To think we should ban private renting?

Don't bother the OPs happy little socialist utopia daydream with inconvenient truths!

@SleeplessInWherever Exactly the same situation here! We are 45 and 50 but we will never be able to afford to buy where we live now (without winning the lottery!)
But we love this place and treat it as our own ❤️

How would the Housing Associations and councils cover their running costs if the rents are to be so low? where will the money to reimburse current private landlords come from to pay them for their properties? Your funding model is fundamentally flawed I’m afraid. It would need Housing management and maintenance teams on a considerable scale - and they will need offices and IT equipment and HR and payroll etc etc. How would the properties be advertised and allocated? There is such a massive amount of privately owned housing- it is nowhere near as simple as the OP describes! Made me laugh though - so thanks for that !

There are a lot of people who rent for a short period and are happy renting privately. Students. People seconded to an employer for 6 months or a year. Recent graduates. They don't WANT a "forever home".

@theneighbourstolemyteacup Indeed!
And as a privately renting is banned, myself and my family are now homeless and so will also need a cheaper SH property please!

We would like to, I’d buy the house we’re in now tomorrow.

Saving for a deposit with the outgoings we have would be very difficult, and the house prices here are insane.

But - we’re also both each other’s second marriage, have had property in the past with our respective exes, and are relatively speaking happy with the situation we’re in, comparatively.

Call it healthy perspective 😂!

No they aren't they are not for profit or charities. They fund th build by cross funding from the sale of private flats and houses along with government grants. The rents they charge you are then also subsided.

You may well live in a HA flat but you don't even understand the basics.

So instead of having to pay my mortgage, maintenance and everything, I can just opt to rent - and as private renting is banned, I can get a housing association property, for very little, get someone else to pay for repairs and maintenance.

Sounds brilliant, and when I need to relocate, I get a new one, and someone else footing the bill again.

what's not to like

@SleeplessInWherever We are also private renters too, but would give anthing to be able to afford to buy!
Is this the same for you?
We both work but it's out of the question.

I am currently living in a privately rented house, I have a specific need for a short term let of probably around a year. I wouldn’t qualify for social housing anyway, what was I supposed to do ? Plus my landlords are fab, nothing is too much trouble for them. I don’t begrudge them a penny, I don’t suppose they’re exactly making a fortune out of me.

There is a 'new' build near me, been on market 2 years. Its not sold. It should be compulsory put into council stock, and an arrangement where a proportion of rent goes to developer and rest to council. It's criminal its empty when there are thousands on local waiting lists.

Exactly, who is paying for this. Housing Associations use cross funding from private sale and grants from the Government IE all of us to pay for their housing.

The reason rents are cheap for housing associations is because it is subsidised by all of those paying tac. There isn't a money tree to pay for everyone to live in subsidised housing. Pay your own way in life.

Oh yeah, social housing does work. My mum grew up in a council house.

but it’s really not a good idea to have no private rented sector at all.

people need to move around to change jobs, etc. having an economy that only has owner occupied or social housing really really makes movement very very hard.

When I initially left my ex husband, I rented myself a 2 bed “gap filler” house, in Teesside. Perfectly pleasant landlord, guy in his 70’s, absolutely no issues.

My partner already had his own rented 2 bed property, again - no real issues.

We now rent a 3 bed detached, in Cheshire, for £1.5k a month. Where we are there’s a premium for having off road parking and a garden, and that is a premium I’m happy and able to pay.

The landlord is a decent guy, they’re responsive and approachable, the house is lovely, and we’re very happy in it.

I would have precisely no desire to move our disabled child into a new, unfamiliar property, and like our house enough to pay what we pay for it.

I don’t feel exploited by choosing to stay on the rental market, by the amount we pay or what we get for that money.

So thank you for your concern, but I’m happy privately renting.

Setting aside the initial cost to purchase these houses from private landlords, how will the government/housing associations/local authorities afford to subsidise rents and carry out repairs to 20% of the countries housing stock, much of which is pre war and wouldn't meet social housing standards? This was one of the reasons for introducing the right to buy, in order to offload public housing stock that was needing major investment (and I think it was short sighted and decimated the social housing available going forward).
In reality, without small private landlords I suspect the Government would outsource rentals to pension companies and big businesses which would probably increase homelessness as low wage single people couldn't afford them and those with poor credit histories wouldn't be accepted at all. It's made student accommodation ridiculously expensive and hard to access in many places.
I think the solution is modern pre-fab housing, provided cheaply by Councils and adaptable to suit family sizes and needs. High environmental standards, cheap to buy and brought onto council owned land ready made. With a falling birth rate it would meet the current housing crisis and, if enough is,provided, over time private landlords won't afford to compete and so will leave the rental market.

It won’t

imagine I own two houses and rent one out.

your law is passed. I’m not allowed to rent it out anymore. I can sell it to a housing association or someone who wants to buy it to live in.

now one in five houses in the U.K. is rented out. Housing associations can’t afford to buy all of them (they have rules about how much money they are allowed to borrow) so most houses get sold to people who want to live in them.

now, if you are a young graduate wanting to move to a city, there’s far far fewer rentals than there used to be, because they’ve all been sold to people who live in them.

the rental market right now is insane - it’s hard to get even a room in a shared house and you’ve got to pass affordability checks to go see flats of houses for rent at all.

so the rich kids do ok. Mum or dad buys them a house to live in in London or wherever they want to live fir their job.

everyone else graduates and gets in the waiting list for social housing in the area they have a job. And waits and waits.

@honeyrosesandwich
What would happen to us then?
My husband and I both privately rent and have done so for over a decade. We both work but don't earn enough to be able to afford a big enough mortgage (we can't move area due to family/older parents/work). We would need a very minimum of a 3-bed (which ours is) as we have children living with us (boy and girl, 6 and teenager). Private rents in the area we live in are incredibly scarce.
We receive no government supoort and do not qualify for Social Housing.
There is absolutely no way we would be able to afford to buy the property we are living in by any stretch of the imagination.
We love the house we live in, take a great pride in its upkeep, and would be in a total mess if we were "forced" to leave.
Our landlady lives very near us and is absolutely lovely.

So you want the government to buy all the private rented accommodation at market rate? How much will it cost?

What should we do about all the pension funds that own property? Confiscate them and let people who have invested in them take the hit? This may be right, but we need to just decide that it is what we want to do. Because people will not like seeing their pension funds plummet

Great point.
Never going to work

I agree with you in principle but I imagine there are many reasons why it wouldn’t work. Wish it would though. Im so tired of private renting and have nothing left to save for a deposit (love it when people say “why don’t you buy?”). I have to move soon and viewed a house the other day where the kitchen was literally falling to bits, much smaller than current home and it was £500 more than current rent. The landlord had clearly never set foot in it either, tried to tell me the falling apart tall cupboard in the kitchen was an integrated fridge (it was not). I don’t know why that made me cross but it did.
When my grandparents got their council house that was just what everyone did, they weren’t homeless or low income, just got married and wanted a council house and got one. Raised their children and grandchildren (and greats!), planted roses in the garden and passed away there with neighbours they’d known for 60 years.

Councils have limits on what they can borrow. So they can’t just borrow money and buy/build a house and pay back the loan with the rent.

firstly the rent wouldn’t normally cover the loan and secondly right to buy means that the person who rents it can buy it for less than the loan and then the council are screwed