So we're being evicted AGAIN!

[OnandOnItGoes]

3rd rented property in 7 years. Been here for 4 years. Had to leave the last two properties as landlord selling, now we're in the same situation again.

Rent always paid on time and properties always very well looked after so it's not that we're bad tenants, just the never ending game we're stuck in.

We left within the notice period of last 2 properties but can't with this one as rents are £500+ for similar properties and much smaller worse properties with no parking/horrible areas are £200-300 a month more and we simply can't afford it or find one which we are successful for as they seem to only want 'professionals' in high paying jobs.

Council have been no help and have said as both DH and I work, we need to find another rented property. I can only work part time in a low paying admin job due to caring responsibilities as need to be on hand for disabled DC for school drop/pick up and after school as no after school care (teens). We have no family support.

Also worried about being put in temp accommodation as around here it seems to be adapted office blocks with lots of anti social issues. Also as we work I understand we'll have to pay a lot for it!

Section 21 expires on 15th May and I'm aware Landlord will start court process for possession as he's very keen to get us out and get it sold. I assume he'll use the accelerated procedure as he's a professional landlord with lots of properties and is selling most of them I believe.

Does anyone know how long we may have before bailiffs? We're in the South East. I've already looked into storage facilities so we can empty the house but we have no family to stay with so not sure where we'll go from there.

Of course we will continue looking for a property and continue paying rent but any advice on timeline will be helpful if anyone has been through the process recently?

The stress is unbearable and much worse this time due to the current rental market!

In the 1980s we sold two buy to "lose" flats in outer London at about 50% losses so no chance of capital gains tax then just big capital losses and made a loss on the rent too and I have not let ever since then.

On empty properties I live in a few streets with detached large houses so nothing like typical at all but the 3 immediately up form me by chance are all now empty which expect when the builders are in two of them which currently have no roof on either is very noisy but otherwise lovely and silent. Another down the road has had no proper roof on for about 3 or 4 years now and been standing empty - I think the lack of roof means no council tax. Council tax is about £4k to £5k per house on our road. Bit further down another family who live opposite an empty house own both and have kept one empty fr about 10 years. They could get about 2k to 3k a month so much be rich as kings to choose to forgo that kind of rent.

However how socialist do people want to be where someone owns an emkpty house and someone else has another unused asset etc - do we force people? Do we say for occupied owner owned homes only one person per a certain square footage or no gardens for anyone and let the homeless camp there permanently - where does it end if we start taking properties away?

It's equivalent to having a swimming pool during a drought when your neighbours are dying of thirst and crops are failing
great analogy!
vast inequalities tend to lead to bad situations
One could argue that we have to let the uber wealthy do as they please with their money, because to do otherwise undermines the principle of private property.
But that means letting them make free with scarce resources and effectively sh1t all over the rest of us😟

where does it end if we start taking properties away?
@Xenia I agree, but things have gone too far and now there are no good options, we have the devil or we have the deep blue sea

Not sure where you need to be, but Swindon, although more SW than SE, has good transport links to London and schools catering for children with SEN. This house might suit you https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/133942538#/?channel=RES_LET

However how socialist do people want to be where someone owns an emkpty house and someone else has another unused asset etc - do we force people? Do we say for occupied owner owned homes only one person per a certain square footage or no gardens for anyone and let the homeless camp there permanently - where does it end if we start taking properties away?

Ah yes, the slippery slope fallacy.

All anyone is arguing for here is for every home to be used as a full time home. One home, one household (or more, for HMOs).

Preventing the purchase of new second homes, giving the choice of selling up or renting to long term tenants and punitive rates of council tax ought to solve most of the problem, with compulsory purchase a last resort (yes - the government already has the right to take away private property, and the sky hasn't fallen in).

Another down the road has had no proper roof on for about 3 or 4 years now and been standing empty - I think the lack of roof means no council tax.

Chances are they've been refused (or know they wouldn't get) permission to knock it down and build a block of flats. If, however, they allow it to deteriorate so much that there's no option but to knock it down - often planning permission eventually becomes achievable.

There's a grand detached house in a lovely area near me, with sea views, which has mysteriously been dismantling itself - the roof disappeared almost overnight. You'll be unsurprised to hear there have been a number of failed planning applications for the site in previous years.

If those people with empty homes sold them, I am betting they would be worth and sell for more than most could afford to pay. Or do you think they should just "give them away"? Why isn't the UK building more council homes/cluster homes/townhomes/apartments, etc? Then it would be owned by the government and be able to be rented out on need based circumstances.

1. Supply and demand is always part of house prices

1. There have been complaints for years that second home owners from places like London with high wages are outbidding local people in places like Cornwall and North Wales where there's fewer opportunities and lower wages. A correction of that is long overdue. Houses are only worth what people are willing and able to pay for them.

1. In many places there's people willing and able to pay who still can't find anywhere to live. I only live somewhere which is averagely affected by the housing crisis (a city, not Cornwall etc) and when I was househunting last year I put in four offers at / above asking price before I got accepted. I regularly hear much worse stories from Bristol, where I used to live, and which has a very overheated housing market.

1. Second homes being sold off don't need to be FTB type houses. There are plenty of local people who will be looking to take the next rung of the housing ladder for a growing family, and when they do somewhere along the chain a FTB house will open up too.

1. We should be building more homes too, particularly in areas of high demand, but it's often easier said than done for practical reasons (have you tried getting tradesmen in lately?)

Agree with everything you’ve said Sambuca. When we were trying to buy last year (deposit ready, mortgage sorted, offers over asking price) we were outbid every single time by stupid amounts way over the asking price. Those houses are all now let out, empty or, having had a lick of paint, for sale at an even more ridiculous price. All of this is pushing house prices up to an artificial/manufactured high.
Bottom line is, houses should be homes not businesses.

