To think we should ban private renting?

They can kick you out but it takes a while and there's a whole process (#Germany). Same as with a mortgage seems to me. I have never been late/through that process though.

There's is nowhere near as much money in it as in the UK! (Or "as there used to be in the UK" is maybe better?)

You can still invest in it. Some people like investing in brick over stock market. Some inherit. In a sense though it's a purer investment than in the UK: you get revenue, but not other rights like many of the traditional housing rights or what comes with that. Landlord cannot decide if I have a cat, if I paint my wall, if I move out - I am always aghast what a landlord in UK controls/has to do.

We do, many of them are owned and empty

Stop frothing and read the OP again. All of that information is there if you want to see it.

And yes I agree @honeyrosesandwich

We don't have enough of the right houses in the right locations for the right people.

Private rent means I can pick my house
If it was up to the housing association I would get allocated a1 bed flat.

This was what I came here to say.

Expecting housing associations to buy every private rented property would force the country into a sovereign default. Basically, the country would go bankrupt.

Where do you think the housing association would get all of this money from?

To have more choice over where they live and the size of their property.

I own one house which I rent out. I moved in with my partner. I don’t put the rent up every year. I make about £100 a month. I pay tax on it.
MN always tells women to protect themselves. If I split with my husband I would have somewhere to go in about 4-5 months.
It may be sold in the future to pay for my care.

Sounds like fun!! :-)

The state would have to buy up a lot of houses at market rate, or build new ones. So how does that pay for itself?

So if some people had their way, people would not be allowed to spend their money on:
Private renting
Private healthcare
Private education
What will people be allowed to spend their money on? Longhaul holidays? Flash cars? Booze and fags?

but maybe they don't WANT to buy? Especially now they are entitled to social housing, why would they?

Please want better for the human race xx

I've moved a lot and I mean a lot in my life. Half of those have been for jobs up and down the country. Without a rental market being free, I'd have not been able to take the job on and further my career.
While I think yes, there needs to be help for those waiting for affordable homes and sometime landlords take the pee with their prices, I wouldn't want the freedom to go.

Exactly, people needing social housing go on a list or are prioritised according to urgent need. People moving for work etc would never get a property quickly enough.

What happens if you stop paying rent? Why do people become landlords, is there any money in it?

Not sure where the housing associations would get the money from to buy millions of houses though!

Have you heard of section 24 OP?
For this and other reasons, it’s become much harder for landlords to make money out of their properties over the past few years. So private rents went up and the money spent on repairs/maintenance went down. The government did this to penalise landlords, but it actually just transferred the costs to the renter.

We don’t need to ban private landlords. The government could make regulation and tax changes which would then enable private landlords to reduce rents, but that will never happen. It’s not a politically acceptable thing to do as it would be perceived to be ‘helping’ landlords.

So, unless we can build more affordable homes, we’re stuck in a spiral of ever increasing costs for landlords, which leads to rent increases for tenants.

Doesn’t the government pay the shortfall to these housing bodies as the rent wouldn’t be high enough to make a profit.
There definitely needs to more social housing, there is also a lot of people who would not be eligible for housing assistance, controlled rent payments and higher standards from both landlords and tenants, proper penalties for break the contract would be better.

People will be able to buy more quickly with cheaper rent. Especially the houses that people have had to sell off now they can't use them to make money off of poorer people.

And what magic tree is the government going to use to buy these houses?

Tou do realise that not all renters are poor wannabe homeowners? Some want to rent, need to rent. Short term work contracts and the like. There isn't a housing crisis. There's a legislative crisis. The government should never have gotten involved in people's private housing decisions. If I wanted to rent a garden shed, that should be no business of the government.

Whilst I understand your point there are also people like ourselves who for various reasons can’t buy in chosen areas but have pretty high income and can rent a pretty nice house and don’t necessarily want a housing association house- so I would somewhat be peeved to be forced into that arrangement

Are you a communist OP? Sounds similar to what Chairman Mao did.

We have enough houses. We don't need to take up more space where we could have nice things like parks and other community buildings to build sufficient houses to meet current need.

Too many variables for this to work.