to think that banning 'buy-to-let' would go a long way to solving the housing crisis?

[carlajean]

It seems so obvious to me that there's sure to be some flaw in the argument, but it would be easy to enforce (i.e. one family, one house) and there would be a large number of houses/flats released onto the market, forcing the price down (to a rational level) so that people could afford the newly-available housing.
Because interest rates are so low, housing is a good investment, particularly with older people who might have pulled down their pension early, resulting in private landlords buying up cheap housing a letting it out.
I await flaming, but am interested to hear what people think.

I am not saying we need more social housing. I think the protections we give to social housing tenants should be extended to private tenants.

But why should a private landlord do anything? It's a business - the point is to make money. No money, no rentals. There is no need for any private landlord to rent to anyone.

But why should a private landlord do anything? It's a business - the point is to make money. No money, no rentals. There is no need for any private landlord to rent to anyone.

What? That doesn't make any sense. It is a business, and as such they need to follow the law and find profit within it.

No, they can stop being a landlord and do something else. That doesn't help the large number of people who will never be in a position to get a mortgage - the people who always needed council houses.

you seem to be changing who needs a council house - now people who can't get a mortgage are those who need a council house?

No I'm not. People who have the choice of buying a house or renting don't really need protection from evil landlords with long term tenancy agreements. They can just buy a house.

The private sector is good at providing flexible accommodation according to market needs. Many people want flexible accommodation and many landlords provide a good quality service because if they didn't they would go out of business.

You can legislate as much as you like but a business must make money, and not just money but more money than another investment. Nobody has to be a landlord.

People who have the choice of buying a house or renting don't really need protection from evil landlords with long term tenancy agreements.

Who says?

what about those people who can't buy, but want and need long term agreements? I.e. a massive chunk of the population?

you are setting up a very false dichotomy. You seem to think that there are two groups: a wealthy class that can afford to buy homes and don't need tenancy protections, and those who can't. it's just not that simple.

a business must make money, and not just money but more money than another investment.

This is the sort of stuff which, like "businesses have a legal duty to maximise shareholder returns", gets trotted out by people who have never managed a business. UK businesses can do what they want with their assets, so long as it's legal and doesn't constitute fraudulent trading, and the shareholders (if they exist: it may be a private company) can if they want get a new board of directors.

People are not rational investors, and even if they were, in any event "making money" involves a lot of complex judgements about "over what period of time", "with what degree of risk", etc, etc. Is a company making a 10% return on assets but taking a risk the money is all lost making more, or less money than a company which shut up shop and just bought gilts?

what about those people who can't buy, but want and need long term agreements? I.e. a massive chunk of the population?

Those would be people who don't have the choice of buying a house, as mentioned above .

I have never argued that they shouldn't be protected.

You seem to be arguing that all renters want and need the same things. They don't.

Those would be people who don't have the choice of buying a house, as mentioned above

better get building council houses then, because much of London is in that boat.

You seem to think there is a big section of the rental market that doesn't want long term protection. As far as I can tell, you have only identified a negligible portion: temporary business people.

I just have to say - who the hell are all these people that just looooove renting? I realise it may not be the most neutral of sources, but:

"Most renters don’t want to be renting. Two-thirds of private renters (67%) would rather own their home, while another 10% would prefer to be in social housing, the Generation Rent campaign says."

I don't think you could completely ban BTL but you have to admit, it's got well out of hand.

Two-thirds of private renters (67%) would rather own their home, while another 10% would prefer to be in social housing

So that's still 100-67-10 = 23% of the rental sector who neither want to buy nor be in social housing. That's quite a lot of people.

And you could also 010% of people with mortgages would rather not have a mortgage or have paid it off. There are lots of things we all want in life but don't get. the bottom line is council houses on the whole can be pretty awful and most private tenancies in cities at the middle to upper end are heaps better than council or social housing. Most people renting in cities find they get a better property renting from a private landlord and the last thing they want is the bureaucracy of dealing with the state.

