To hate homes under the hammer

You evidently didn’t understand my point. It was his glee at the money he was going to make that galled me (IIRC he was boasting of a 14% yield on his investment) and (obviously) the fact that so much government/taxpayer money goes into the pockets of so many landlords like him - money which by rights should be going towards the provision of social housing.

And please don’t anybody start on about Thatcher and Right to Buy - Labour had 13 years in which to do away with that, but they didn’t. Why not? Could it possibly be because they thought it’d lose them votes? Plus, Gordon Brown positively encouraged private landlords, by allowing them to retain mortgage interest tax relief, while removing it for owner occupiers. Buy to let absolutely mushroomed under Labour.

And no, in case anybody’s wondering, I’m not a Tory voter!

Anyone can go to a property auction. It's a level playing ground.

Not if you've just scraped enough money together to try and buy a property and you're bidding against landlords with plenty of cash wanting to add to their property portfolios.

The council/HA are just as able to buy as part of their portfolio as the private investor. Rents would be cheaper if there were fewer people needing to be housed.

Yes, I have 5 teenagers/20-somethings and they and they mates pretty much all have the latest phones/go out a lot/take ubers/order just eat etc. I tend to make observations based on what I see. What’s your point?

And yes, exactly - you helped me make MY point.

Do you think LL’s don’t have other costs? Do you think they take home everything above the mortgage payments in profit? Maybe look at some of the costs involved in the buy to let business and the hoops that must be jumped through. That’s before you even take into consideration tenants who decide not to pay their rent, whom you then have to take through a costly court process to get out and who then leave the property in a state owing thousands of pounds.

It’s an extremely stressful profession (I don’t know how my dh deals with some of the shit he does) and he has all the responsibility on his own shoulders, he’s not working for a firm.

People on here seem to think it’s easy, Chuck a bit of white paint around and Bob’s your uncle, you’re in the money. But if so why aren’t they doing it themselves?

Because it’s hard work, costly and risky and most people couldn’t be bothered with it or don’t have the know-how to make it work.

If he hadn't bought it to rent to the family with lots of children, where do you think they would have lived?

Many of the types of homes features on Homes Under The Hammer (and similar programmes) are in such a state of disrepair that it’s often a gamble in terms of cost for whoever buys the property.

Unless you are an experienced builder or developer who can properly assess a house, these properties often have issues that are not detectable to the naked eye, and even if you are experienced you cannot know the full extent of cost and damage until you start repair work. These houses often cost thousands in renovations, need rewiring, new plumbing, often structural repairs are needed.

I’m not sure it’s in the best interests of the council to buy these properties to renovate and then rent or sell cheaply, given the renovation costs and times are often ‘how long is a piece of string?’

You win "the latest iPhone" bingo, congrats!

As for the coffee analogy - don't be ridiculous. The beans might be 10p. How much is -

The rent for the café
The VAT
The barista's hourly wage
The accountant the owner uses
The delivery charge to get the coffee (and milk) from the supplier to the café
The power/heating
The standing charge for the water
The café insurance
The business rates

It was similar for my family member.

They bought a property that wasn't a house at auction for £120k cash. They subsequently spent £400k + to turn it into a beautiful home which was valued at a million. They still live there.

Occasionally the programme does show some gems!

My parents were on Homes Under The Hammer.

They paid £250k cash at auction for the property. You could not have got a mortgage on it as it was uninhabitable, it had no functional kitchen or bathroom, the previous owner had been a recluse. It cost them £75k to make it to a good standard. They didn’t do anything extraordinary for that price, it cost them that just to make it habitable. They then sold it for £450k.

There’s no way this property could have been bought by a first time buyer, unless they had £325k cash lying around…

My issue isn't against rentals, its against what its become. A mom and Pop rental of someone who looks after the house is more than fine.

Instead a select few buy to let landlords buying up all the cheap/affordable properties (hundreds even thousands of them) and bodging them then doing no maintenance.

