Is this 2 bed worth £5,000 PCM?

I'm a great believer in free markets and minimal intervention.  I've seen all too often the law of unintended consequences as regulation in one way results in all kinds of often perverseness and unintended results else where (think financial Gaia Theory). Don't forget banks were regulated before the biggest financial bust in history.

Rental regulation?
However,  it does make you wonder sometimes when you see some of the rents landlords are trying to charge in the overheated South East.  I came across this 2 bed maisonette in Thornton Heath on the Streatham High Road.  Jokingly its called Heath House.  Now this ain't swanky London and the landlord is laughingly asking almost 5 grand a month for it.  In Nottingham and I"m guessing and in most provincial cities outside London a place like this would be likely to attract a rent of just over a tenth of this.  I'm dead against rent regulation of any sort but when you see landlords trying to charge rents like this you do wonder.

Is this overcharging on the rent or just an opportunistic landlord chancing his/her arm to bag a desperate tenant?

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