Small landlords selling off isn't a great news after all

Thats rather irrelevant.

Labour could scrap it or at least water it down, instead they are going full steam ahead and the only people who will pay for this, will be tenants ALL costs passed on.

The changes to EPC to a C and tighter standards, will mean more costs, even when an exemption granted.

It also means HA's wont be buying new builds as they will and are diverting funds to bring up to spec existing properties, meaning less new social housing will be built unless new funding provided (by the tax payer) which in todays climate will not happen.

Doesn't need to be green belt building. There are huge amounts of grey belt and brownfield land, ex industrial sites, semi derelict areas of town centres, huge numbers of "flats above shops" that lie empty, huge numbers of unoccupied houses where the owner has gone into a home (often for many years), empty houses due to slow/delayed probate, etc.

So much could be done to release empty properties, to convert empty/derelict buildings, to build on brown/grey field sites. A lot of the time it's planning rules and councils that are holding things up rather than NIMBY's. Such as a recent planning refusal in Blackpool where the owner of a disused B&B wanted PP to convert it into a family home, but the council refused PP - they obviously prefer a semi derelict eyesore than a family home!!

Loads of cases just like that. One of my clients has a closed down shop - he's in his 80s - typical ground floor shop, with flat above on a shopping street - no one wants to buy it because council won't give PP to convert it to residential and he can't get building regs for the flat above as there is no separate access and the stairs are too narrow/steep for modern standards - unfortunately it had PP for change of use FROM residential to commercial when he started using the upstairs for business storage etc. - if he hadn't changed it, it would still be residential and wouldn't need the hoops to jump through re the separate entrance and staircase improvements required. Of course, no grants or support available for the conversion, and no purchaser is interested, so it just continues to deteriorate.

no one wants to be the one to push people into negative equity and bring down the card tower that is house prices.

the answer is mass building of social housing, but that involves long term investment and purchasing of land etc upsetting NIMBYs.
once you’ve taken care and given stability to those people, your building communities again. And adjusting the private rental market. You’re keeping money circular into councils and governments instead of lining private firms pockets.
that in turn will adjust the buyers market.

Brown/Blair had 13 years and did nothing. Starmer is showing no interest in improving matters. I think we can clearly see neither of the main parties are remotely interested in improving the situation. Too many snouts in the trough making money from high housing costs.

Absolutely. And the rot began when Thatcher sold off council housing and didn't replace it. Then scrapped the Fair Rent agreements and reduced tenants' rights. And then on her watch and Blair's, house prices skyrocketed and they did nothing to prevent this. So homes - the most fundamental human need of all is shelter - became investment items. Thousands of inner London homes standing empty, probably many more throughout UK, as they are just part of foreign investors' portfolios. And keyworkers can't afford to live where they work.

Labour may not have solved the problem. They may have exacerbated it at times. But they didn't create it.

It was Tory policy and they put the bill in motion when they were in power

Same near me. Lots of landlords selling up. Properties in terrible condition and asking over the odds!

Their properties are sitting on the websites while owner occupied places that have been taken care of are going for the same price.

It was a Tory policy.

I'm doing the same. Short sighted Labour policies.

He is seeking an off ramp now (or is he getting ready to escalate?) unlike tariffs he can"t switch this off now, Iran has a lot of cards to play.

A bit doom laden there.

We don't know what Trump will do or how the ME will play out.

One thing is certain though, the longer this goes on, the worse it'll be and for Trump too, mid terms 6 months away, US petrol prices up 35% already, this wont be forgotten by even the most thick of MAGA supporters.

All of which means he will be seeking an off ramp asap.

Harder to do when mortgage rates are climbing (some small relief today but the rates will be back at the races when Trump makes his next move in the ME)

It sounds like poor planning. They can always sell up.

Yes, but many can"t pay the extra debt that markets are now charging them though, they won"t be in business for the next "good times" IMO the good/bad times of the 2001 - 2008 cheap debt run and crazy bailout from the money printers that followed and suspended reality until relatively recently was a one-off, it won"t be repeated.

The BTL brigade need to bite the bullet and await the good times coming around again, remembering that they are sat on an asset which they have outsourced the majority of the debt.

A massive problem for mortgaged landlords is that rents are driven by wages while the cost of their debt is driven by bond markets (global volatility) they could end up with no lever to raise the rent while seeing their debt costs rise ( and potential buyers for their BTL won"t be there because their potential monthly debt cost has also risen) the technical term would be "Stagflation" I think?

The coming recession will balance that out, the first thing young people do (if they can) when the financial SHTF is run to parents for free rent, they have nothing invested in a rented party box in the city, young people now also have no concept of a proper recession, it will be interesting times.

The Zoopla report in early March says rents have risen, in England by 3.6% to (outside of London) £1430 per month.

Even though supply is up (11%) supply is still 23% down on pre pandemic levels & demand down by 14%, with just approx 5 inquires per rented property.

Causes for this is less migration, so it would be good to see where exactly supply is up, because it isn't in the far SW, demand is mental.

Since landlords started (trying to) sell off rents have started falling and supply is up by about 15%, not great news but certainly good news. If you watch a few minutes of Bloomberg news you will see that the suits in the big glass buildings are now seriously rattled about the prospect of a global recession, Big Corp is not going to bail UK small landlords out of their debt mistakes! If they went anywhere near doing this it would be at absolute bottom dollar prices, but it just isn!t worth their time, they have capital, capital can be deployed to much more lucrative, less regulated more liquid investments.

Nevermind. I know someone who sold her lovely family home to a first time buyer (who'd viewed it with her mum). First viewing, full asking offered and accepted.

Turned out it went straight on the rental market and she never planned to live in it.

I'd love to have sold my late mum's rental property to a first time buyer. But the stress of dealing with her debts and the whole legal nightmare (plus the stress of having to get the tenants out and dealing with the horrendous state of it) had affected my mental health so much that I wanted the quickest and least complex sale I could get. And the highest offer was a cash one from an investor. I couldn't countenance turning it down.

We stayed in a AirBnB that was someone's (brick built) garage. Sounds awful, but it was really nice inside. Properly done out. Very comfortable and we would have happily stayed a few days, but we had a schedule to keep to.

Ground rent & maintenance has been the great investment for many over the last few years, especially for companies. It's purely because of the lack of freehold availability in England. As always those owning the buildings lease got greedy. It's easy money for them.

He wasn’t obligated to sell to a FTB. He sold to who paid him more. Perfectly normal’ 👍

I think holiday lets in residential streets/blocks need far better restriction control. It's not nice living next door to a revolving door of different people every week, if not twice a week - people who generally don't care about noise and disruption, where they park, etc., as they know they'll be gone in a few days! People living in residential streets or blocks of flats don't sign up for that level of annoyance and disruption.

Holiday lets need to be more aimed for "specialist" places, like farm/barn conversions, railway carriages/canal boats, converted railway stations, converted mills, etc - i.e. the kind of place that wouldn't usually be residential.

We holiday in the UK a lot and always try to avoid renting anywhere that looks to be on a residential street/residential area. We cause no noise/disruption, but we still feel it's unfair to the neighbours and anyway, we prefer to stay somewhere unusual. Currently on a short break in a converted chapel in the middle of a field that had been derelict and crumbing for over a hundred years!!

We did actually put in a heat pump, but that's because we only had storage heaters so the plumbing needed to go in anyway. But for those on mains gas, I don't see the point while electricity is 4x gas prices - you'll have an expensive, disruptive installation process and then if you're lucky and the house is suitable and it's a really good installation, it'll cost about the same - if not, your bills will be higher, often substantially so.