Why so much hate for Landlords on MN?

You cared enough to start a thread about it and then reply lots of times.

It's literally unearned income, that's why you don't pay national insurance on it.
Noone cares that the landlord has to pay tax on unearned income. Everyone has to pay tax on their earned income, before they then pay it to the landlord. Why are we supposed to care? And why does this make them any less leechy?

I think there’s an inherent and historic dislike and mistrust of people who own private properties other than those they live in, with the sole purpose of making money out of other people’s housing need. Many, many landlords maintain their properties to the minimum, or below, while trying to extract the maximum amount of rent, with tenants often having to offer over the amount asked, in order to secure a tenancy. That’s just the way it is and has always been. Of course most people aren’t going to harangue bad landlords to their faces in real life! A large number of tenants feel exploited, nonetheless.

My previous landladies (2 sisters inherited their mum's house) seemed really nice at first but kept it from us until we moved in that the adjoining semi belonged to one of their husbands boss! The walls were quite thin so we got moaned at via landladies husband about the noise (we tried to rectify this) and got constant whinges from the neighbour, once again via landladies husband who kind of took over the role of landlord, about our garden. It was overgrown when we moved in but they expected us to pay for a gardener (they could sod off). My husband was always mowing and strimming. If we had known about the landlords boss living next door we would never have moved their. I'm convinced the landlords boss is the reason we got evicted after 5 years and being told we were good tenants and could stay as long as we want.

Fast forward our current landlord. He runs a company that builds houses. He bought the old bungalow we moved into with the intention of demolishing it and building 3 houses on the land. However we weren't told this until we had been living there a month and got a letter about a planning application to do that. So we had gone from a no fault eviction which was very stressful and made my 4 year old son stop eating until I had to take him to hospital to thinking we would be out on our ear yet again. Luckily the planning got denied. Being a tenant means your whole wellbeing and security depends on the landlord.

I can only speak for myself but I'm not "exploiting a vulnerable individual"!

I've done gas check (annual) electric check (5 yearly), heating repairs (3 x as complicated), new cooker and remortgage (fiddly, thanks Putin/Trump). About £3k. Plus there are annual service charges of a grand or more due to complex ground landlord situ.

No it's not. It's not earned income, it's investment income.

Lol no it isn't

It is the role of individuals to be decent people and exploiting vulnerable individuals is not being a decent person.

People who are against landlords are not saying it's their role to house people. They want the opposite. They want them to stop buying up all the houses and giving vulnerable people no choice but to rent them. We want them to NOT house people.

I know. Mortgage companies don't care! That is their usual stipulation: rent must more than cover mortgage and council tax.

Earnings are also for risk (which is partly why housing assets attract capital gains when sold). It is more risky to buy and rent a house out than to rent one, in the financial sense.

Tenants pay their own council tax

It is not the role of private individuals to provide the "vulnerable and needy" with a home, unless they're family members I suppose, and even then there are limits!

Boo hoo hoo.

Many people pay thousands in tax. So what? Taxes are a fact of life for everyone.
Most people however, have to pay tax on money they earned, not money earned by someone else and given to them monthly.
My heart bleeds for him 🙄🤣

Not sure if you mean me, but "loss" is the opposite to "profit" so it's the correct word. You are right though: if the value of the asset is going up (which it is), charging below market rent to retain an excellent tenant is neither here nor there as long as when re-mortgaging you can satisfy the lender that the rental income covers mortgage and council tax.

Anyone who doesn't maintain the condition of a valuable asset is an idiot anyway or thinking very short term because quite apart from the legal requirements to provide a safe and good condition home, who wants backlog maintenance?!

‘Cost of supply’ isn’t how we price most things, and countries that tried to do away with price signals generally collapsed their economies.

For example how do you price your own labour? Have you refused raises that would do more than cover your living costs? Do you think salaries should be lowered if it can be shown that the recipients could live more frugally than they do?

Zov, you sound like you have only experienced bad LL's. There are many good LL out there. You belief a LL might only spend £1k on maintenance in 30 years is ridiculous. This year alone I have had a new boiler in 1 property, an old conservatory pulled down and replaced, 2 new washing machines, a new American fridge freezer, 1 tumble dryer as well as fixing a loose hand railmon stairs and chopping down a tree blocking light and replacing an old fence with a new one. This has cost close to £5k and I will still make a profit.

Anyone that rents through an agent follows the legal requirements. It's mandatory. Not the 'most basic safety checks'.

Are you aware that actually it is now virtually impossible not to give tenant deposits back? As opposed to 20 years ago when I lost every single rental deposit I put down. It was just an additional cost.

And if, as some on here think, opening a window to prevent damp levels rising is unreasonable, then at least some tenants are responsible for the mould developing in their homes. Not all of course. But I have experience of this with a friend. Refused to open a window, but complained about damp in that area of the room. It was condensation dampness.