Landlords are selling up in droves

[MNisMyGuiltyPleasure]

I am a landlord. Not full time but I have a couple of flats I let out. I have been for many years and bar twice, have always had good tenants. I am still friendly with a few of them who moved out to buy their own place, in fact. I go above and beyond what's expected of me because I want my tenants to enjoy living in my flats. However I am getting more and more concerned about the hike in costs related to letting properties. This has already started driving many, many LLs to sell up, with the result that the number of private rentals is dropping, driving rents up. And I'm serious thinking of selling up and finding somewhere else to invest my pension.

This morning another landlord shared this article www.property118.com/property118-founder-selling-his-best-property/ and this started a conversation about the risks of letting, which are only making more people get out of the lettings market.

So to all those people calling landlords greedy, and saying they shouldn't put rents up: if they are, it's likely they are because their costs related to letting are going up, and they need to cover themselves to meet additional costs should tenants not pay (cost of living or whatever other reason). My accountant last year told me to assume I will only make money from my flats when I come to sell them, and to budget to break even at best until then.

I get that shelter is something everyone should have, but please don't blame landlords for the hike in cost of private rents. Because if they all left the market (which may well happen at some point), the situation would be worse, not better, for tenants.

I am sure I will get a few people to flame me for the above, of course. If they do, I'd love to hear if they are renting, letting, or if they own their homes.

@justasking111 - not sure what that has to do with anything.

@Soapnutty my dh works for Homes England. It is part of the department for levelling up. They do all work incredibly hard scouring out and securing brown sites they can get a company to build on. They also provide risked funding for many new builds as well as advising government of the need for more new homes, which area of the country they are needed most and how much support government needs to supply. I know Boris is much hated on MN but the Department for Levelling Up was his initiative and money coming recently through to Homes England for new homes to be built was approved whilst he was PM. The government just release money very slowly.

Ahahahahaha you try going to Booker - a wholesaler owned by Tesco and a major supplier to corner shops.

Now do a price comparison on the wholesale prices in Booker Vs the retail prices in the Tesco next door.

It is very often CHEAPER to buy the exact same stock in Tesco than in Booker. Then they have to pay for rent, rates, utilities, insurance and staffing on top.

I can assure you that corner shop owners are not making more than supermarkets, they just have higher costs they have to pass on. I strongly suspect a lot of corner shop owners are working for less than minimum wage.

In Wales we used to have the Welsh development agency who had the power to compulsory purchase land at agricultural rates and offer them to companies to build and run commercial businesses.

Today a developer has an option on say a big field to build 100 houses. That field now worth a fortune which the developer has to pay the farmer.

What should happen as used to is the Welsh government compulsory purchase the field at agricultural rates £8k an acre and gives it to the developer in exchange for them allocating plots and building social housing. A developer can fit 18 properties onto an acre.

Developers must include some social housing on each estate they build. Also Homes England buys land for developers to build to rent as well as build to sell. The problem is it hard to acquire the brown site land to build on. I think another strategy would be for Homes England to buy old houses that no one seems to want to buy and renovate them into lovely family homes and then rent those out.

Found out today my old landlord put my flat on Airbnb after painting over the damp, refusing to do repairs and eventually evicting me. No doubt they were inspired by someone else in the same building who did the exact same thing.

I paid £800 per month

They're now charging £205 PER NIGHT

In the middle of a housing crisis, having a home stay empty for 25 nights out of 30 is more profitable than actually providing a home.

It's a working class area but in a city which attracts tourists, there's a homeless shelter within easy walking distance, and frankly the greed is obscene.

Not all landlords in the private rented sector are providing housing.

I agree lastofthechristmaswine that’s gross. Unfortunately he’s free to do that. I generally prefer to stay in hotels as at least they employ people.

I have 8 btl houses but all are let to families and 6 families have children. A married couple in one and three sisters in the other. I allow cats and small dogs too. I do as much maintenance and improvement as I can each year because repairs and maintenance can be written off against tax. This is why I never understand LL who don't keep their investments in tip top condition. If they don't maintain property they just end up far paying more tax. I actively look for maintenance jobs I can do like a new fence or replace old decking. Also if property in top top condition you can charge more of rent than if run down and grotty.