My other issue is people doing the same and 'flipping' them (which frankly I hate even more).

If my landlord fixed the damp and other issues. I would have no issues at all about the fact the house is 30-50 years out of date. I dont care about wear and tear or any of that.

It just warms my cockles to know this house is now so bad (you can't just paint over these 'cracks' anymore) and so well documented that he will either have to spend a FORTUNE to bring it up to standard to be re-rented, abandon it or sell it at a huge loss and its all his own fault for letting it get so bad. I KNOW he will try and blame me though as he already does.

The private landlord has very little regulation which is the issue. The HAVE to comply with gas safety annually, check smoke/CO2 alarms annually and do electric every 10 years or so if the house is lived in but other than that they can do whatever the fuck they like seemingly.

I live in the north, have you ever watched the documentaries on Hordon and similar places like Hart-le-pool, Middlesborough etc... most the houses are abandoned and in uninhabitable condition (beyond any logical repair, well past 'doer ups').

They are all mostly owned by private landlords from the south who swooped in and bough up all the 'cheap' houses but rent/house prices didn't rise inline with the big cities so they let them fall into disrepair with damp, mold, leaking roof etc... (from their comfort a world away) and then where left empty when the tenants where removed due to unsafe living condition. Once abandoned they have attracted squatters (from the now huge homeless population) and vandals.

They just don't care, thousands of houses completely ruined to the point of requiring demolition.

I think if a house becomes unlivable and no effort is being made to fix it it should be ceased and forfeited or they should have to pay growing fines depending on how long its abandoned. Maybe people in big cities don't know what life is like in the ruined ghost town but the landlords really weren't helping.

Then again I have seen people charge eye watering prices for 1 bed filthy hovels in dangerously cladded skyscrapers built out of dangerous concrete methods in London so maybe its no better there either.

Ah I see. Thanks. Totally agree with you.

What's to stop young people buying a dilapidated property and refurbishing it?

Mainly that they can’t be arsed or would rather spend their money on nights out/having the latest iPhone/travelling etc. My ds is 25 and not one of his large group of friends has bought a house, they’re all either renting or at home. They want to be close to the city or live in trendy areas and won’t consider moving to less fashionable places, buying a do-er upper and putting the time/money in. That’s fine and dandy and today’s culture is more about living in the moment and having fun whilst you’re young, but you can’t have it both ways.

My dh is a LL and has now sold several of his properties due to ever increasing loopholes and the threat of rent controls etc. It’s already a longwinded and expensive process trying to get nuisance tenants who don’t pay their rent out of a property so why carry on if things are set to get worse? So those properties have now been taken away from the rental market. That’s been happening for quite a while now and is set to become the better option for many, especially now Labour are in power.

Less houses for rent/rising population/the government not building anywhere near enough social housing = well it’s a recipe for disaster and homelessness which is already happening.

Yes in an ideal world people would be handed a perfectly renovated and very cheap house because they feel they deserve it but life doesn’t work like that does it? My dh worked really hard and came from nothing to build his property business. He took risks when he was young to buy houses and worked 16 hour days 7 days a week to do them up ready for the rental market. The property market is very up and down and it certainly hasn’t been a bed of roses, he was rarely home when the dcs were young.

It makes me laugh when I read some of the ignorant comments on threads like these about greedy landlords “getting their comeuppance” and the jealousy-fuelled bile spilled from people who don’t even understand the first thing about the property market. If it’s such an easy buck to make why the hell haven’t you done it yourself?

