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I assure you that ordinary landlords do not have the upper hand and have not for very many years now - especially when it comes to commercial property where rents are dramatically down as are property values - which, as they are calculated as a fixed multiple of the annual rent, is a major blow.This can lead to major difficulties as lending covenants are at risk of being broken leading to bankruptcy and repossession by the banks.  Most property is effectively owned by the banks on a mortgage of course and they charge handsomely for the privilege.  This cost has, as a matter of absolute business necessity, to be passed on in the rent.  Just as the cost of renting out the shop is, in turn, passed on in the price of the butcher's sausages.  This is just normal practice - every business has to cover its costs or die!I cannot speak for the massive multi-million pound property companies, but the rest of us are working just as hard as you are desperately trying to keep everything together in the face of extremely challenging circumstances.I know it is difficult for many people who have hoodwinked themselves into thinking that the rent they pay goes straight into the landlords tax-free fund for a new gold-plated Rolls to believe, but the reality is that costs in the property rental game are massive and the risks many.In the last seven years I have raised the rent on one of my residential properties once and even then that was only to correct a situation where the rent being charged was significantly under the market rate for the area.  That particular property still loses £300 pcm.  In another area I recently dropped the rent by £50 to assist an LHA tenant that was struggling.  All my other residential rents have not moved in seven years.  Rents on my commercial building are down over 20%.  OTOH, wages are up, and even LHA is up for social tenants - but rents are not. Needless to say, my costs are not down.  Quite the contrary in fact.No, I am not asking for or expecting any sympathy.Just that you have a think about what is really involved before tarring people with that particular brush.Just in case you are minded to pull up a quick chart to prove me wrong read this first:http://www.landlordsyndicate.com/knowledge/landlords-need-an-official-rent-survey/And note also that the government's own very first survey on private rents is not due out for another couple of months yet:http://www.statistics.gov.uk/hub/release-calendar/index.html?newquery=*&title=Index+of+Private+Housing+Rental+Prices&pagetype=calendar-entry&lday=&lmonth=&lyear=&uday=&umonth=&uyear=It will be very interesting to see what it says once it is published.

Tony Colliver ● 4774d

Asking rents** tend to rise dramatically when a new lease is let.This tends to mean that an established business (with a set business model and little energy or enthusiasm to change it & often with older tenants who are only a few years off from retirement) finds itself unable to afford the new rent.It always surprises me that landlords are not more flexible when this situation arises.Anyway, it is my (completely unproven) theory that new businesses seeking to become established factor the new / higher rents into their business plans from the outset as the rents they are being asked for are the only reality that they know - most of them not having been around 25 years or so ago when the "original" leases were signed.  So, either their new business plans can accommodate the level of rent (in which case they open up for business) or they can't (in which case of course one never sees any sign of them as they do not open up for business as a direct consequence of not being able to afford the rent).  The net overall visible effect of all of this is that the older business owners tend to "retire" and the newly vacated premises occupied anew only by those business that can afford it - leaving aside the vast horde of hopeful also ran's for whom the sums could not be made to add up.[** Although if my experience trying to let my office building in Leatherhead is anything to go by I would have thought that the landlord(s) would be subject to a good dose of economic circumstances induced market forces "realism" in this day and age...]

Tony Colliver ● 4774d