We know only too well that the popular press equates rising house prices with a ‘healthy’, ‘improving’, or ‘strong’ property market – and vice versa. Yet, perversely, they often bemoan the fact that youngsters find it ever harder to get on the housing ladder. It rarely seems to occur to them that rising house prices (a Good Thing) are linked to issues of affordability (a Bad Thing). And so it is with rental values…
Agents need to show some sensitivity as to how they present information about what is happening in the market – as Reliable Homes in Crouch End found to its cost at the weekend.
The Ham & High is reporting that the firm, ‘celebrating’ rising Muswell Hill rents during the pandemic, has been forced to apologise.
Apparently a Facebook video was posted by RH welcoming the fact that rental prices were “absolutely soaring” in the district. In it a staff member from Reliable Homes said his “heart goes out” to tenants who have struggled during the pandemic, but that the “silver lining in a very difficult year” is that Muswell Hill rents have risen; and they quoted an “absolutely enormous” 10% increase.
There was a substantial social media backlash to the video which has since been removed.
Hornsey and Wood Green MP, Catherine West, said it was “saddening” to see a local estate agent “take pleasure” over rising rents, and Haringey Council’s housing lead called the video “incredibly disappointing”.
Councillor Emine Ibrahim, Haringey Council’s housing lead, said: “It is incredibly disappointing that a local estate agent would celebrate the fact that the already astronomical rents in Muswell Hill are increasing during a global pandemic.
Muswell Hill resident Hal Sinden was reported as calling the video “smug” and said it “jeopardised” the character of the area while “capitalising” on the hardship of Covid-19.
Jakub Orna, Reliable Homes’ managing director, said the video was “reporting the facts” and had been “completely misunderstood”.
He said: “We do not dictate the rents, the market does, the same way the market dictates the price of gold. If rents have risen, it shows how desirable our areas are.
We have to protect our snow flakes you know. Why do so many nowadays try to deny the reality of life? Have local prices not increased? Have we all come to believe the rubbish that is uttered by so many who seem to live in a world of make believe, where if you say something enough times you come to believe it? Social media has a lot to answer for. Whilst perhaps the agent was not being sensitive it is amazing how all the people like councils and MPs jump on the story when they are the very people who mostly influence prices. Councils that do not provide necessary levels of social housing put unacceptable extra pressure on the PRS. MP’s that are incompetence (or just have to follow the party’s utopian line) by increasing scarcity of housing with their landlord bashing policies driving investment away but dressed up as helping tenants when they do not in reality. Of course these politicians always say they are providing more housing whilst painting the whole of the PRS as crooks. More pressure from thousands of illegals which the government seem impotent to deal with just adds to the problem ALL OF WHICH POLITICIANS CONTROL.
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