However, 52% of brokers disagreed while 7% said they were undecided over the issue.
David Whittaker, managing director of Mortgages for Business, said that it would be a mistake for rent control to return to the market.
“It was only the introduction of the 1988 Housing Act which freed up the market and encouraged creation of a new private rented sector. Up until that point, the rental sector had been declining in volume terms for 70 years, because the rent was set by the unknowing and genuinely incompetent, and therefore the value of the investment property could go down significantly on the whim of the local rent officer.
“The creation of the housing act freed up the market to follow market economics and therefore property values were the same whether it was a rental property three bedroom house, or an occupier three bedroom house. If we move away from that again, the private rented sector would shrink at a time when the government neither has the political willpower or the financial appetite to provide council affordable social housing.”
Last week, the National Housing Federation expressed its concerns over the rental sector in its Housing Market Analysis report.
It said that with the average rent pushing upwards every quarter, and more than 1.5m people on waiting lists for social housing in England, it is worried about the lack of affordable alternatives to home ownership.
Whittaker added that tenants who are facing financial difficulties keeping up with their rent, need to prioritise their finances and budget accordingly.
“There is a generation of younger renters who don’t understood that actually going out to restaurants, cinema and shopping should not be their number one priority. That actually, in a recessionary time, your priorities turn on their heads and your obligations are to pay the rent or mortgage, council tax and utility bills.
“There’s a whole group of younger working people that have never experienced an economic downturn or witnessed it, so people who are calling for measures to control rents are people who have never had to cut their costs.
“They need to understand that there are times when rents will be in the landlords favour, such as now, but that there will also come a time when property prices recover and rents won’t leap ahead.”
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