%) top rates of income tax (which have never hit me – I am very poor) bring in more revenue over time – they bring in LESS revenue over time, because they undermine economic life. Even ex Communist Bulgaria has a flat rate income tax of 10% – why not the United Kingdom?
As for the regulations on private renting – they are clearly designed to destroy private renting.
Let us hear no more nonsense about “the unintended consequences of government intervention” – the terrible consequences are very clearly INTENDED (not unintended).
Politicians do not think up these regulations – officials advised by far “left” experts are behind these regulations, politicians just rubber stamp this.
Collectivist (indeed Marxist) academic “experts” have been influencing policy for many years, indeed many decades. My half brother (“Tony” Marks) was one of a Legion of them.
This goes back a very long way – for example the insane policies of the Liberal Party government elected in 1906 came from the Fabian Society (from the “Minority Report” on the Poor Law, and the belief in even more power for UNEMPLOYMENT causing “Collective Bargaining”) and anyone who thinks the Fabians were benevolent knows nothing about them.
H.G. Wells, George Bernard Shaw, Mr and Mrs Webb, and so on, wanted human blood shed – they wanted to kill vast numbers of human beings.
A society that makes these monsters cultural heroes – has a deep sickness.
The H.G. Wells view of housing?
Destroy all existing housing no matter how beautiful (indeed especially if it is beautiful) and have people live in tents till vast blocks (in which people will live like ants in a heap) are created.
This is mentioned (casually – as if it was obvious and no one could object to it, in a “everyone is a socialist now” flippant way) in such works as “in the days of the comet” (and other stupid stories – treated as classics by fools, or worse).
The Covid “lockdowns” pushed by “SAGE” and other groups of evil (profoundly evil) people, show that the “intellectuals” have not changed.
George Bernard Shaw demanded that everyone “jusify their existence” before a government board and be executed (killed) if the board was not satisfied.
Mr and Mrs Webb praised the Soviet Union – the most vicious regime the world had yet seen (and they knew that – make no mistake about that).
An intellectual class that makes such monsters its cultural heroes is sick – rotten.
The Henri Saint-Simon (indeed perhaps all the way back to Francis Bacon, whose faithful follower Thomas Hobbes was, and the Technocracy of his “The New Atlantis” – 1610, yes back that far) style international Corporate State elite do not like “small players” as Gawauin Towler calls them.
BlackRock (headed by Mr Larry Fink now also the head of the World Economic Forum – now isn’t that cozy) may control vast amounts of housing – with money they get at artificially low interest rates (much lower than an ordinary person would have to pay for a mortgage), but not “small players”.
This is because BlackRock – State Street – Vanguard (they have shares in each other) are “partner corporations” you see – like the Credit Bubble banks, they are (see themselves as) part of the government.
Socialism delivered by “capitalists” – the Henri Saint-Simon dream.
I lament some (SOME!) of the cuts in the US Federal Govt that Trump has made…BUT, I don’t see any other way to rein in the beast than cutting off its head. A scythe that cuts through the entire bureaucracy. It’s just too large to be surgical about this. But at the end of the day, so far at least, not that much has really been cut! It’s beyond discouraging.
Trump could kill the bureaucracy by re-locating all the jobs from DC to the 50 States. You know, to be closer to “the people”! And I’m not talking about the big blue cities, but the reddest county in each State! Build some Quonset huts with large fans (no AC), and barely adequate heating…you know to “save the planet”. No Starlink…just dial up modems.
Fred the Fourth,
Were you able to find a profession that was an improvement in that regard? I’m pretty sure everyone I’ve ever heard talk about their profession has said “People don’t realize we spend most of our time filling out paperwork”.
I guess regulatory paperwork is probably worse-than-average, as far as paperwork goes.
@CayleyGraph2015
Were you able to find a profession that was an improvement in that regard? I’m pretty sure everyone I’ve ever heard talk about their profession has said “People don’t realize we spend most of our time filling out paperwork”.
It depends on the industry more than the profession. Right now I run a bunch of different software contracts and have effectively zero regulatory paperwork. However, in the past I created a small medical device and there was a room 20’x30′ that was literally packed full to the ceiling with regulatory paperwork that nobody ever read. (one of the many reasons that medicine is so ridiculously expensive.)
Unfortunately, this is yet another example of bad economics, but good politics. After all, landlords have never been sympathetic characters. (And I write that as someone who is a landlord, albeit an accidental one.)
I do not lament any of the cuts that President Trump has made – especially as government spending has gone UP not down.
I wish President Trump had cut government spending, but he has not – although, yes, it would be even higher without him.
As for regulations – yes President Trump has got rid of some regulations (and deserves praise for that), but he should have got rid of vastly more regulations.
The fatal problem is the refusal of the Republican leadership in Congress to do anything.
Their religious devotion to the “filibuster” rule means that nothing good, no real reduction in government spending and no real deregulation, can come out of Congress – whilst they cling to the “60 votes in the Senate” rule to do anything – nothing will be done either on reducing government spending or reducing regulation.
It astonishes me that some people still do not understand this – and cling to the 60 votes in the Senate rule, not understanding that the United States is heading for de facto bankruptcy.
The 60 votes in the Senate rule make rational budgeting impossible.
The debt is over 38 Trillion (“Trillion with a T”) Dollars – and rising incredibly fast.
Government spending is out-of-control.
“filling out paperwork” might be the perfect job for AI.
Those requiring the paperwork don’t really care about the quality of the information set down, they only care to check the box, maintain their regulatory grift.
This alone would justify our investment in AI if it reduced the paperwork burden from 50% for an engineer to, say 5%. That’s a near doubling of time to do engineering work (n.b., for those of you in Portland, increasing it from 50% to 95%)! Or, as per Fraser Orr’s comment, increase the time medical pros spend doing medicine.
Again, for those in Portland, “n.b.” means “note bene” or “it is well known”.
I only skimmed this post’s comments, so apologies if others have already tumbled to this notion.
GregWA – I take it that you mean Portland Oregon (rather than Portland Maine).
Those people (including Corporations and rich individuals) who pushed the “keep Portland weird” agenda have a lot to answer for – it is indeed very weird, and horrible, and sane people are leaving.
And the same Corporations (and “educated” rich individuals) are pushing the same evil (and it is evil) agenda in Austin and other cities.