To not agree with how some people make their money, specifically landlords and letting agents?

Yeah I do feel like that. Everyone needs a roof over their heads and hoarding property to capitalise on that need, while offering substandard or overpriced housing is morally wrong.

I've a family member who has about £12 million worth of property and he is still the tightest git known to mankind. And he looks down at benefits claimants and disabled people. He refuses to rent to HB recipients.

The only alternative then is no one ever pays for a home

I have one rental property, which I manage myself. It is in better condition than the place I live in, I respond very quickly to my tenants' needs, fix everything immediately whatever the cost or who caused the issue, and am currently looking on line for a nice new comfy sofa to buy them (which they have asked for despite the old one being fine). Yes, I charge market rent but that is because after my mortgage, tax, service charge, insurance, maintenance bills, licence to rent etc, I cannot afford to do anything else.

Do you think OP that I should be doing this all out of the goodness of my own heart? Why should I be subsidising someone else's housing or working hard so they can live comfortably but not get paid for my work? Yes, I make a small profit but believe me, I work for it. However, the government are now making it so hard for small landlords like me that I am thinking of selling, which will mean only large corporate landlords are left, who might not care about my tenants and only want large profits. Those of you who bash landlords never seem to be able to give an alternative that doesn't involve landlords working for free. I remember once on MN someone even saying they should gift their inherited flat to the tenants because the tenants had been paying rent for years!

Earn money and purchase property in the same way that they did and cut them out of the equation.

Who has access to a time machine though? Regulations & requirements are different, taxes are different. lending criteria is different, salaries are different.

If you want to live in a communist state, fill your boots! There are a few to choose from.

Please check back in to let us know how you get on.

Most people need to rent, for at least a portion of their lives. Either through not being able to buy, or due to moving lots. In my 20's I moved every 6 months to a year for work, I needed to rent. I had bought a property in early 20's, but no suitable jobs available for me in that area and couldn't sell due to leasehold issues, so had to rent it out - I was a good landlord - repaired and replaced things promptly even when damage caused by tenants, I think I had to put a new washing machine in on average every 2 years due to misuse. Didn't increase rent on any tenant, only when tenants changed over.

There is a difference between good landlords who treat their tenants with respect, acknowledging it's theirs for the term of the tenancy and repairing things promptly. And those who neglect their tenants to make as much money as possible out of them. There are also good and bad tenants, but this is rarely mentioned. I made a loss over the 8 years I rented my flat out, after paying my mortgage,letting agent fees, service charges and repair costs (including higher call out fees to get thing's sorted quickly) even when the increase in value from buying to selling was factored in.

The government has made it much harder for good landlords to operate at any profit if havea mortgage on the property, so many have sold up. Leaving rubbish ones who operate outside the law, and desperate tenants who have no choice but to use them.

I see what you mean but if people can’t afford a mortgage then they need to rent which comes with a landlord.

My husband is a landlord but he goes above and beyond to make sure he looks after his tenants, so they can be there long term.

2 days before Christmas the tenant rang my husband to inform the cooker had stopped working. My husband could have left it til after the bank hols since no where was delivering until after the 27th. Instead he paid extra to get the cooker that was available the next day. Went to another town to collect it and had it installed as soon as he got it to the tenants.

The tenants were so happy they baked him a cake. Good landlord do exist but perhaps hard to find, sadly.

So do you want even less houses available for renting

Banks make a massive profit out of housing through interest payments

Lots of people can’t get mortgages.
or are between houses
or don’t want a mortgage

Agreed. Long term renter here who has no chance of getting a council house due to Thatchers
Thatcher's stupid Right to Buy Scheme.

I used to work in lettings many moons ago in a former lifetime and I can say with some confidence that (anecdotally at least) that for every crap neglectful landlord who tries to keep entire deposits or levy additional chargers for spurious reasons there is an equally crap tenant who skips town owing rent and leaving the place in state that can only be described as outright vandalism. As a business we did not want to deal with either crap tenants or landlords and avoided most like the plague once identified. Most private landlords did give a shit about the fabric of the building and would not just casually allow leaks or serious defects to cause long term very expensive damage. Most also wanted a happy tenant as they stay longer (fewer voids and change over costs) and the last thing they (or we as a business) wanted was being called up several times a day due to an unaddressed broken boiler or washing machine. Most of the landlords I dealt with owned a single rental property that more often or not used to be their own home before they got married/had kids/moved for work etc and were planning on using their property as an income during retirement given the collapse of final salary pension schemes and the uncertainty on relying underperforming stocks and shares. A balanced supply of both private and social housing rentals underpinned with strong protections for both parties is required.

Exactly. I only earn £28k per annum. Who the hell is going to give me a mortgage??