Good luck with compulsory purchase orders one of the most expensive areas of real estate is the Bishops Avenue running from Tottenham Court Road to Hampstead mostly now owed by foreign investors all empty look at No1 is Mayfair I think all empty

I'm familiar with Bishops Avenue - I used to live nearby, and know Hampstead Heath like the back of my hand thanks to the dog.

It doesn't start anywhere near Tottenham Court Road, which is in central London. It's in North London, and runs from Kenwood House / Hampstead Lane to East Finchley. It's about a mile long in total.

No one would start with megamansions in disrepair - as problematic (and vulgar, and somewhat symbolic) as they are, they are about 0.01% of the problem.

Start with the Cornish cottages which have been turned into Airbnbs. Start with the inner city flat I was evicted from last year to make way for Airbnb guests. Start with houses that were always homes for ordinary people.

Examples:
https://abnb.me/QjgQAUJFEzb
https://abnb.me/QBcR59PFEzb
https://abnb.me/tgBIWCUFEzb

You cannot select one notoriously expensive road in London and use it to say that the idea wouldn't work elsewhere. It's a straw man argument.

There is a building society doing a 100 percent mortgage with your income it makes sense to buy if you can

near Me new blocks of flats are built (or converted from office blocks) and advertised abroad. They are all sold off plan in minutes before any U.K. home buyer is aware. They then flip from foreign investor to investor

@SamShortForSambuca yes I knew my geography was off any way you might be right I just remember when I was living in London how vibrant it was now not so much
@VegetablesFightingToReclaimTheAubergieneEmoji yes exactly

This is part of the problem, but so long as they are being lived in full time (i.e. let out to long term tenants) and are well managed / properly maintained, they don't raise my blood pressure quite as much as empty homes.

There you go this is reality

1. We could encourage the 18m more people who live in the UK than when I was born to leave. The UK used to have a lot of emigration. My uncle and aunt emigrated permanently to Tasmania in 1970.
2. On the empty house with no roof - it is unlikely flats will be built as it is a conservation area - one of very few in my London borough with restrictions in title deeds of one house per plot and flats never built so I think it must just be criminal or laundered money or a dispute within a family that means it is empty.
3. If we cannot encourage 20m people to leave the UK, I still don't think we can only allow a person to own one property. What about limited companies which own lots of properties or pension funds. It gets very complicated.

I'm in the states but we have much of the same problems that need the same solutions.

As for the tradesmen--I totally understand. Then, when you do get one, the materials they need take months-a year, instead of a few weeks.

I hope both of our countries can come up with solutions that work and do it soon.

@Redebs

heartless landlords????

it's been made very difficult & not worthwhile to be a landlord, that's why they're all selling up.

people whinged & whinged about landlords & the govt made it very difficult for them.

im not talking about the genuinely shitty ones with properties with mouldly walls and facilities that aren't for purpose but the Mr & Mrs Smith, BTL properties as an investment, on top of maintenance etc. the Govt has made it far too much of a nightmare for them & they're selling up.

The result is as expected. No properties to rent. People really can't be surprised.

@OnandOnItGoes I'm really really sorry you're in this position. I'm in the SE too and rentals around here are rare now & bloody expensive.

Although I wouldn't want to move away from the 'known' re schools & support for DC I don't think I'd have any option but to move properly up North & basically start again.

I honestly don't know what else you can do that would be better. Yes, you'll get more help from the council once you're homeless, but it could be temporary accommodation for a long time. I'd rather move far north myself.

If foreign languages were taught properly in schools, then the exodus of young people would have already started.

With technological improvements, languages may no longer be the barrier they currently are.

I’d love to know what % of those <35 would leave the U.K. if language wasn’t a barrier to employment. Good luck to those left behind!

It’s usually the young and skilled who emigrate. Not sure a smaller, ageing, unskilled population will do us much good.

Yes, there's a correlation between youth and being priced out of secure housing. Bearing in mind we already have a labour shortage, we really don't want that cohort leaving.

There's a grand detached house in a lovely area near me, with sea views, which has mysteriously been dismantling itself - the roof disappeared almost overnight. You'll be unsurprised to hear there have been a number of failed planning applications for the site in previous years
This kind of thing had never entered my head but now you've explained it it makes perfect sense.
That grand detached house would have seemed like something very desirable and valuable....yet they just let it collapse, it doesn't matter because the real value is in the land and your ability to get planning permission.

1. At a time of full employment and a labour shortage in many sectors, encouraging a quarter of the population to leave would be disastrous for the economy.

A key driver of population growth is the ageing population and rising life expectancy. However, good luck finding a country that will issue visas to the over 70s - they'll take our young skilled workers but not the pensioners. Presumably other methods - like withdrawing NHS care from the over 65s in the hope they shuffle off the mortal coil a bit earlier is not going to be politically popular.

1. Obviously neither of us know exactly what's going on with that house, but it is possible to get restrictive covenants removed from the title deeds

https://cunningtons.co.uk/restrictive-covenants/

1. It's fine for people (and ltd companies) to own more than one property so long as they let them out to long term tenants, maintain them properly etc.

My argument is against second homes and Airbnb, not for the complete banning of the private rental sector.

@VegetablesFightingToReclaimTheAubergieneEmoji your post about long term stability on Saturday summed it up beautifully- it's not just having to move within local area too- many have had to keep moving towns to actually get somewhere remotely suitable when there is a shortage.

Aaaaand it’s gone. Poof.

Either someone at Manchester Life going to get a bollocking for leaving it up all Bank Holiday weekend, or it took that long to get enough interested parties!

Rigged game.