So if repairs and maintanance could not be written off against tax and would not make the properties more profitable (say there was a fixed price rent regardeless of the condition), would you bother?

Sadly I cannot question the legality, only the morality.

@PositiveIntelligence yes of course. No point in having an asset and letting it deteriorate. But fact is LL are allowed to right repairs/maintenance off against tax so no excuses for any LL not to keep houses in excellent condition.

I do go to Booker. If it is owned by Tesco then they really need to take some of the salad cream and put it in the empty shelves in Tesco.

I do agree some of the products are dearer than in Tesco but lots aren’t. It’s about googling as you go round.

Then buying from Tesco where some things are cheaper

Here is an example. This morning I got a message from one of my tenants saying that the fridge freezer is broken. Since I only replaced it two years ago, and it's a decent brand (Bosch), I was a bit surprised. They said it's been broken for a couple of days because they noticed at the weekend that the light wasn't coming on. They wanted me to send someone out to repair it.

As I was really surprised the fridge had broken, I started talking them through possible issues e.g. the socket had been switched off by accident, etc. It turns out a light bulb had blown at the weekend, but when they went to turn the switches back on, on the fuse box/consumer unit, for some reason they didn't switch them all back on and left the one for that socket off!!!! Surely if you know to check the consumer unit you also know to turn all the switches back on? Anyway. Here is an example of what can take up a LL time - things that if you owned your own home you'd be happy to investigate yourself before spending money, many tenants are more than happy to take the easy route and call their LL. Even though the legislation does talk about a 'tenant-like manner.' And there are so many more examples like this. Everything home owners do to maintain their homes, LLs have to do for their tenants. So unless you think that maintenance of your own home doesn't take up any time, then you must agree that it definitely adds to a LL's to do list.

So this situation took up your time but didn’t cost you anything? Annoying your tenants made a mistake yes, but that’s running a business! I really have never seen entitlement like some of the posts on here.

”I want my asset to make me lots of capital and income, and I want to spend absolutely no time or effort on it. Tenants are merely the inconvenient peasants who pay for my asset, how dare they bother me”

Sounds like it took up 10 minutes of your day. Hardly a great hardship.
Trouble is if you start "investigating" in your landlords house and accidentally damage something in the process you're screwed. Usually tenants aren't allowed to do more than just replace light bulbs, so bloody right if anything goes wrong first thing I do is call the landlord. Can't have it both ways...

My point is that PP who say LLs do nothing, are wrong. Time is taken up with one thing or another, as it should since it's a business. But to say we do nothing, is plain wrong. If we do nothing, neither does anyone else who runs a business. Of course if you've never run a business you wouldn't know.

Comparing supermarkets is nuts!! Supermarkets for one thing don't require that your household income is xyz before allowing you to purchase or that there's 5 of you eating, not just two or that you have a 100% perfect credit record- and if you can't afford stuff in waitrose then you pop to Aldi instead because you have choice! There is very little choice in the rental markets in many areas AND where you can fulfill all the jumping through hoops.

The government will move against Airbnb next. You can’t have empty rentals 20 odd days of the month. I believe there are some rules in place already, but as sure as night follows day, they’ll be next.

@C4tastrophe - in Scotland you now need to apply through planning permission for airbnb.

Everything is tightly regulated up here!

Nice.

I wish we would get tighter regulation in England too, but with nearly 1/5 of MPs being landlords I doubt it very much sadly.

Tenants don't know how to replace light bulbs in their properties an estate agent friend once told me. The agent gets a call out. Puts in new light bulb and charges £50

My point is that PP who say LLs do nothing, are wrong. Time is taken up with one thing or another, as it should since it's a business. But to say we do nothing, is plain wrong. If we do nothing, neither does anyone else who runs a business. Of course if you've never run a business you wouldn't know.

unless you have a portfolio of properties then it is not going to be a 40 hour week every week of the year job/business. There will be some paper work, tax returns and organising work men from time to time, even if that is every month its not going to be more than a days/8 hours work for a couple of properties

What all tenants ever?

If you let one-bedroom flats, you are most likely to get first-time renters, people who until then were either living at home, in a flat share, in halls of residence, etc. And yes, they haven't the first clue about how to run a home!