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

That’s not a bad thing if that happens. Would free up housing for families/couples, etc. there needs to be more/sufficient halls for students so they’re not clogging up the local housing market.

6 million households in the UK would not qualify for a mortgage apparently.

To do so much damage to the PRS without ensuring that there is enough social rented accommodation to make up for any shortfall is downright dumb. It will be interesting to see what happens, but I'm bloody glad I'm not a LL any more, and I'm certainly very glad that I'm not a tenant.

Actually landlords can access people's credit scores. It's something I always do as part of referencing. All you need is for the tenant to give you their name, DOB and last couple of addresses, and to put in writing that they give consent for you to do it. It costs around £20.

Are you suggesting that my friend just randomly lied to me about this for no apparent reason?

thanks for the patronising lesson, but I do know how credit scores work! Obviously the landlord can't access anyone's cc themselves, no more than anyone else can. What they can do is ask prospective applicants to access their own scores themselves and provide screenshots etc.

Whether they should do this or it is a relevant or fair way of choosing applicants is all debatable, what isn't is that it did actually happen!

As my friend had a very good score she agreed to provide it as she thought it would go in her favour. Perhaps there were other applicants who refused to provide theirs, I don't know - the point is that the landlord for a fairly standard property in a not particularly nice area, had their choice of applicants despite the insane amount they were charging for rent.

It will no doubt be an overly bureaucratic quango which just adds more costs to landlords who will pass them on to tenants.

@thecatneuterer Do you have link to the amendments? I’m curious to see what they are.

Thinking of my own student days in the 1990’s, we rented a v. dodgy house, six of us crammed in and then one girl started getting headaches…turned out the gas fire in her room was leaking!

But then I know someone IRL who owns a couple of student rentals and they’re really nice. She’s even including free WIFI!

There will also be a mandatory new Ombudsman service for ALL landlords to be a part of. Though what the price of that is and what that involves no one knows as it hasn't been invented yet.

So another finger in the air thing of future costs.

Are yes you're right. I know landlord organisations were lobbying for that, but I thought it had been refused. It seems the amendments got through in the end.

Small landlord here with 2 rental properties.
Both have had the same tenants since we rented them out (when we got married and bought a joint house).

Fantastic tenants, and we are great landlords. Definitely charge below the market value, but that's because we like them and want them to stay as they look after the houses so well.

However, we are starting to feel the pressure to sell. We will continue to step rent up a little each year, but even so eventually we will be out of pocket. However when we sell we will have a huge CGT bill to pay :(

We would love to keep the properties for investment into our children's future. We've work hard to be able to do this, and now it is all likely to be taken away.

This all started when they made a change to the tax system where we can't put the interest on the mortgage against the costs anymore.

We're really sad about it and feel totally stuck :(

Thanks!

@thecatneuterer but large corporations are less likely to want to liquidate their buy to Let asset to pay for retirement.

I think student accommodation is one of the areas provided for in the new legislation. It will be treated differently to single lets and HMOs

I supposed the concept of 'funding an old age' is fairly modern. When state pensions were first put on the table, it was thought to cover the last few years of someones life.

Life expectancy was much different then, so you would end work and perhaps live another 5 years

Now we live much longer past retirement age, although not always in good health

So now we all (me included) want our pensions in our 60s but will be living until our late 80s.

But assuming Ive got a sell by date of around mid 80s, I wouldnt be able to work until my late 70s at all.

My owned house is not a C

I think some of the 'standards' which people are insisting on for private rents is not realistic. No one is saying people should or will live in a broken dangerous hovel but the reality is most of us live in houses with things that need doing. Its life.

Good points. But what these policies seem to be achieving is driving out small private landlords, to be replaced by large rental corporations. That's not going to help the issue at all.

I don’t think it’s that simple.
they need to get generation rent out of the private rental market before they retire.
the universal credit bill is going to be massive and it’s all going to go into private landlords bank accounts.
They need people either in council houses so the money stays within the council or owning so there’s no bill. With a chance of claiming some of that to pay for care if needed.

if rent rises more people need to claim benefit, or need council houses. They need to stop that without crashing the market completely. It’s a really difficult balancing act.

bailing out the housing market in 2008 was the second biggest mistake after selling off council houses.

I sold a 2-bed last December for £267k and the day we completed the guy had it up for rent for £1350 pcm (and it let in days). Even though he said it would need work to bring up to spec (it didn’t and I think that proves it). Shocking in Hants/Surrey border area.

I think this is very likely to happen. The fall out of around 30 per cent of rentals (much higher percentage in London) suddenly becoming unlettable would be too disastrous. And of course it's 2028 for new lettings, not 2030. I'm pretty sure the criteria will be changed to make a C much easier to attain.

Even if landlords want to get the changes done, at the moment there is no clear guidance on how to achieve the higher ratings as it's known that the criteria are to be changed. And in any case there aren't the skilled workers available to suddenly do all this work on millions of houses within probably an eighteen month period.

Yes, the leftys would soon complain if these people were housed by them.

I'm not surprised as have family in an area where literally nothing is available to rent. It's a real struggle.

But rent in advance won't be allowed anymore, and neither will over bidding.

@MadinMarch They already have since last year and it will change again probably next year. And hence why I said do it now so it will last 10 years

Unless of course the Government move the goalposts and change the criteria required to obtain a C rating...which is more than likely.

There's no shortage of houses to buy! Just look on Rightmove. Rentals, on the other hand are in short supply...
Not everyone wants to, or is able to, buy.

Our neighbours were landlords. House was a family home, I think their parents or grandparents. Recently sold for £650k not to local people, but to second home owners. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Not that most local people could have afforded it anyway. I’m very grateful to the landlords who allowed Dh and I to rent privately at a reasonable rate for the 10+ years it took us to save to buy a house.

Owning a house is expensive though. I don’t blame anyone for not putting themselves into debt to keep rents low. And I live in a place where locals are often priced out of the market by second home owners. Everyone likes to whinge about non-locals pricing locals out of the market. But no one likes to sell at prices locals want to pay. If I had to sell up my family home to afford retirement, I certainly would sell to the highest offer too, so can’t say I blame them. It’s not greedy. It’s a sensible financial decision, no matter how angry it might make Bob down at the pub.

@smallglassbottle - As long as the house has an EPC of C or above then you won't need to do anything. And if you get one done say immediately regardless of how old your current one is, that will cover you for the next 10 years.

There are also grants available to cover the costs if you did need a heat pump.