Why can't we edit a post to correct our typo's?! And another thing. Councils / social housing providers have a policy of deliberately keeping their rents low. Unfortunately this provides a permanent subsidy to social tenants, whether their current circumstances merit it or not. That's why waiting lists are so long. If these bodies charged higher rents then those that could afford it would pay and those that couldn't would get increased housing benefit. But the they would then have a higher income and then they could afford to modernise properties or better still build some new ones. Why should those in social housing get a better deal than those in private housing, irrespective of ability to pay?

steven551. A home is a home. Not everybody is able to own their home, and some people should never go near a mortgage. The current problem with rents and house prices is that we have too few properties compared to the demand for properties. With people living longer, household sizes getting smaller (fewer occupants per property) and substantial immigration we need many more new properties and for many years we haven't built enough. While you seem to have a beef with private landlords, have you thought that many new properties are sold to private landlords because they have the ability to buy whereas first time buyers don't. Without the landlords buying there would be even less homes built and the housing crisis would be even greater. What we need to do is to build more homes. If that means some nimbi's are flattened in the process so be it. We can only build up down or our, although I fully recognise brownfield sites should be utilised first, where these exist. Building new houses provides work in this country to people who will pay taxes here and spend their money here, so for the economy this is a win-win. Building more homes means that prices rises will be moderated. If we build enough then prices could stand still. If we build too many prices will collapse- look at Ireland and Spain to see what happens in that situation- it isn't good. So we need to build enough new homes annually to stabilise prices without a collapse. Any other measures are just tinkering at the edges and pandering to the prejudices that we all have.

@Fender. My argument is not against people making profit but people using their vantage point to hoard large amounts of good homes from hard working people. If there were no profit to be made why are so many people doing it and how are people able to go from owning a few properties to easily owning 10's of properties? what I would like to see is owners having to declare at purchase or sale if the property has been rented and then pay extra stamp duty. This would put first time buyers in a better position when buying homes versus landlords.