To not believe people who claim to think housing is an uncontroversial investment

Yes this is going to be a huge problem, like that post above where properties have to be sold because they're not going to be up to the EPC standards which are arbitrarily chosen
Our house, which we own wouldnt come up to that standard either!!

This must be one of the most ridiculous, poorly thought out, reductionist argument I’ve read on here.

1. they might not want to own the property for various reasons - could be a short term key prior to moving and don’t want the associated legal fees for buying/selling. They may have money invested elsewhere which is making more money than the rent is costing. The person may not have the desire or financial means to deal with ongoing maintenance etc.
2. why on earth does person A buying a property mean person B cannot afford it - this makes zero sense. Person B’s finances and ability to afford a property is the same whether person A is a landlord or “regular” home buyer. If you’re trying to argue landlords push the price up then that doesn’t hold water - it’s the market generally which leads pricing. Someone who falls in love with a property and wants it as a home is actually more likely to pay over the odds than a purely money focussed landlord.

I accept there is an issue with “rich Londoners” buying up second homes in desirable areas (eg Cornwall) making it unaffordable for locals - but that is a tiny percentage of the housing problems in this country.

The real issue is the lack of good social/council housing which drives people towards renting.

IMO the issue isn’t so much buying, it’s the cost of renting.

I’ve never rented but I do rem when private rents were affordable (say £6-700 for a 1 bed on a 1.6k salary) allowing people to move around for careers with ease.

Now those 1 beds are £1.5k plus bills on a £2k salary.

Low income families using HB to pay £2k+ to rent insecure private homes that used to be affordable council.

High rents are strangling our economy as people have less money to spend locally while we also have an astronomical housing welfare bill to pay rents to private owners.

I also have a DC in their 20s who will be moving a few times over the next few years and currently has no wish to buy. Competition for rental is high in the area they are looking for and they are getting really stressed about trying to find something.

Don’t know why that is in that area but it is happening here and as far as I can tell that is due to the number of landlords selling up due to the various changes coming in. Prices haven’t fallen and it is putting more pressures on people needing rentals so sadly we frequently have posts on local Facebook group from people desperately looking for places to rent but can’t find anything.

Thats interesting.

I just did the same experiment, within 3 miles of my post code, houses only, 2 bed minimum, no retirement, shared ownership or auction properties and got 118 results. We are in the south east, 80 miles south of London

People who say they "will never invest in property": can you be sure that your pension (if you have a defined contribution one) is not invested in property in some way?

Some people openly state they do not want to buy a house.

I am a LL through circumstance rather than deliberately investing in oroperty. My house is currently rented to a lovely woman who has lived there over 5 yrs & is welcome to live there as ling as she need until I sell it in approx 15syrs time (after I retire). Not all LL are renting out slums for extortionate rents. Here in Scotland the rental matket is quite tightly regulated & we cant just increase rent when we please. My tenants rent is not that
much higher than it would be for a similar council house. There is deffo a place for private renting in the housing market.

Actually Miley over the next 2 years I shall be selling 4 of my houses ahead of EPC as not financially viable to get from a D to a C as single skinned terraced houses and would need internal cladding. This will mean evicting 8 adults and 9 DC including 1 DC with severe SEN who might struggle to find something in the same area as her special school. I expect you will be glad about that though.

One of the main reasons England thrived was that, from very early on, it had secure property rights. This means that what belongs to you (house / field / car / horse / jewellery) will not be taken from you and the rules by which you hold those possessions will not change. The introduction of punitive taxes is a substantial change that undermines property rights and has a domino effect that reduces prosperity for everyone over time. There are far better ways to ensure the affordability of housing, like restricting foreign ownership (Denmark and Australia among others do this) and restricting how much banks can lend.

Quick snap a few more up to add to your portfolio.

Where I live I've just looked on RM and found over 70 houses under £250k. Some have been on the market for over 7 months. There are plenty of houses for people to buy. They don't not buy because LL have bought them all up. They don't buy because either they don't have a deposit, can't pass bank stress tests, don't earn enough to get big enough multipliers or they don't want to buy and prefer to rent. If a LL buys one of these houses it makes absolutely no difference to prospective home buyers. Yet another LL bashing thread.

We have a capitalist economy, everything is there to make money, even health services.

How that regulated and managed, thats a different matter but I dont agree that there is something intrinsically wrong or immoral to be a landlord.

Which is nothing like me making an individual pay my mortgage and pay me a profit while this erodes their ability to save for a house deposit. I couldn’t do it.

