Angry renters took to their campaign to end the practice of ‘bidding wars’, where letting agents and landlords ask prospective tenants for bids above the advertised rent and then choose the highest one, directly to the agents on Saturday. Members of the community union Acorn mounted a noisy protest along the length of North Street from Ashton Gate to Bedminster, and filled letting agency offices with people calling for an end to the practice.
Acorn called on letting agents to sign a pledge promising to stop the so-called ‘bidding wars’, in the week after Bristol City Council condemned the practice and began looking at ways to ban it. The Acorn action took place on Saturday morning and saw around 20 tenants march from one estate agent office to the next, demanding the practice stop.
It was the second such action in the campaign, which was launched with a protest march in Church Road, Redfield, before Christmas. Some agencies who are already in negotiation with Acorn about signing the pledge were left alone, but others were visited by an Acorn deputation, while the majority of the campaigners staged noisy protests outside their offices.
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Staff in each letting agency visited promised to pass on the Acorn request to their managers, and Acorn organisers said they would be following up their requests and could repeat the protest again and again until the agencies agreed. “We’re bringing people together here today, we’ve done it before and we’ll keep doing it, until this is a bid-free city in Bristol,” said Acorn organiser Ewan Maclennan.
“We’re trying to stop letting agents pitting tenants against each other to force up the price of rents, driving loads of people out of the city, out of their homes that they’ve been in for years, and breaking apart communities, and this is something that is going on all the time - it’s affecting loads of our members,” he added.
“Last week the council passed a motion calling for the end to bidding wars in Bristol, condemning the practice, and instructing their officers to look into how they can ban the practice of bidding wars in Bristol. All of that is really encouraging. There’s nothing concrete in there yet, but it’s a good sign for what might happen, and it’s backing up our campaign and the message that we’re sending out to letting agents.
“There’s a whole bunch of different ways that bidding wars actually go on. Sometimes it’s letting agents encouraging people to bid and saying ‘look, you know, there’s lots of people interested in this house, if you bid £50 or £100 higher, you’re more likely to get it’.
“Sometimes it’s even the case of a formalised offer form that they are giving out to tenants, encouraging tenants to bid higher, to give their maximum price or their bidding price, or however it is phrased. It’s almost part of the formal process for a lot of these letting agents to encourage these lettings agents.
“What we’re calling on these lettings agents to do here today is to sign our pledge, the pledge that is the main part of our campaign, which is demanding that they stop the practice of bidding wars. It’s driving people out of the city, it’s pushing people in a cost-of-living crisis even further into poverty. We’re asking them to do what they should do, and what most people think they should do, and bring an end to bidding wars,” he added.
Earlier this month, Bristol City Council passed a motion on renting in the city, with the cabinet member in charge of housing, Cllr Tom Renhard, describing a 'power imbalance' between landlords and tenants in the city. As part of the motion, the city council pledged to investigate and call for greater power to introduce rent control measures that include a ban on lettings agents and landlords asking for bids from prospective renters that are above the advertised rent for a property.
Read next:
- Councillors agreed to set up a new database of rogue landlords and create a "living rent index"
- Letting agents warned to stop bidding wars for rented homes in Bristol
- Disabled man's eviction halted by tenants union
- The fightback begins in Hillfields, Bristol's 'forgotten' estate
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