To be a bit shocked at the landlord who is evicting 200 families because they are on housing benefit

[wetaugust]

Heard this and 'Wow' - I was shocked.

He's being interviewed on C4 News.

He'd rather rent them to Eatern Europeans who are working.

He said that if house prices go up then rents should go up.

He said he's not the only landlord doing this.

Wow!

So some local authority will have to find new housing for all these people.

Where will this end?

I am stunned.

How can migrants find work which pays enough to pay the rent but locals can't??????????

What the LL wants is the gov to pay more benefits so he can charge higher rents.

He just says he is letting the properties to migrants to cause anger and anti-gov sentiment in the hope they are forced to pay more benefits to increase his income.

It was an awful interview. I don't understand why he wasn't questioned on his assertion that raising rents in line with house prices was 'common sense'.

Umm, why? House prices were in part pushed up due to banks lending more and more money, where as rent payments are ultimatly very much limited by income/hb levels. Why can't he see the difference?

food, clothing, shelter, medicine, education.

Making money from providing these things is fine - however a private landlord does not 'provide' shelter, they hoard shelter and then allow somebody to use it in exchange for profit. People who produce food, shelter, medicines and provide education do not hoard a limited supply to extract a profit, they actually do something useful in creating products that wouldn't otherwise exist. Private landlords, unless they actually built a house that would not otherwise exist, are parasites on those who work and do something useful for society.

What absolute claptrap yellowknife. Often private landlords pay taxes ( like everyone else on theor prpofits) and those taxes can fund benefits and social housing. I don't let to claimants because the cash flow, disappearances and defaults would be too high, I would make a loss and there would be no taxes. Reality check required.

The government needs to sort out the private rental market. it's an absolute disgrace. A home is to nest, not to invest!

Actually Saucy as a single person I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever buying my own home. So my landlord rents my home to me for a reasonable rent, as I said before I couldn't afford an agency and don't qualify for social or council housing.

I don't think the British are work shy. However a lot of low paid jobs are so poorly paid, lack contracts and lack any kind of security. There is no way someone on minimum wage can look after a family etc. The east Europeans are paid less again no contacts etc but often it is short term as they return home.

My direct debits alone come to £1k a month for mortgage, energy, water, council tax and insurance in the south east. There is something very wrong in the UK where one needs to take home £1k just to live without food and petrol to even get to work. Christ knows what I would do if I lost my job - it wouldn't take long to lose my house but working on minimum wage will not help in the slightest so I would probably become work shy too!

Yellowknife

I think you'll find that pharma companies would fail your test. They sell medicine at quite a cost to us.

I'm constantly amazed at just how widespread private landlordship actually is.

Actually Saucy as a single person I don't have a snowball's chance in hell of ever buying my own home. So my landlord rents my home to me for a reasonable rent, as I said before I couldn't afford an agency and don't qualify for social or council housing.

But if your landlord did not own your home because he wasn't allowed to own multiple properties for profit, then it would be available to buy on the open market and would have to be sold at a price someone who wanted to live in it could afford to pay. So you (and everybody else in work) would be able to buy your own home. Houses would not cease to exist if private landlords were banned. They would just be sold to owner-occupiers for sensible prices instead.

brettgirl Perhaps, though many of my friends have made the same decision (both where I live and in other parts of the country). The desire to to own your home is often emotionally rather than financially motivated.

I am an ex-tenant on of his, he kicked out 70 families back in June for the same reason and there are on-going legal cases. He is well known for it round here, he evicts people, keeps as much deposit as he can then uses it to do up the houses and up the rent, if you google his name this isn't the first story like this published about him.

In our case (which is all sorted now) he tried to take our deposit for something that was already broken when we moved in, luckily for us we had written proof that he said he was going to fix it and never bothered and FIL threatened him with legal action and he apologised and backed down but not before he had made false claims to the council about us being in arrears when we weren't, we were homeless for 3 months because of his lies, I know other tenants are more vulnerable than I am and don't have the same support so are far worse off.

It is also worth noting that he owns the majority of private rent houses which take hb in Maidstone and that there are still people waiting to be housed from his last set of evictions.

No - if landlords didn't buy the properties, other people would if they could afford them. Or do you think that house prices would magically come down so that everyone could afford them? I couldn't have afforded a mortgage when I left home and no mortgage company would give me one now.

And berating landlords for making profit - honestly? My landlord actually reduced my rent a few years ago because he had a new mortgage deal which was costing less.

If he really wants to rent to 'eastern europeans' who work then fine but then I'd also say that I live in an area where this is happening and it means they are renting to people who are 10 to a flat. The consequences for those living in and around people squashed in flats ain't great.

But business is business.

What about reluctant landlords who enter the profession only because they need to move and can't sell their property? Are they soulless, scum sucking maggots too? (I have a sense that some of this type may be worse than "professional" landlords since they are not doing it through choice).

Amazed/aghast that any one individual could own so many properties. How does he have the means or motivation? [shocked]

I live in an area where this is happening and it means they are renting to people who are 10 to a flat.

The law should definitely be tightened/enforced around that.

Or do you think that house prices would magically come down so that everyone could afford them?

Yes of course they would. Houses are only worth what people are willing and/or able to pay for them. Basic supply and demand.

Where I live, a bog standard 3-bed sells for roughly 275,000-300,000. It's an average family home, but the average family cannot afford anything like that.

.. because they need to move and can't sell their property

There's no such thing as a property that cannot be sold - at the right price.

There's no such thing as a property that cannot be sold - at the right price.

And if the right price plunges the sellers into horrendous negative equity? That's preferable to renting it?

The reason why charities "agree" isn't because they think tenants on HB deserve to get kicked out - it's because they agree thr government has created a mess by cutting HB.

The reason the landlord has suddenly decided to evict isn't that he's had a snap relisation that all tenants on benefits are feckless layabouts who'll spend the rent money on fags and booze. It's because he knows the they're increasingly not going to get enough HB to keep up with the rents he wants to charge.

It's not a bedroom 'tax' FFS

It's a start of an attempt at solving our housing crisis.

If you want a home for life with more bedrooms than you need, then buy one.

Interesting debate. My thoughts are that landlords will be losing money if they are getting less in income minus costs than their money could have earned through other investments.

If you can make 10% per year through stocks/shares/bonds then a 50,000 house must bring in more than 5000 per year profit else why bother with all the hassle? House price rises may or may not happen and reaping a profit on the sale is a long way down the line so is only really suitable for retirement planning.

Personally I would not want the grief of being a landlord.

Danaan, that's interesting. Bears out my feeling that it's pretty sick to chuck all his HB tenants out, whether or not they're actually in arrears with their rent. If all landlords do that, where will all these tenants go?

It is also rather disingenuous of Mr Wilson to say that "not one of our working tenants is in arrears" and imply that his HB tenants are out of work. In fact, about a million people in work now receive some amount of housing benefit. This figure has been rising steadily and will surely continue to do so.

The Wilsons are definitely straight out of Little Britain. A ghastly couple.

It's possible, of course, that with them owning 1000 properties, that they can actually force local HB rates up, if they increase rents, because their inflated rents would put the 30th percentile rent up for the area.