RENTERS AND LANDLORDS PAY A HIGH PRICE !! ANAVALAIS MASM

IT'S A crisis that's unfolding all over the country - and it could lead to a 97-yearold woman in Manchester losing her home.

- JOSEPH TIMAN

Gloria Wilson has lived in a two-bedroom flat in Northern Moor for 18 years. Throughout that time, her rent was just £ 525 a month.

That was until January, when the former nurse, who suffered a 'near-fatal' heart attack last year, received a letter from her landlord asking for a £125 increase. Eight months later, after reaching an impasse, a legal notice was issued, raising the rent to £875.

The landlord says he has no choice but to raise the rent as interest rates have skyrocketed, leaving him at a loss of around £5,000 over the last year. But Gloria's daughter and full-time carer Jean Barett, who lives there too, says the sudden increase is unaffordable.

This is an 'extreme' example, according to one landlord lobby group, but it is 'not atypical' of the housing crisis Britain is now facing. More than four-fifths of landlords in England have four or fewer properties in their portfolio and nearly half rent out just one home.

For some, it is an investment aimed at topping up wages or a pension. In Gloria's case, the new build flat she lives in was bought by her landlord with his family in mind, hoping that, one day, it might help one of his four children get on the property ladder.

Since buying it through a tracker mortgage which means monthly repayments immediately rise with interest rates - he has rented it out.

From 2009, the interest rate set by the Bank of England remained below 1 per cent- until last year.

Following the disastrous minibudget delivered by the 38-day chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng, interest rates started rising sharply and, within 12 months, hit 5.25 per cent.

This means that landlords who do not own their properties outright are suddenly having to pay much more in mortgage repayments, with many passing on these extra costs to tenants by hiking the rent. Landlords have also come under pressure in other ways.