The typical trajectory for the 50% of people who are graduates anyway is leave university, pay off debt, work full time, marry, save and svae and save, then about 30 buy some tiny tiny one bed place in some dreadful area what might be coming up and buy their first place sometimes with £5k from their parents and go from there. They have nearly 10 years only renting and would be worse off if private renting disappeared. Then you get the newly divorced who aren't yet on their feet ready to buy yet who want rental until they find a new lover or move cities.

TheSnufflet I just have to say - who the hell are all these people that just looooove renting? I realise it may not be the most neutral of sources, but:

"Most renters don’t want to be renting. Two-thirds of private renters (67%) would rather own their home, while another 10% would prefer to be in social housing, the Generation Rent campaign says."

Mumsnetters seem to live in a rareified world where everyone else is just like them. I fully admit that I don't know everyone, but of the people I do know, all are either renting privately or have bought. I don't know any families in social housing, my neighbours who are won't speak to me and prefer interactions of the anti-social kind (racing cars around the development, holding loud outdoor parties to which we are not invited, police often round, etc). I don't know any unhappy renters. In fact, I've hardly ever met any of those bitter people who post all the time on mumsnet blaming anyone else they can for their own relative misfortune.

My own flat is sitting empty because the chances of getting a bad tenant are too high for the risk involved once I've paid tax (and gone to the hassle of registering it, protecting deposits, sending info to HMRC and so on). I suppose the OP would like everyone to be like me, or maybe I should let a family live there, perhaps for a peppercorn rent or something. Obviously if I did make better use of my property and rented it out, I would then immediately be transformed into an evil landlord who was taking housing stock away from more the more deserving.

I do rent privately. When I think of the ghettos of council housing stock that prevailed in the past and which still exist, wild horses wouldn't make me want to live there. Neither would I want to live in the social housing section of my home's development, because its rapidly gaining a bad reputation for itself due to the behaviour of some of the tenants.

In fact, the public sector has an appalling record of providing good housing stock. It also tends to be a bad landlord, slow at effecting repairs and dealing with anti-social tenants. Plus, it also tends to sell off its housing stock, built by public funds, to the private sector! Its record is actually much more objectionable than the privately rented sector.

What I am asking is why the rental sector should be broken up into two separate markets - one with proper tenant protections and one without.

At the moment, its the other way around - council and social housing does not have to comply with the requirements of for example HMOs (in some areas more stringent than others). e.g. mains operated smoke alarms with battery back up, self closing fire proof doors, emergency lighting and fire escape signage, smoke blankets and fire extinguishers changed regularly, etc.. In fact, many councils require HMO landlords to use a standard lease with certain notice periods.

That always seems strange to me, considering that families with young children are much more likely to be renting social housing.

George Osborne said buy-to-let landlords have a “huge advantage” over homebuyers because they can offset mortgage interest payments against their income. “And the better off the landlord, the more tax relief they get,” he added
Osborne said this had contributed to the rapid growth in buy-to-let properties, which accounted for more than 15% of mortgages taken out this year, and had caused the Bank of England to sound a warning about the market.
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/08/osborne-buy-to-let-tax-relief-limit-budget
Houses aren’t expensive simply because of supply and demand. As long as houses are expensive, people will work to keep them expensive – buy-to-let landlords with far more capital can buy up houses and rent them out at high costs, wealthy British and foreign investors can buy up land and new-build luxury property knowing that the likelihood of profit is a far better bet than with any other investment. Keeping families and individuals locked out of home ownership for a lifetime works as a financial racket, which is precisely what we’re dealing within.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/16/why-houses-so-expensive-google

As far as I can tell, you have only identified a negligible portion: temporary business people.

You think their number is negligible, but where I grew up it was and is the vast majority of renters. In the village where I live now there a few rentals, pretty much all rented by people who are relocating and want to rent for 6 months to a year before they buy. As a student I wanted to rent from October till June, not be tied to a property for 2-3 years. This was the normal student tenancy agreement.

In terms of housing standards and up keep, properties I have rented have been immaculate when I moved in because that is what the market demands, and maintained because the landlord was contractually obliged to do so.

