- 2 days ago
Soaring rents and difficulty buying have created a housing crisis in the UK. KMTV explores the local impact across Kent and asks if holiday lets are making things worse.
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TVTranscript
00:00Hello and welcome to this Kent Tonight special on KMTV with me, Josh McLaughlin.
00:25Tonight, soaring rents and difficulty buying. We're in Maidstone as the housing crisis rages
00:31on in the South East.
00:33I had to up and leave, take my kids and all of my staff, and I lived in a car for about
00:40two weeks.
00:43And holiday home headache. Our Airbnbs and short-term lets, making the housing issue in
00:48Kent worse.
00:49I think without the visitor income that we've got, these local communities would struggle
00:54and the independent businesses wouldn't be popping up and thriving.
01:00First up, the housing crisis here in Kent and across the South East has touched thousands
01:04of families, especially as the average house price has been more than eight times higher
01:09than workplace earnings for the last five years, according to the Office for National Statistics.
01:14Our reporter, Emily Sinclair, has travelled around the county to hear from some of the
01:18people who've been hit the hardest.
01:20It actually got to the point where I felt a little bit shameful because it was, it was
01:25just, I'm like, I'm a cash buyer and it wasn't, you know, it was quite a lot of money and I
01:29still couldn't find a house.
01:31Louise first tried to buy a place of her own three years ago. What she thought would be a
01:34pretty straightforward task turned into over a year of struggles.
01:38I had to up and leave, take my kids and all of my staff. And I lived in a car for about,
01:44it must have been about two weeks. I lived on my friend's sofa. I lived at my pastor's
01:51house. And all the while, I'm trying to still find a house. It was really hard. It was really
01:57hard. And it put an impact on a lot of my relationships with a lot of people at the time, because I was
02:03just so stressed.
02:04House sale prices have returned to their pre-pandemic affordability levels in England
02:09and Wales. But since 2018, house prices in Kent have been higher than the England and
02:14Wales medium. So what does that mean for people trying to live in our county?
02:18If bananas had risen at the same rate as private rents nationally since 1988, a bunch would cost
02:24£13 or thereabouts in the supermarket. People have a real right to be angry and want change
02:30around this issue.
02:31What doesn't make sense is you look around Maidstone and you see all these housing properties
02:36going up, like one massive half's another. And I'm sitting here thinking, how on earth
02:41are we still in such a crisis with housing?
02:44I put that exact question to Maidstone Borough Council's Cabinet Member for Housing and
02:48Homelessness, Simon Wales.
02:50How, right now, is there still a crisis with housing? What would you say to that individual?
02:55Because it takes time for these to feed through the system. We do have 2,000 people near that
03:01on our waiting list, which is coming down. I think Maidstone Council is doing more than
03:07a lot of places in terms that we are now building. We're in a fortunate position that we do have
03:11enough finances to be able to do this. And some councils aren't quite so fortunate in terms
03:16of their finances. But we have a reasonable amount in reserves, which you are putting
03:21almost exclusively into housing.
03:23Knowing how difficult it can be to find housing, Louise now works for Making a Difference to
03:28Maidstone, a local charity with an outreach centre, food bank and charity shop to support
03:33those in need.
03:34I think working here and going through what I went through a few years ago, kind of gives
03:40you that grace to understand what other people are going through.
03:44As Louise turns to helping others, is there enough housing support for locals in Kent?
03:49Emily Sinclair, KMTV.
03:52And Emily joins me in the studio now. That was a powerful story there. But what is actually
03:56being done in Kent to change things?
03:58It certainly was, Josh. You know, after speaking to a range of residents across our county, I put
04:03that very question to East Senate MP Polly Billington. And this is what she said.
04:08Everybody who is concerned about the number of housing, numbers of houses being built, also
04:13knows people who are struggling to be able to get a house. So we need to get that balance
04:19right. And that partly means legislation. It partly means money. And it partly means local
04:24powers to local leaders, particularly at the council level, in order to be able to set a
04:31plan for the overall community.
04:33So Polly told me that there was far too many people in Thanet who were really struggling
04:38to get a safe and secure roof over their head. But she did acknowledge that any sort of change
04:43takes a really long time to be implemented. We know that for some places in Kent, especially those
04:47seaside resorts like Margate and Deal, that holidaymakers are a massive part of their community.
04:53And so I asked Polly whether she feels Labour got the balance wrong between boosting tourism and
04:58protecting housing.
05:01So what I am arguing is that the local authority needs to have the powers to be able to not just
05:06register short term holiday lets and know how many there are, but to also have a have a control over
05:13how many there are.
05:14Thanks, Emily. Now, one of the factors quoted as worsening the housing crisis in Kent is the growing
05:20number of short term holiday lets. With more than 850,000 nights reserved across the southeast in
05:26August alone, tourism to the Garden of England is boosting local economies. Many locals, though,
05:33are feeling squeezed out of their own towns by staycationers. Our reporter Chloe Brewster headed to
05:39the coast to find out more. Margate is Britain's oldest seaside destination. They've got the beach,
05:45they've got the shops and they've got the fish and chips. But do they have the homes?
05:49Short term lets have always been a thing on the coast. But as rents rise nationally,
05:52are they doing more harm than good?