Providing capital to a company at least
allows them to grow. But as I said I get landlords are a necessary evil. We will always need rentals. I could just never be one. I view properties as primarily a form of shelter. Not for me to make money.

We have a cost of living crisis yet lost of us will have investments in utilities, big supermarket conglomerates. So literally food and water and heat, the real basics needed to survive are being 'invested in'

Anyone who has a work or private pension is involved in this.

Many also have property portfolios within the investment package.

Yep. I am happy to have investments but could never have a home as an investment. I would feel very uncomfortable at ever being a landlord. Especially with the housing crisis we have. Make it hard for individuals to own their own home because they are paying my mortgage makes me very uncomfortable.

I get that landlords are a necessary evil and have no issue with accidental landlord with one property. But I could never be one.

Its incredible isnt it the short sightedness

There is this mythical magical thinking that all the landlords are going sell up and then the people living in them will just buy them and house prices will crash to around 100k all over the place. Ignoring the fact that people will just hold on to their asset until prices rise anyway

Ive also seen on other threads about this, people who are generally anti landlord, making the distinction between the general accidental or singular landlord, perhaps they are someone just renting out a property because they have one or two and they are wholly hated. But then the distinction is made between them and 'landlord businesses' as if the landlord businesses and companies and organisations are somehow preferable and deemed permitted and ok and somehow morally acceptable compared to Mrs Goggins down the road who has a couple of flats she lets out to pay her pension income

I can tell you now that those big rental companies will be hell to deal with, wont have the same flexibility or knowledge of their tenants and neither will they care. There will be a lot less transparency about how or why you werent chosen to rent that property and I think people on benefits will be the most disadvantaged.

Many people need rental housing e.g. due to poor credit, needing to live temporarily in an area, not having a large deposit and so on.

I have a BTL and its housed the same family in it for seven years. Over those years the rental market has shot up but I've kept their rent fair and am probably charging them between £150 - £200 below market value. All repairs are sorted quickly. If they want to buy their own house, they have had 7 years in which to save a deposit for it, but presumably they are happy and settled renting and the situation works for them.

Exactly. People seem to forget that are are a large group of people in their early 20s, students and young workers, who actually want affordable rental properties, zero hour contracts etc. There needs to be good options for people who want permanency but also people who want to move around.

I don’t fully understand it but people are saying than there will be fewer landlords with all the changes coming. Won’t that push private rents up?

my student kids wanted to rent flats in their University cities. They certainly didn’t want to buy there.

my Polish colleague wants to go back to Poland and not buy here. He would like to rent for a year.

This. However I can see two arguments against it

1. It creates a rentier class within the working and middle classes whose interests are opposed to the majority of single home owners and renters

1. It upsets people as our entire system is based on people owning wealth earning more wealth from people who have none and BTL is the lowest rung of this

There isnt actually a shortage of homes, there is a shortage of affordable homes

So people who may be able to afford a mortgage, might not be able to get one for a myriad of reasons
People who can afford to rent need a guarantor, a barrier to renting privately but theres no social housing
People who cant afford to rent privately, but cant access social housing, get further and further into debt
People who are privately renting usually dont have enough to go round to save up a deposit for a purchase if thats what they actually want
Private rentals usually are hard to get and you can easily 'fail' the criteria. Private landlords also dont like pets most of the time

There simply isnt enough small housing and social housing. We need rentals that dont require massive deposits, dont require a guarantor and that are pitched at the same rate as the LHA in case someone needs benefits. We need for people to be able to have gardens and have pets and also for them to remain living in a consistent area for health and education needs to be met.

I think this is more a problem of British housing policy than moral bankruptcy. It goes quite far back.

I do think we need to tax assets more and tax work less.

How do you know? As a student the last thing I wanted was a permanent home, I thrived on moving every year with a new group of friends. And then before I moved abroad, I wouldn’t have wanted to tie myself down with a mortgage to have to sell and rebuy when I got back two years later. I also moved into a rental with now DH after a year of being together. It would have been absurd to buy together at that point in our relationship. Even more absurd if I’d bought with my ex boyfriend as we only lived together a year (in a rental) before splitting up. And then when DH and I moved to a new city, we bought in a totally different area to our rental after we got a feel for the place - I’m glad we weren’t tied to where we originally chose. My friend could afford to buy, but is rubbish at DIY and so activitely chooses to rent where all of those problems are her landlords responsibility.

There is a place for landlords, some renters actually want to be renting.