No drop in private rental properties despite rent freeze, says minister

Early data does not show any drop in private rental properties despite the Scottish Government’s rent freeze, a minister has said.

Minister for tenants’ rights Patrick Harvie said administrative figures showed a small increase in private rented accommodation, but the Government is working on producing higher-quality data.

Earlier this month, the Scottish Parliament backed a rent cap of 3% for private tenants from April.

In October last year, legislation was introduced to temporarily freeze rent increases for private and social tenants, and for student accommodation with the cap set at 0% from September 6 until at least March 31.

At Holyrood’s Local Government Committee, MSPs approved a minor amendment to regulations which facilitated the changes.

Conservative MSP Miles Briggs asked Mr Harvie about the impact of the policies on private landlord registration data.

Greens MSP Mr Harvie said this data was merely administrative and “doesn’t provide the rich granularity of data that all stakeholders recognise is necessary”.

Longer-term reform is needed to provide this kind of data, he said.

He added: “While we do have that, admittedly limited, source of information through the landlord registration scheme, I think it shows no decrease as yet and perhaps a slight increase – only very marginal – in the number of registered properties since before the emergency measures come into force.”

The minister accepted there would be a time lag between landlords deciding to drop out of the sector and their properties being removed from the market.