That’s the real problem, I think. We’ve been able to help our kids with deposits after selling the family home and downsizing. Their mortgages are literally a third of what it would cost to rent the same properties.

The problem is.. if all landlords decided to sell up, where would all the tenants go? Even if house prices drop, a lot of people still wouldn't have enough money for a deposit. Im a tenant and am so worried about my landlord selling up as my rent is just about affordable.

Estate agents are reptiles. They forget that they are simply employees and service providers. Its the kind of job you go into when you have no qualifications or skills to do anything else.

Sure. But it turns out banks want deposits. Usually 10-20% of the house price. Average house price is £300k in the Uk, significantly more on the south. So deposit needed is £30-60k
Median salary is £40k. Take home salary £25k. How do you expect the average worker to save that in an instant?

It's an interesting debate.

Money evolved to streamline bartering, but now the pursuit of it supercedes its primary function. We get the paradox of it being finite, and not growing on trees, yet a system has been created in our digital age where it apparently does, accruing "interest" due to the mystical markets, which strike me as precarious as gambling.

Personally, if this us the system we've got, I think that profit from necessities should be regulated and capped. Housing prices baffle me. How on earth, in a few decades, can an average family property, have risen in price from a few thoysand to a couple of million? Especially when wages haven't increased in line?

As to the morals or ethics, I think we're being psychologically manipulated into a skewed concept of "fairness" where greed overshadows necessity. Resentment abounds and it's driven by the consumerist / capitalist model. Judgement rests on how much you have, never mind how you come by it or how you conduct yourself.

I'm as far from religious as you can get, but it strikes me that the bit about love of money being the root of all evil is pretty accurate.

Fair play to those who have plenty if they "worked hard" etc, but we live in a world where opportunities to do the same are being phased out of existence because many can't just adapt to the speed of change because they're trapped in a cycle of survival over actual progress, and the divisions are ever widening.

deeply uncomfortable about profiting from people’s basic need for shelter,

People also need clothes, water, gas, electric, medicine, food, transport, linens, blankets and a raft of other stuff...

What do you do for a living? Who profits from the service you provide?

Everything is a service being provided by a provider to a recipient.

Power balance..ha! We are accidental landlords of one beautiful flat always rented below going rate, always responded quickly to any tenant issues etc. Then we got the tenants from hell. We gave them rent holidays and tried to help when they experienced income issues. She never worked. Told us she had a job lined up initially. Turns out they were both heavily into drinking and drugs. No rent paid, the flat trashed, complaints from neighbours. We finally got them out when she went to rehab. Oh no...op....we should have waited till she came back from rehab so she had a place to live. Grrrrr.

Whereas in my experience the people slamming landlords are not people like me, who rent and will never be able to buy a house, it's the people who cannot afford a second property and are jealous they can't have a slice of the landlord market

You know about the water companies right?? 😂

Agree with all of this having been a renter for many years and now a landlord.

The other difference to food/medicine/clothing
is that once the tenant has used the property it still exists as an asset. It’s probably gone up in value as well in the meantime by no act of their own. If the landlord has a mortgage the tenant has paid for the asset for the LL, or at least part paid for it. If no mortgage then it’s pure income. what I find abhorrent is when the expectations for landlords to have healthy homes or pay for maintenance mean more expenses for them they pass it onto the tenant.
We rented a house for years at pretty high rental. The laws here meant they needed to ensure it wasn’t mouldy so they needed to install an HVAc. Our rent went up to the cover that cost over a year. The owner lived in a huge property elsewhere and refused to absorb any cost at all. We had no option but to accept. A year later he made us leave so he could move his daughter in. If he or she lived there he would have done it anyway so we have paid for his asset several times over.
As a LL now I would never pass those costs on. It’s my responsibility but also my social responsibility to have available housing for the low income and temporary workers in my small village. I would welcome the return of rent caps.

Supermarkets make profits, clothes shops make profits…the one I really do have a HUGE issue with is the power companies, as it’s a huge indirect taxation (with zero assistance) for the poorest people

Hmmm…..So how do you feel about Supermarkets and Shops and what they charge for food - about the additional fees they add from what the farmers/ producers charge - after all they are profiteering from people’s need to eat !

You can disagree with how some people make money from this “income stream” but let’s be realistic - they are hiring out something valuable to someone for their use so similar to car hire companies and other services they should be compensated accordingly. If people don’t like it then they will take their business elsewhere.

I am really tired of hearing the constant landlord bashing - the real issue stems from the government selling of social housing and not building to replace the supply. The basic concept of supply and demand is the factor that drives this issue - more supply drives down prices - so let’s start focusing the conversation where it will make the most difference - government building and maintaining more social housing.