05:55Local people who want to live here, the rents have gone up. And that makes things a little
06:01bit harder for people these days.
06:02It's not very affordable unless you're going in with like a share of people. It's just
06:07not cost effective for you anymore.
06:09It's really good in the summer, but holiday lets don't want, people don't want to come here in the
06:14winter, do they?
06:15Chris Thomas is a representative from homeless charity Porchlight.
06:18We've heard of landlords selling up or evicting people from their properties to turn it into
06:24airbnbs, which obviously creates additional homelessness.
06:27In August 2025, UK short-term rentals topped 491,000, up from the year before. The South East saw 56,000
06:37listings, ranking third after London and the South West. FOI data from Folkestone and Hive and FANIT show
06:44that while below their 2022 to 2023 peaks, numbers remain higher than during the COVID-19 years.
06:50For thousands heading to holiday homes up and down the country every year, it's clear the industry can
06:55get quite lucrative. I'm here on the gorgeous Cape coastline to talk to Arthur, who runs a series of
07:00holiday homes around the county.
07:02Having grown up in Deal, Arthur joined his family's property management business of 13 years. They now
07:08operate more than 150 self-catering cottages.
07:11The holiday letting provides a huge amount of jobs. Not just jobs, but also visitor income.
07:16All of our guests eat out, drink out, they go and visit the galleries, they go to the local independent
07:25shops. I think without the visitor income that we've got, these local communities would struggle
07:32and the independent businesses wouldn't be popping up and thriving. It's definitely a balance of having
07:39affordable housing for locals, but I think in a location like Deal or Whitstable,
07:45a lot of the properties just aren't suitable for a family to live in full time. So they lend themselves
07:51really well for people to come for short amounts of time, long weekends or a week, and contribute to
07:59the local economy while they're here.
08:01It's a complicated issue, but it's clear we're all looking to wave goodbye to soaring rents.
08:06Chloe Brewster for KMTV in Margate and Deal.
08:10We did reach out to Airbnb for a response on some of the comments made there,
08:14but we didn't get a reply. Now, with Rachel Reeves' budget recently setting out Labour's
08:19financial plan for the country, what's on the agenda for housing? To help break it down,
08:23I'm joined by Tudor Price from Kent Invicta Chamber of Commerce. It's great to have you here,
08:28Tudor. So I guess first question everybody will have at the top of their minds is what is your
08:33initial reaction to the budget and how will it impact housing locally?
08:36Well, from a business perspective, I think it was all the business community can sort of exhale now.
08:42We've been holding our breath, waiting to see if there's going to be another big hit. Thankfully,
08:46it wasn't like the last budget. So most businesses will now relax and start to plan for the future.
08:52Specifically within the housing market, I think there was some positives within that from a sort of
08:58house builder's perspective. Just sort of winding back momentarily, most employers recognise the housing
09:06issue that we have here, particularly in Kent, and the problem that has in terms of being able to
09:11attract and retain staff. So there is a real conflict, if you like, between the business model that is
09:18property management and rental, and then obviously the needs of local business employers and organisations.
09:24So the Chamber of Commerce and the business community here have been calling for an increase
09:30in the number of houses that can be built, primarily to try and address this shortfall with increasing
09:36rental prices because of lack of available property and the fact that housing is far outstripping the
09:43financial reach of many of your average workers here in Kent. So in the budget, we saw increased funding to
09:50try and address and simplify the planning process because that drags on and can take a huge
09:54amount of time. We've seen some clear leaning towards increase in the rental income in terms
09:59of tax contribution. So again, it's sort of encouraging that business model perhaps to
10:03sort of try and cool off a little bit. And generally, you've sort of seen some positive
10:07moves around freeing up some devolution around local town centres as well to enable some funding.
10:12So I think actually the government seem to have taken on board some of these issues around the housing
10:17issues that we have here, and businesses are playing a part in trying to address that.
10:21And I think one of the biggest kind of announcements that were made as well,
10:26specifically that will be on the top of the mind for renters,
10:29is the rise in income tax for landlords, which is going to be up 2% from April 2027.
10:36The Chancellor has called this fair. Kemi Badenoch, leader of the Conservative Party,
10:40has said that renters are going to be hit the hardest by this. What are your thoughts?
10:45Both are right. What happens is the market has evolved over time.
10:50Now, when you make any changes to legislation, what happens is those entrepreneurs and those
10:54people that are relying on that sort of income adapt to the new legislation. And what we saw was
10:59when people are being taxed higher on their second homes, what happens is suddenly there was an
11:04explosion in buy-to-let properties, in holiday lets rather, because it was more tax efficient.
11:11So there's a business model that's at work here, which is not helping the wider economy. So
11:16the Conservative opposition quite rightly are saying, yes, there will be a short-term
11:21hit for rent, because until we build more houses, there will be a continued lack of stock and
11:26availability. And most landlords, of course, are looking to pass on those costs to the renters.
11:32Thank you, Tudor. Apologies.
11:34That's a number of bits and pieces.
11:35Sorry, that's all we have time for this evening. Thank you so much for chatting with us, Tudor.
11:38Don't forget, for anybody watching, you can always keep up to date with your latest news across the
11:42county by logging on to kmtv.co.uk. Thank you. Have a nice evening and take care.
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