Rent & Eviction Freezes announced by Scottish Government

Nicola Sturgeon today announced a freeze on rent increases and on evictions, with immediate effect.

This has left me wondering, how will this affect the private rental sector?

Before today, you were able to issue a rent increase letter to tenants with three months prior notice. But now landlords will not be able to do so until after 31st March 2023.

Which is blessed relief for tenants, who are concerned about the rising cost of living. However, landlord’s costs will also go up, and it is a sole source of income for some professional landlords.

To me this seems a little harsh on a sector which is providing much needed housing. Perhaps, initiatives to help stem the rising cost of household energy bills may have been more practical?

More measures to combat rising energy costs could have been more effective

As well as this, no evictions will be able to take place between now and the end of March 2023. Which is a far greater cause for concern, especially if landlords encounter anti-social tenants or tenants that are not paying rent.

So far, there has been no mention of any form of relief or grants to the tenant or landlord who are struggling financially, as were available during the covid 19 pandemic.

This seems like bleak news for landlords.

One of the main things landlords and tenants are also asking is, what about existing rent increase or eviction notices that were served prior to today?

The answer is, we simple don’t know at this stage and will have to await further detail on the legislation announced today.

Overall, a period of not being able to raise rents, I think most landlords can stomach.

In my experience most landlords want to charge a fair market value for their properties and would be happy for the rent to remain stable over a difficult market.

Moving away from discretionary evictions to no evictions, across the board, seems like an unnecessary move.

We will have to wait and see the devil in the detail.