to think all buy to let people are just in it to get someone else to work to pay off their mortgage?

[madhurjazz]

I wish people would say it as it is. Buy to let in my mind is just about getting someone else that can't afford a deposit / without a stable job to do all the hard work to pay off the mortgage of someone else. It does feel like a massive step backwards in equality.

Very few actually want to rent, the vast majority are stuck doing so as speculation keeps pushing ownership out of reach.

The fact is, there's a shortage of housing, so if you own more property than you need, unless you let other people use it for a genuinely affordable price you're harming other people. I get how appealing it must be to purchase a BTL in the current economic climate, with almost no interest on savings, but that fact remains. The fact of having working hard doesn't alter that fact either.

You'd like to think the government is going to use ex MOD land to build houses for it's citizens User now we no longer have an army that needs housing. Well you might think so, off the top of my head I can give you an example of two ex MOD sites: MillHill Barracks, empty for years, a lovely bit of real estate in a prime part of West London sold to Taylor Wimpey to build a massive private development of very pricey houses to add the oh so essential stock of multi million pound houses in the area.

The ex army barracks in Brighton, again empty for years. Are they building homes the for the many homeless in Brighton, no of course they aren't, they're building, oh so essential, flats for the mass of students that Brighton wants to attract so they can do really important degrees that the country needs like media studies; not many homeless families being house there and not many first time buyers in either of them.

Anyone who thinks the government is concerned about creating housing for families is naive. The government will sell it's land to the highest bidder and that is not a council tenant.

Stop blaming private BTL LL for the lack of housing. It was the government of the time that decided to sell off the very necessary housing stock and it's governments who haven't build social housing and isn't building it now.

The government is not going step in and save the housing problem, the only hope people who can't afford to raise a deposit and therefore a mortgage have of having a roof over their heads is to rent from private LLs.

I the "work hard" argument stands. I am mid forties and, as posted previously, made sacrifices and worked/saved hard. Foregoing luxuries like holidays abroad, new clothes, eating out and suchlike. And I do know people my age who didn't do that and had the holidays/clothes/restaurants. Fair enough, their choice at the time. But now I own two properties, made possible by my choices while they bemoan renting and not owning. Their outlook is that it's unfair and honestly can't see how they got there.

It is fair in that case. I reaped what I sowed. I didn't work bloody hard to be told I'm doing it all wrong and hurting others

And where's the incentive to succeed in that case. Nah, doesn't matter. Don't bother striving to achieve. Just do what you like and somebody that DID will come along and share theirs.

I don't think having a roof over your head is a 'service' being used. It's a basic human right being met IMO

I kind of get the logic in that, but then what happens when, as we've seen on here, someone believes that gives them the right to others' assets?

Only an anecdote I know, but I have young friends, both good earners, who've been allowed to live rent free in a "spare" family house for years so they could save a deposit. Except that they've blown the lot, saved absolutely nothing and are now whining about how "unfair" everything to do with housing is

So what do we do about people like that - and they certainly won't be alone - if housing really is "a right"?

And where's the incentive to succeed in that case. Nah, doesn't matter. Don't bother striving to achieve. Just do what you like and somebody that DID will come along and share theirs

That's often why communist communities fail - and why punitive measures have to be taken; individuals within the populace know they will get a share of whatever is produced, so don't put in as much effort, but as more and more individuals do that, productivity goes down, so there's no longer enough to go round, so the state introduces punishment for those who don't pull their weight.

People have to be motivated to work. Capitalism rewards people for working, communism punishes people for not working.

And where's the incentive to succeed in that case. Nah, doesn't matter. Don't bother striving to achieve. Just do what you like and somebody that DID will come along and share theirs

Oh, and this ^^

I don't think having a roof over your head is a 'service' being used. It's a basic human right being met IMO.

Shelter is a basic human right - home ownership isn't. Someone renting from a private landlord has their basic human rights met, plus a lot more besides.

In the event that they can't access shelter, the state (in most, but not all cases) provides the means to do that. Some people make life choices that preclude them from taking up the options offered to them by the state to access shelter.

Shakey - are you saying that people who rent don't 'work hard?'
You made good financial decisions but I don't think that means you worked harder than a person who rents.

I'm still waiting for user or anyone else to comeback and explain how us renting out our former home adversely affects the housing benefits system when none of our tenants are in receipt of it. It's a 5bed detached in an affluent area. We have a high changeover of tenants as they have all used it as a stop gap. How is this skewing the system?

Shake, the young families I know are working hard but they can't afford to get off the housing ladder. On one road 10,out of 15 houses are rented! Is so much harder to get on the property ladder than it.was when we were younger as more people own more than one home.

You made good financial decisions but I don't think that means you worked harder than a person who rents.

Each generation has different opportunities and hurdles to overcome.

