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

Just another one to add to the voice of small landlords selling up. We let out a big property that we used to live in. We were good landlords, beautiful house well maintained. Sadly we sold up early this year. Labour gvt making it totally untenable for us to keep it. Had to put the lovely tenants, a family who’d been there for years, on notice.

Labour disgust me.

I very much believe the private rented sector is a key part of our housing provision and should remain. The problem generally with private rentimg is the insecurity and lack of standards for landlords. You could luck out and get someone like my neighbour who is in it for the long term and takes his duties very seriously or you could get an utter incompetant "accidental" landlord who is one missed mortgage payment away from repossession. Who knows?

Letting out a residential property is first and foremost a service business, tenants are your customers, not just a convienient way for you to pay for your pension.

Therefore it is right there are standards and cusomter protections, which yes means there is admin for landlords to do. Don't like it, find some other way to make money. Of course these need to be reasonable and notntip thr balacoe too far the other way, but by god the moaning when it is suggested that mortgage paying units (sorry tenants!) might possibly have a right to a safe, secure home.

I totally agree. Labour is really putting the boot in to ordinary folk. And worst to come in the budget or so we keep being told.

Tenants were able to have all that until governments started meddling in the name of regulating bad landlords. All it has done is driven out good landlords. The bad ones are still operating because they don’t give a shit

It is such a shame.

i have been a landlord as I moved in with my partner and we rented out my house. I always prided myself on being a great landlord. Kept house nice. Fixed things straight away. Low rent as I was passing on my good fortune. Tenants always said how good I was.

selling up now.

This UK gov is really not socialist.

When did all the rules come in for landlords?

I’d imagine tenants have only ever wanted a sensible rent, proper maintenance of the property, not to be made to move on a whim and not to have their deposit stolen for general wear and tear by living there. Those protections should be in place.

Im pretty sure they aren’t the ones demanding heat pumps etc though.

This government isn't socialist. They're not even really left wing.

Any landlords should pm me. I'm working with a British battery provider as part of Clean Power 30.

We plan to provide oversized batteries free of charge (the investor gets their money by providing the connected batteries to balance the grid) to householders and can do the same for small companies. A typical household should earn c£1k by using the battery to buy cheap and sell electricity high, so only using electricity when it is at it's cheapest. (Electricity is at its cheapest when thee is excess renewable energy.). Won't help with EPC rating, but may help fund something that does.

I'm certainly not making money from being a landlord. I do it at a loss.

The house is an asset, however.

Don’t worry - the planned Renters Reform Bill is great news for tenants.

Rents will fall, and there will be more stock available for tenants, and those properties that are sold will be bought by renters who could not previously afford to buy.

Oh wait…

Of course Water companies make money! Have you never heard of Shareholders?

As for Medicine.........you have GOT to be kidding! Pharmaceutical Industries are among the richest globally!

Sheesh.

@Hedgehogbrown So you don't like paying for housing? Bizarre. Where are the free magical house?!

I own 8 properties. What rules and regulations do these hard done by Landlords struggle with?
This is just another stealth anti labour thread.
OP said her LL is selling to a 'corporation' for 10k over the asking price. No where in this country is that likely. Also that will all go in property gf sins tax so it seems unlikely.

You don’t say where you rented, but in many European countries where the rentals are more controlled, the tenants also have more responsibility.

In Germany, for example, tenants must provide their own kitchens and bathrooms and take care of their own maintenance.

Landlords are free of CGT after 10 years and can still claim mortgage interest relief, unlike the UK.

Errr, have you heard of Thames Water?

Typical uninformed post.

Your wish was already granted to you in 2015 by George Osborne. It’s called Section 24 and removed the ability to deduct mortgage interest from profits which means in some cases people are paying 100%+ in tax.

It’s one of the reasons, along with mortgage interest rates rising, that so many landlords have already sold and are planning to sell.

Maybe you have a more intelligent suggestion for what happens next since tenants are now struggling to find homes and we have a ‘housing crisis’.

Wow so many 'good' landlords on this thread even if you do say so yourselves. So who are all the money grubbing shit heads I've been renting off for the last twenty years? If you want to make money off peoples need for housing, you are not a good person. You wouldn't do it with water or medicine. So why housing?

Of course inflation is relevant. You have to pay CGT on the difference between the purchase and sale price, without taking inflation into account.

I understand it used to be taken into account (taper relief or something?), but that was changed years ago. If that's not the case please explain how I'm wrong and I'll be thrilled (and will consider selling something!)

Exactly. DD was transferred with work to a location she had no intention of settling down in long term, so she rented.

12 weeks later the company underwent major restructuring and she was relocated back to head office again.

I don’t understand why it cannot be acknowledged that rental housing is required in all its various forms and tenants, for all sorts of reasons don’t have to buy.

That’s rubbish! Of course people buy with good sitting tenants. Good sitting tenants and a well maintained property will always sell. To top up our poor pensions (self employed all our lives) we sold 5 of our properties to individual landlords and the last flat to ftb’s all within the last 5 years.

Got out of the business before this useless government started taxing people to buggery.

@WaryHiker Sounds like a good experience. Did you get a sense of who owned most rental properties- did it tend to be large corporations/wealthy individuals with several properties, or small-time landlords?

We rented for several years in a Scandinavian country. It was a great experience on both sides because it was so heavily regulated and everyone knew where they were.

The local authority set rules for how much a landlord could charge per square metre, and that was set centrally at a reasonable rate. The price varied slightly according to the other facilities available in the house or apartment, but was generally a good rule of thumb.

The landlord could be reported and fined or have their ability to rent taken away from them if they were charging more and taking advantage of people who might not know the rules, such as foreign nationals. And there were heavy penalties for raising the rent during the term of the generally long-term contract.

Plus there were a lot of extra protections if the landlord wanted to move back into the property at any point. They had to prove this was genuine, and checks would be done on a regular basis. So, they couldn't just throw someone out because they had found higher paying tenants.

It meant rents stayed relatively affordable, repairs were done quickly and by licenced professionals, and the tenants were not subject to sudden rent increases when mortgage rates went up. Only those people who could afford to play by the rules became landlords. It wasn't a get-rich-quick thing.

@PrincessofWells I agree that’s probably what’s going to happen, it’ll follow the corporate model. I was just curious to hear what @Snakebite61‘s preferred approach is, because some viable alternatives would be great.

Jeez. You missed the point. I’m not jealous. I’m a landlord too and I’ve paid CGT myself. I don’t moan about it because for every 18% of CGT paid there’s 82% in your bank - for basic rate tax payers. Stop moaning and be grateful you are fortunate enough to have a second property to pay CGT on.

Inflation has nothing to do with anything. PP is confused.