In this week's blog, we find ourselves in the midst of election fever, a time of uncertainty and potential change. As the electorate prepares to vote on July 4th, we will strive to maintain our non-partisan stance. However, we cannot ignore the implications of Labour’s deputy leader's speech at the UK’s Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum (UKREiiF) conference in Leeds this week. This speech may hold clues to the future of housing under new leadership, and we will also delve into the potential impact of bills that may not pass in time before Parliament is dissolved.
By the time you read this, you may know the answers. Still, the immediate debate in our sector will be the fate of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill, currently sitting at the Committee Stage in the House of Lords, with only two stages left until the Bill enters Royal Assent. Now that’s parliamentary parlance for it's in a processing que, a que so old, we have bestowed it with an aristocratic designation. Such is the sedentary nature of our system. There is no timeframe for when it will pass, and the worry is that the dissolution of the parliament will effectively create a situation where the bill has to be reinstated in the next parliament, and the process will begin again.
There are a considerable number of individual elements and protections in this bill, and to lose it now would be a massive blow to 4.8 million leaseholders and 4.9 million private renters who would directly stand to benefit from varying forms of protection. These are complex arguments; if you are sat with an economics hat on, you could argue a strong case for Section 21 no-fault evictions on the simple outlook that private landlords withdrawing from the market will bid up rental prices as the supply side diminishes, but there is no objective evidence that exiting landlords units won't just stay in the investment sector, and just be consumed by more prominent property speculators, that would certainly fit with our thesis we have touched on many times, an inflow of private wealth consuming the housing stock. More importantly, though, if you are sat with a compassionate hat of pragmatism on as opposed to a hard-nosed economic one, this an industry of homes, and we need to keep people in their homes; that's all that matters ultimately.
A point raised in an article by the brilliant industry magazine Inside Housing is "A consultation on ground rents that is believed to propose a cap of £250 has still not been published, let alone made part of the bill" That is a fascinating point, upon reading it the logical thing to do is to Google how long a consultation takes. The answer you will get will be, "The amount of time required will depend on the nature and impact of the proposal (for example, the diversity of interested parties or the complexity of the issue, or even external events) and might typically vary between two and 12 weeks"
Now, this is the 'sticky wicket' of the whole bill and something that will need considerable unpacking, potentially well beyond 12 weeks. As we have touched on in pieces previously, on one hand, you have a prominent element of public protection. Do we want to see the public protected from what could be seen as neo-feudalism and exaggerated ground rents? Yes, of course. Have we really thought about what this may do to the Freehold asset class? No, not really. But Pension Fund Managers and Investment Managers will have and probably will have had a few sleepless nights as a result. This is an incredibly interwoven situation, and burning down the forest to eliminate an unwanted snake could land the next government with a billion-pound compensation claim. Indeed, this issue will need more time than circumstances will now allow.
Circling back to where we began and Angela Rayner's speech, one of the interesting takeaways was the focus on "Investment and innovation, together with active local government", perhaps mirroring our relationship as one of the partners of Homes England. To solve some of these complex problems going forward the private sector and the government are going to have to work more closely than ever before. The speech references 8.5Mil in the UK with a housing need, which puts this into stark perspective. One focus of the speech was the return to housing targets and the overriding of planning laws to force councils to approve more; this will be contentious; the talk here is about new towns, not new estates, with a mixture of affordable and traditional housing, it’s a monumental task.
How will those needs be met? Well, to stay in the style of rambunctious political speeches by a veritable land army of re-energized and revitalised SME developers backed by fintech capital providers such as us.
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