To think we should ban private renting?

A) where is the state going to get the money to buy all that property?

B) the maintenance of all that property is a huge undertaking. Do we really trust the state to do this to a high standard, at such scale?

So the local HA gets compulsory purchase orders for every private rented property at market price? Do you think Has are just sorting on millions of pounds profit? What able the massive increase in staff they'd need and the infrastructure to sort that?

Maybe the council won't do anything about it, but as a private small-time landlord I certainly would.

I've invested personal money into my houses and I don't want them falling into disrepair and therefore losing value. The capital put in needs protecting because that's where the investment is, not in rent received (which can easily be wiped out from month to month by an unexpected repair bill). I am proactive on maintenance and sorting problems before they even become problems (and it is amazing how many tenants have no clue about maintaining properties).

Bigger corporate landlords or councils/housing associations are much less likely to give a shit.

"Luxury" housing? 😆

I shall tell my friend that then. The damp is wrecking her belongings and health, yet the council wont do anything about it.

I agree. I tried selling a 1 bedroom flat in a city with good employment opportunities in the south a few years ago. It was cheap - under £100k decorated nicely and maintenance fees low too. Would have made an ideal starter flat for a young couple or a single person.
The only people who came to view it were landlords. Ditto when I tried to offload a 2 bed flat in the same area - LLs only came to view it.

I wanted to sell it to someone who was going to live in it and not rent it out - hypocrite much, I know but I wanted to do the right thing.

My thoughts exactly! Young people today don't want to start at the bottom of the housing ladder and work their way up it like we did, I get annoyed wheni I see people whinging online that they need to save such a big deposit and when they talk about the value of house they want acd where they want it, they basically want their starter home to be the same calibre and value of the house I live in now after 22 years of paying mortgages!

I remember an article about a couple only just in their twenties and they wanted a £300k three storey Victorian terrace in Manchester somewhere as their first home, a lot of young people thinking like that will take on massive mortgages that consume most of their income and end up in financial trouble

We're becoming a country that wants everything subsidised! It's important to remember what the point of social housing is! It's so people who can't work or are on low incomes could afford to have a place to live. If the councils / HA's buy every rental property across the country it would cost frightening amounts of money because they would have to pay full market value for it because nobody should be expected to let them have it cheap and some will have mortgages to pay off. Who funds that when the rents are small for the low income tenants?

There shouldn't be encouragement of people to to keep their income low and deliberately try and get a lifestyle that gets them a nice house for low rent! The whole point is they get a house and then aspire to get in their own two feet and buy or rent something better and hand back the subsidised housing for someone else to get a leg up with. They shouldn't be offered luxury homes for really small rents because you are giving them something they'll never get by themselves! Why should benefits get you a larger and more luxurious house than many of those that work and completely pay for their own housing!

You also cannot jeopardise the house values of people's owned homes by putting social housing / council housing tenants anywhere and everywhere because not all of them look after their housed, do you put people in a nice house on a high value street and they just let the front garden overflow, fill it with junk? Anti social behaviour? Have single mothers moving in with 6 unruly kids? We all know these kinds of people exist and peoples owned houses are like life savings, it's money for retirement and that shouldn't be destroyed.

When we were moving house a couple of years back we were eyeing up a detached house on a new build estate but when we went for a drive there, there was an alarming number of houses up for sale - later found out it was because the council had bought some houses there and the tenants they moved into them were causing problems.

I also keep hearing how first time buyers can't afford to get on the property ladder these days.

I think this is only really the case in the south east.

When I got divorced 5 years ago (when house prices were at a peak) I had to buy my own house. I couldn't get a big mortgage on my own as I'm self-employed, but I needed a 3 bed house for the DC. I paid £150k for a three bed semi in the midlands. It needed a lot of modernisation, which I've saved up and done over time (rewiring, new kitchen, new bathroom etc etc). The house i bought legally couldn't have been rented out because it wouldn't have passed eg electrical safety checks, so I lived in something that looked like a building site for nearly 2 years whilst I invested time and money doing it up.

There are houses out there which are still affordable, it's just people don't want to buy those houses. They either want to buy more expensive houses in more desirable areas, or they want someone else to invest the money to get the house up to a certain standard and then complain about the cost to rent it.