Do you think supermarkets are evil for making a profit on the food they sell? A cup of coffee in my local cafe costs £4 and around 10p to make - a much bigger markup than the profit gained by LL’s nowadays - but coffee shops aren’t the subject of vitriolic rage. Most LL’s own a couple of properties and barely break even with all the rules and reg’s nowadays - my db rented out a property for a year and went through hell trying to get his house back when the tenants wouldn’t leave. They wrecked the house causing thousands of pounds worth of damage and he ended up out of pocket. And you can say “he deserved it” but how would you feel if that was your house? Again, he has sold it now - another houses taken out of the rental market which won’t be replaced by SA housing. For those of you who still havent grasped it: “THE GOVERNMENT/COUNCIL’S ARE NOT BUYING HOUSES, HOWEVER CHEAP, TO BUILD SOCIAL HOUSING”. They are not even making it easier for other people to use their own money to build houses, in fact they’re making it more difficult. But bringing in rent controls and rules that seemingly protect the renter are an instant vote-winner - even though those in power know themselves it is exacerbating the problem. They don’t care so long as they get your vote, and most people are too ignorant to know what’s actually going on.

Blaming Homes Under the Hammer on people not being able to buy homes, honestly 🤣 Do do some actual research instead of parroting the “evil landlord’s to blame” rhetoric you’ve been sold.

And to the posters saying completely thick things such as “homes should be auctioned off cheaply to the most deserving/bought cheaply as social housing” etc.
So if that were your DM’s house who’d died and been inherited by you and it was valued at £300k, you’d sell it for £100k to the young couple with a baby desperate to get on the housing ladder would you? Or to the council for a steal so they could rent it to a family on benefits?

Course you would!

There are so many houses on Rightmove. Where are you that there are no houses left for you to buy?

Anyone can go to a property auction. It's a level playing ground.

But where would you have been living if this house was not available for you to rent?

Yeah many auctions here are modern method, they are aimed specifically at people getting mortgages now. Also landlords are rarely cash buyers.

Mine certainly has a mortgage because the mortgage company just came out to do a reevaluation because he want to transfer companies and extend it (even though it must almost be paid off from the £78,000 he has had from us over the years) along with the rest of his massive portfolio.

I have been trying to buy for over a year, I'm a cash in hand first time buyer. I have the money thank you.

Many don't even hit the market as local buy to letters and flippers have deals with EA they already used before.

Because if you buy at auction you have to pay a 10% deposit on the day of the auction and then pay the balance in 20 days. If you want to take out a mortgage, you have to arrange a survey etc. before the lender will agree to give you the money - if you don't pay the balance in 20 days, you lose your deposit and you might be liable for additional costs of re-selling. As well as the other reason that PPs have said about some of the properties not being mortgageable due to lack of functional bathroom and kitchen.

Many of you will be pleased to know LL's are selling off btl houses. According to Rightmove almost 1 in every 5 properties for sale was/is a btl property.

So LL's are not stopping anyone else from buying then.

But we get that anyway even if painted white with the landlord special.

If it was OUR unsafe shithole we could make it safe and nice.

I would rather OWN the shit hole and do it up to my tastes within my time frame of a lifetime.

For what its worth my rented house is not remotely 'done up' and that was part of why I liked it. It has the same wallpaper as my childhood home in the 90s etc... so wonderful nostalgia so being an ugly white and grey box would in NO WAY have appealed to me. It would be lovely if the landlord had done just basic maintenance but he won't, as soon as we moved in he does the bare minimum gas/electric safety and wont fix the other issues like damp which have gotten so bad its ruining everything.

I don't believe for one second the 'paint it white' landlords are fixing those things either. In fact we are currently STC on a house (but in a probate no mans land) we are buying that was a buy to let and its cheap because its RIDDLED with damp and structural issues the landlord hid and painted over. Currently it looks 'fine' in photos as a white box with grey carpet in every room. the bright white hides the salting and blown plaster and speckled grey helps disguise the damp floorboards. It needs a whole new roof from cheap bodges (removed lead on whacked cheap concrete on overloading it) and structural repair that where deliberately 'hidden' with mortar and paint rather than fixed too.

I'm happy to do that work to get a house though. Even a shiney new house needs maintence and things changing.

Nobody wants to live in an unsafe shit hole.

This 100%

It's a shame there's not a system where young families or people genuinely trying to get on the property ladder could have first dibs on auction properties.