How attempting to lower rent contributes to sustainability – isn’t that a bit of a stretch? No! In fact, in the current state of the rental housing market, it might just be the main driver of change….
To explain this, we will first explain the current state of the rental housing market. Start with point 6 if you want to know the conclusion immediately:
1. There is a tightness in the housing market. That means there is more demand for (rental) housing, than supply. A natural consequence is market forces; landlords who find that tenants are crowding out tend to charge higher prices. Usually landlords have multiple properties; it is attractive to throw the price up even a little further at the next change of tenants when you got away with it last time.
2. Laws have been introduced to protect renters from overpricing. In fact, our government does not want prices to rise that far, because it brings negative consequences for our society: people have a harder time finding housing, have lower purchasing power, build less wealth, (opportunity) inequality increases, and it gives a positive incentive to investors to start renting out housing, strengthening the cycle. These laws have been tightened several times in recent years, and this trend seems to be continuing. So there are more and more homes that are tied to a maximum rent, and that maximum rent has become lower than before.
3. To make sure these rules can be followed, we have the Rent Tribunal. This organization helps resolve disputes between tenants and landlords and issues official rulings based on these rules. The Rent Tribunal shares a lot of information and has prepared helpful forms that tenants can use. However, the Rent Tribunal is not very well known to renters, after all, you won’t receive a blue envelope from them when you moved into your new home either, as you may be used to from the IRS when you work, study or didn’t wear a seatbelt while driving. In addition, all the documentation and forms do make it possible to apply for a rent reduction, but not really easy. It’s a lot of material and difficult to figure out how to fill out the forms correctly.
4. To strengthen the Rent Tribunal and make it possible for more tenants to reduce their rent, there are also several municipalities that have created rent teams for their residents, a number of agencies and rent law attorneys ready to write a bill. This helps; a good portion of the Rent Tribunal rulings indicate that a party was authorized, those rulings might not have been there if that help was not offered.
5. However, the numbers remain small (an estimated 3% of tenants eligible for a reduction). The rules are too complex and both the Rent Tribunal and the other helping parties reach only a small portion of tenants. Most tenants do not know that it is possible to downgrade, or have the unjustified perception that they cannot downgrade because they classify their situation as black and white (e.g., in freehold) when there are no single black and white cross-sections. Precisely because the numbers remain small, landlords can threaten with arguments such as “for you 10 others,” while these are empty arguments, because you cannot be evicted just like that and those 10 others all have the same right as you to a fair price. Market forces are too big, enforcement is too small, legislation from the government for “how our rental housing market should be” deviates more and more from how it actually is.
6. The government’s “Housing Rents Decree” gives heavy weight to the sustainability of homes in the calculation for maximum rent. Homes that are more sustainable may therefore be rented for a higher price. This would incentivize landlords to become more sustainable when tenants would also claim their maximum rent. So exactly that is what is happening too little. Landlords save the investment by not renovating and do not suffer from the lower living comfort and higher energy bills. Just by trying to lower your rent, you make your landlord aware that the government put the rules in place for a reason and that he/she is losing money if he/she does not make it sustainable.
Contribute to sustainability, lower your rent!
What are you waiting for? Check what you can lower on through our rent check and shake up your landlord!
Rent Relief makes reducing rent faster and easier than ever before, because tenants also have many other things on their minds and it’s a shame if they don’t get around to their reduction as a result. No cure No Pay, no risk, only if it succeeds we charge the lowest fee asked; all so that tenants take action. Only together can we solve this problem!