Britain doesn't have a housing crisis. The south east does. That's an entirely different thing and could be solved if work opportunities were more evenly distributed across the country.

The problem is some of these seaside places have impracticalities. There's an argument always rumbles on about holiday rentals in Robin Hoods Bay and Staithes on the north east coast but these places are small and a long commute from any decent sized urban places to find work and it's rural roads that would be busy with holiday traffic in the summer and pitch black and icy in the winter, there might quite a distance to go for schools, colleges, GPs, dentists and hospitals.

Also if you got rid of all the holiday rentals it would probably impact the local pubs, shops and cafes etc but somebody on holiday would be out spending locally everyday but you wouldn't if you lived there.

I take it you've never owned anything and that's why you think it's ok to steal somebodies home and offer them only half a low rent payment every month as compensation for stealing it! As a working tax payer who has worked to own my home, I am not willing to fund people having large homes in nice places for tiny rents! How do you expect a homeowner to pay a mortgage off if you steal their house so they can't sell it, how can they move and get a mortgage on a new property of you steal their equity that's tied up ok the old one and their ability to pay anything left on the old mortgage off!

But those rules can be changed too! It’s one thing leaving a shit tip - fine, whatever. But painting everything magnolia etc can be stopped and they live with the decor the same as you do when you buy a house and can’t afford to do it up

I don't think insurers would want tenants doing their own maintenance. The landlord has to insure. Friend in a council house wanted to put in new carpets, paint and wallpaper the house. Pave part of the garden. They agreed but reminded her that if she left. The carpets would have to come up and all the walls be repainted magnolia again. The house looks beautiful now. She said it was sad that a future tenant couldn't enjoy it when she moves on.

But the government are in everyone's business these days. I had to apply for a new driving licence at the weekend, so I googled DVLA. Nope I had to install a government app then register on this app. I had to scan in passport or existing licence. Then they wanted me to open a link so they could scan my face and it was a scan, not a photograph that flashed blue, yellow, green, red whilst it measured my face.

So now I have a government app on my phone which I can now use for passport, driving licence and HMRC purposes. The only thing they haven't done is put a microchip in me 🙄.

I also have an NHS app.

I'm fooked aren't I

Surely if we make holding huge or even small property portfolios incredibly unattractive, in fact it costs more and more money to have them, then the houses would be put up for sale, more available houses would bring prices down and it would be easier for people to buy their own home? Once it is calmed down govt can buy up excess homes for council housing. But maintenance should be on the renter, and no right to buy. If their finances improve, their rent should be re-assessed or they move out to buy their own.

The government have no business in what people use the rooms in their homes as.
If someone can afford the rent/mortgage and are under occupying, then how the extra rooms are used is no one's business.

No I said that the government are looking at various ways to find extra rooms for people to live in. 31 million empty bedrooms in the UK in their opinion would solve the housing crisis.

How they plan to go about it I've absolutely no idea.

What about people who get a job offer in another city and want to move there? Private renting offers opportunity to those people, who wouldn't be eligible for HA.

If the second room is an office it's bringing in income they might say so you pay tax on that.

What are various things though?.

I'm not saying I agree but the government are looking at extra spare rooms as in rooms that are not for sleeping in.

Empty, and under occupied, are different things.

But you want your neighbours to be taxed out of their own home rather than something like practical help?

But you'll also hit people like me who live in a 2 bed flat and who actually uses the 2nd room as an office. Or my parents who live in a 5 bed house and use all those bedrooms for various things.

Why should people be penalised for being able to afford a property bigger than their need just because some people can't afford to live the same way.

Yabu we aren’t living in a communist state.

Agree

One way is to treble council tax on empty, under occupied property. If Burnham removes stamp duty on downsizing that may help.

Take our lovely neighbours they've had a four bedroom three reception room for decades. Late 70s. Husband had a stroke so they're now stuck. He can't help with a move physically and anyway wants to die there. , she'd be overwhelmed by one now just clearing out the house is beyond her physical strength and mentally because he's so anti.

As a widow she might but she'd need family help

So you get stuck in a big property.

What are we going to tax to raise the money to hypothetically buy all of these houses?