To hate homes under the hammer

I used to watch it all the time but stopped when it started to be just landlords in Liverpool or Nottingham buying all the properties in every street to rent.
I have started to watch it again but the format is tired.
It makes me sad when perfectly good houses are torn down to build two or more new builds in its place. There was one yesterday which was lovely with a huge garden and the couple replaced it with two new builds.
I like it when they go back to properties shown years ago and see their transformation.
I love it when it's someone buying to do up to live in, especially when it's a first home or a forever home.
I especially like it when the homes are brought back to life from, well, basically a ruined shell.

It's not even work for local builders / trades sometimes , it's often their family and friends doing the work for mates rates. Sometimes themselves, but rarely can they do it all themselves. Especially the more expensive specialty jobs.
You can tell the ones not paying mega bucks

I guess you could also look at it as employment for labourers, carpenters, plumbers, electricians etc and the landlords are doing their job. This is their livelihood. You could say the same if any business person, you're greedy buying something cheaply and then selling it for a profit. Everyone has to make money somehow

My favourite one was when the agent viewed it after work
“well the kitchen is not good enough quality to sell, renting it will be fine”

brilliant attitude let’s let the renters have the shit, it’s all we deserve. and then, get pissed off when it breaks after 6 months.

Bloke on last week bought a perfectly decent flat a but run down but fine and redecorated it in a magnolia hideousness with an ugly vinyl floor and cheap looking kitchen. It used to be good fun, now, no.

If I wanted to get ideas for renovation or decoration, I wouldn’t be relying on Homes Under The Hammer 😂

I agree OP.

Used to really enjoy it as easy viewing but it became a much harder watch seeing all these landlords congratulated for shoving yet another cheap property into their bulging portfolio whilst my generation struggle to get on the property ladder at all.

Both the landlords and the flippers have normalised viewing houses as investments rather than homes and I find that attitude quite unpalatable now.

The music choices are good though.

I stopped watching ages ago when on an episode there was a landlord (think it was in the Burnley area) who had something like 900 properties and they said they were aiming to get to 2500 properties.

I agree with you @Cappuccinowithonesugarplease - and at the risk of sounding like a total arsehole, I find it highly amusing when I see a 'rogue tenants/crappy landlords' type programme, and you've got somebody who rents out a property they have purchased as a 'buy-to-let.'

Then the tenant doesn't pay the rent (and it takes about 6 months to get them out, and they lose about 3 or 4 thousand pounds,) I just think 'that'll teach you to be greedy and grabby.' I do NOT include people who are renting their home out because they were forced to move because of personal issues or problems, (and they can't sell the property!) Just the ones who buy properties to rent out.

I don't think anybody in this country should own more than one property, (the one that they live in.) Every other additional property should be bought by the local authority on a compulsory purchase order - for the price that the landlord paid for it. So if they got it for £38,000 in 1999-2003 or something, (and it's worth £180,000 now,) they still only get £38,000 .. I mean, think of the money they've made off it, renting it out!

Then the local authority(s) can rent them out to people as social housing!

A FIFTH of rented properties in the UK are owned by private landlords. Imagine how many more social housing properties will be available! (1000s and 1000s and 1000s actually! Probably more than a million!)

.

Such an awful tv show

The rental crisis is not down to evil landlords.

It is a bit. 👀

apart from anything else it is so bloody boring. They buy a cheap house , knock walls down to create a large kitchen diner, paint it all white with grey carpets and then sell.or rent it for a profit.Yawn.

apart from anything else it is so bloody boring. They buy a cheap house , knock walls down to create a large kitchen diner, paint it all white with grey carpets and then sell.or rent it for a profit.Yawn.

I get annoyed when they talk about their other rentals and when they refurb the place as cheap as possible to get maximum rent.

The horrible dark grey ridge carpet that belongs in an office really annoys me.

I'm sure when it first started it was more based on people buying their first homes to live in themselves?

I love HUTH. Its tacky day time viewing, with cheesy music and the very lovely Dion Dublin. Not a programme to get political about.

I pray HMRC have someone taking notes.

For those who don't like the music, just think of Martin's invisible piano and make up your own tunes as he plays.

If they're auction properties they are unlikely to be attractive and viable to first time buyers. You need avaliable cash for the property and the works. Time and skills. People with experience of property or trades are most likely to be able to have the resources to do it.

Many of the properties have suffered years of neglect then been out of use for years and are being brought back into use.

A cosmetic turn around in a month with the main expenditure being grey paint, not so much, but where they have been brought up to a modern standard ready for someone to move in, that's no bad thing.

Lots of people expect to move in to a property that requires no work. That bumps standards and prices up.

I used to watch it when home ill but not seen it for a couple of years. Agree with PP it always seemed like the same episode!

The episodes I saw were always a 2 up 2 down terrace somewhere up north, investor ‘extending their portfolio’ buys then does the same budget makeover with grey walls, carpet and kitchen. The end.

Since it became wall-to-wall landlords, they could just play Money Money Money by ABBA for all of them, with Ain't Nothin' Goin' On but The Rent by Gwen Guthrie for variation.

I liked it when you got the occasional skint young couple looking for their first place on a shoestring.

Not quite homes under the hammer but similar I was watching 'the great house giveaway' and was struck by the MASSIVE irony of the show.

The point of the show is how no one can afford to get on the property ladder. So the show buys a cheap 'first time buyer' houses at auction (using extortionate bridge loans) and allows to poor people to work themselves to the bone day in and day out for 6 months to to 'flip' the house (rewiring, new heating, new windows, full re-plastering, new kitchen/bathroom, sometime even serious structural work that even pros wouldn't take on etc... which they are suppose to try and source free if they can and fit with the help of family).

All the costs and fees (including the high interest on the massive loan) are added to the house buying cost and if it makes more than that they can keep the profit split between them as a deposit for a house (the lucky ones get about £12k which likely equals the wages they lost, many get nothing).

It will often be a case of:

This house was bought for £120k
It was renovated for £18k (and they'll be called out for not doing it for £8k etc...)
Stamp duty, Auction fees, Estate agent fees, Council tax, Utilities are £11k
Bridge lone repayment is £20k
Profit line is above £169
House sold for £175k

Profit of £6k split between 2 people (but really its more like 8 people when you account for all the family help).

So now a £120k house is approx. 45% more expensive for a first time buyer.

Not only is it massive exploitation (essentially slave labor but with the unlikely promise of getting a house, and it seems clear the fees are not explained upfront) but this 'flipping' houses means they are buying all the cheap houses then using the poor people who can't afford them themselves to do all the work for free to up the price of the housing market so they can't ever afford these houses.

Its like watching lambs to the slaughter or ants in a death spiral.

Most houses brought at auction aren't mortgageable... so wouldn't be able to be sold on the standard market. Most people don't have the cash to buy, even a "cheap" house without a mortgage.

The smug ones I can't abide
But then they won't have to live in it will they as they zoom off in their Ferraris to their pile in the country.

|I think a lot of the episodes are repeats from a few years back which might explain the cheaper prices.