Large Landlords Should Raise Rents To Build

The largest housing associations should be allowed to raise rents in exchange for agreeing to build more homes, an influential thinktank has said. A paper by Policy Exchange said the government should do housing deals with associations that own or manage more than 4,000 homes which would give the greater financial freedom to enable them to build more, particularly properties for sale. The report said the five-year deals could involve an association agreeing to build 3% to 4% more homes including a significant number of shared ownership and market sale properties. In return, the government would permit the housing association to raise its rents by up to the CPI level of inflation or to simply avoid the rent cut. Download the paper from the Policy Exchange website.