Renting suits people who want flexibility - why impose additional obligations on landlords when a large part of the rental market works perfectly well and suits the needs of the market?

why impose additional obligations on all landlords

In the village where I live now there a few rentals, pretty much all rented by people who are relocating and want to rent for 6 months to a year before they buy.

Yup, you are still just talking about a small portion. Furthermore, nothing I have said would exclude such rentals.

I have lived in many jurisdictions in America and UK, and the private rental protections here are amongst the worst. When I say tenure, I mean that you have the right to stay unless you are being asked to leave for a very small set of reasons, one of which can't be the LL wants more money. In those jurisdictions, short term tenancies are always possible. Nothing I have said excludes them.

Renting suits people who want flexibility - why impose additional obligations on landlords when a large part of the rental market works perfectly well and suits the needs of the market?

I'd hate to see a system you think doesn't work very well.

someone on another thread linked to blog on awards for really bad landlords. But the awards for for housing associations. They seem able to ignore all the standards and regulations for private landlords. No-one should be able to do that. What's going on?

You've obviously never experienced the "joys" of renting in Holland or Germany, redstrawberry. I've had to do both for work and the standard of rental property is far, far lower than what you can find in the UK. There are no basic standards at all. Its also very very difficult to actually find a property, as properties go as soon as they are advertised, and you often have to pay large sums to agencies to even let you view them in the first place. Just awful. Dangerous, dirty properties without basic facilities such as floor coverings or even light bulbs in some cases, deathtrap staircases, damp, windows that don't close, but everyone else is in the same boat and so you put up with it.

But hey, The Netherlands has rent controls and theres no profit in renting, so that's what you get in return. Actually, rents can still be pretty high and the market is dominated by social housing providers which are non-profit making organisations and whose main purpose actually seems to be to employ the relatively lazy who don't want to work in a normal job, hence they can be dire to deal with. Very inefficient and poor at responding to reports of damage/breakages, screw you over your deposit at the end and you're lucky if their opening hours are more than a couple of mornings per week!

In Germany, rentals can be so long term that you actually bring your own kitchen units with you! If you want a shorter term option (ie anything less than 3 years), you have to pay a huge premium, especially if you are a foreigner and desperate for somewhere to live!

Suspect that free standings kitchen furniture is more common in those countries where you provided your own kitchen units in a rental?

Suzanne Suspect that free standings kitchen furniture is more common in those countries where you provided your own kitchen units in a rental?

No, fitted kitchens seemed popular. So you would have to find someone to dismantle it and then refit it in your new rental. Of course there are rentals with kitchens included, but because its so hard to find somewhere to rent and they aren't all like that, its not unusual to rent without a kitchen at all, and just use a microwave perched on top of an box, using the bathroom sink for washing up.

In Holland, I found that a lot of rentals, even rented rooms, were unfurnished and even when furnished, didn't have ovens or washing machines. Bloody annoying when you only want to stay for six months or a year!

Yup, you are still just talking about a small portion

Based on what figures? You are pulling these statements out of the air.

Completely disagree. There needs to be a substantial stock of affordable, quality homes to rent. Not everybody wants or needs to buy. You might be living in London for 2 years on a postdoc or have in mind that you want to move to Edinburgh, New York or Timbuktu in 1 or 5 years. Why should there be no available nice houses for you to rent?

Home ownership is a huge pressure that many people don't need.

I think that the amount of money available to borrow generally should be drastically cut. I mean, you shouldn't be able to borrow more than your annual salary sort of thing - the banks sloshing wild sums around to first time buyers and buy-to-letters have pushed the prices up and up and up. It's STAGGERING that the houses on my street cost about 12 times my (not unreasonable) annual income, and are still going up by 10 - 12% a year.

"I have lived in many jurisdictions in America and UK, and the private rental protections here are amongst the worst."

Do you mean United States? Where if you miss a month's payment, the LL can apply for a court eviction and within 30 days you have a sheriff (police) forcibly removing you from the premises and a hired crew is removing your belongings on the closest public curb?