New CEBR analysis for Babelfish finds 1.4m homes could be built on brownfield land, adding 0.9% to GDP a year for a decade. Half already have planning permission.
Rent controls aren't just desirable - they're viable
98.8% of landlords made a profit in 2024, their worst year. New data shows rent controls would still leave them in the black — and save renters £1,200 a year.
Private landlords argue that rent controls will destroy their investment, force them to sell up and push more struggling families on to the streets. But research by the economy and democracy analysts Autonomy Institute shows that with the right reforms they can thrive and so can tenants
England Needs Rent Controls... We Now Have the Data to Prove It
Private rents in England have reached 44% of average wages, a record high. Nearly one in five households now rents privately, and most of them are spending a third of their income on housing. The Office for Budget Responsibility forecasts that rents will absorb all average wage growth until at least 2030. In other words, even if your pay rises over the next four years, you will not feel it.
The case for doing something serious about rents has never been stronger. And now, for the first time, we have the evidence to show that rent controls are not just desirable, they are viable.
The Myth That Landlords Cannot Afford It
Whenever rent controls are proposed, opponents raise the same objection: landlords are struggling, and capping their income will push them out of the market, making things worse for renters. This argument has always rested largely on assertion, not evidence.
Research by the Autonomy Institute, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF), has analysed landlord returns across three waves of the English Private Landlord Survey: 2018, 2021, and 2024. We finally have the evidence base upon which sound policy can be built.
Even in 2024, the year when interest rate rises were supposedly squeezing landlords hardest, 98.8% of landlords had positive total returns on their investments. Only 1.2% made a loss. Average post-tax returns were 5.6%, down slightly from 2021 but still comfortably above the 4.75-4.95% benchmark return for the broader real-estate sector.
In any given year, between 66% and 99% of landlords exceeded the returns available from comparable investments (e.g. in stocks and government bonds). These are the kinds of profits that, in any other market, would invite regulatory intervention.
What Actually Drives Landlord Returns
Our research also reveals something important about where those returns come from. Rental income is not really the main story. Capital gains, the increase in the value of properties over time, account for between 58% and 69% of landlords' total returns. The value of owning the asset appreciates, and landlords profit whether they raise rents aggressively or not.
This is important for the rent control debate: it means that landlord profitability is driven more by house-price growth than by what tenants pay each month. A rent cap would not eliminate landlord returns but merely reduce one component of them while leaving capital gains intact.
Crucially, the research also found that in 2021, landlords on fixed-rate mortgages were insulated from variable interest costs – but they raised rents anyway. The idea that rent increases rise with increased landlord costs is simply not supported by the data.
It's Time for Rent Control
Off the back of Autonomy's work, JRF has modelled what a well-designed rent control would actually do. Its central proposal caps rent increases at normal inflation rates (CPI) within tenancies. Under this regime, average renting households would be £1,200 a year better off by 2030/31. A more ambitious freeze within tenancies would save renters nearly £1,700 a year and cut the proportion of them facing unaffordable housing costs by more than eight percentage points.
Critics will still worry about landlords selling up and shrinking the rental supply, but the solution here is to pair rent controls with tax reform.
Currently, the removal of mortgage interest relief under Section 24 pushes costs on to leveraged landlords while leaving unmortgaged landlords relatively lightly taxed. And because rental income attracts no national insurance, many high-returning landlords pay a lower effective rate of tax than someone earning the same amount through work. If you reinstate full mortgage interest relief and apply national insurance to rental income then you would effectively redistribute the tax burden towards those making the largest profits.
The modelling shows that with both reforms in place, fewer landlords would make a loss on their rental income by 2030 than under the current system, even with rent controls in force and millions of renters protected.
A Political Choice
This is not a fringe argument. The Institute for Public Policy Research, the New Economics Foundation and many others are now calling for rent controls. Polling by More in Common found that 67% of the public support rent controls in England, with majority support across almost every voter segment.
Landlords are making supernormal profits. Rents are taking an unprecedented share of wages, which is increasing. Rent controls, paired with sensible tax reform, offer a path to lower rents that is both economically justified and practically deliverable.
The only question is whether the government is serious about tackling one of the main drivers of today's cost-of-living crisis.
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