The effort and sacrifices needed 20 years ago to secure a home may not be enough now. That's not unfair - you can't compare life chances to previous generations and demand that current opportunities reflect those of 20/30/40 years ago.

By that token, I should be bemoaning how "unfair" my life is because my health was put at risk by passive smoking in a way that the current generation are not.

Is so much harder to get on the property ladder than it.was when we were younger as more people own more than one home.

How does multiple home ownership make harder for people to get on the property ladder, though? Surely the barriers are financial, not a lack of availability.

And those who think it's a matter of morals or ethics, what about those people who bought their home in the SE in the early/mid 1980s. They maybe paid 50k for a house now worth 1.5m. Do we say it's unfair to the poor people who bought elsewhere in the country for similar money but whose house is now worth 300k? Or are we saying it's ok that they bought the right house in the right area at the right time and made over £1m, but it's not ok for those who married, moved into one house and kept the other to make any profit on it. Even if that profit will never come close to £1m.

Me and oh are looking at buy to let, but we'll do private lettings to his brothers and just cover the cost of our bills, nothing more. It's so that they can move out and rent, for the cheapest rent they can get, whilst saving for a deposit of their own. If they were to rent off a landlord who they didn't know charging normal rent rates, they'd never be able to save for a deposit of their own which they want to do. They also want to own their own home but move out and have independence sooner.

I think it all depends on individual circumstances

Yes, obviously the only two choices are keeping the housing/rental market exactly the way it is now, or COMMUNISM

Renting in the UK is pretty shit. It's insecure, it's often badly regulated, it can end up being so expensive you can't save up for a deposit to get out of it. It has got a bit better with deposit protection schemes and (in some parts of the UK at least...) better HMO regulations and tightening up on some of the extortionate 'fees' charged. But it's still not comparable to how renting works in, e.g., Germany. Living somewhere when you can't plan ahead more than 6 months at a time in case the landlord decides to sell, you can't redecorate, you can't even put up pictures, I've had two leases that wanted me to get the landlord's advance permission for guests to stay overnight - this isn't a great way to live as an adult.

BTL becoming a great investment has also meant a lot of people becoming landlords who don't really understand (or sometimes even care that much) about their responsibilities. Lots of landlords think they are great landlords while falling well below decent standards. I have had landlords who thought it was just fine to let themselves in whenever they wanted, or that they didn't need to give a proper notice period because "well I'm selling it and the buyers might not want to wait that long." They considered themselves great landlords and were shocked, SHOCKED, that I was so "ungrateful" as to object.

And that's not even getting on to how shit letting agents can be.

The system needs to be better than this. And if that makes BTL less of a cushy investment as a consequence, then oh well.

There are people who work hard and remain poor. No doubt.

The flip side of this is that there are those who make seemingly unholy sacrifices in order to get ahead and cobble together a depost - the most obvious ones, subjecting yourself to substandard housing and deferring parenthood.

Or, moving away from your hometown.

Yes, obviously the only two choices are keeping the housing/rental market exactly the way it is now, or COMMUNISM

Hang on, there are lots of people on this thread who are saying how unfair it is that some people own more than one property when some people own none. That's a straightforwardly communist principle and it bears comment.

I don't think anyone has suggested there's no middle ground.

I'd love to own my own place and it's very hard saving while renting however that's life. We need somewhere to live and short of trying to put on our parents we have no choice.

I never begrudged paying my ex landlords rent for his mortgage. He was fantastic and the price was fair . I do resent paying this landladys though, she and/or estate agents are shit. They up the price every year despite many many issues that need rectifying. Can't wait to move out of here and hoping to find a ll like my first.

NNChangeagain. Things become more expensive when demand falls short of supply surely. There are less houses to go around for everyone. Passive smoking is in the past, we can't change that. We have more influence on what happens for future generations but the majority of our generation don't car about them, I get that.

Communism is about a bit more than "there's a lot of inequality in the current system."

Communism is about a bit more than "there's a lot of inequality in the current system."

Who has said otherwise?

There's a lot of equality in the current system - agreed

It's unfair for any one person to have more than one house when other people don't own even one - disagree

Sorry - inequality, obviously.

There is a state programme to assist building on state land but it's not available to ordinary people. I would like a right to buy any unused public land for housing. Every single site around here (outer London) whch is private land like unpoular pubs, petrol stations is all giong for housing and the flats are sold before the buildings are even finished as at the bottom end - around £300k there is such demand.

Also those of us with older children are having to use money we might otherwise need to help the children buy which is a massive change from how things used to be. I don't expect any sympathy for the burden of doing that and it's my choice and partly because I've always worked full time so have a bit more money than some women my age who had career breaks or didn't work full time. I could instead say to the children not a penny will I pay. Go to where my parents were from and buy somewhere ilke this for £20k [a]www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-39816969.html[/a]