To wonder how people afford to private rent and think there should be a cap on it

[user1498221998]

From the age of 21 I have rented from Housing Association. When I finished my University studies I was unemployed and didn't want to return to my Parents or house share so I applied for social housing. Got given a HA apartment and when I had my Son at 23 I got given a council house.

I've never had the money to buy or private rent so never got to live somewhere I actually wanted and always felt upset and angry at the fact I lived somewhere I didn't like and couldn't move.

I'm in the process of moving to a smaller house but in an area I prefer. I am moving from a two bed semi detached house to a two up two down terraced house but I will be happier there. When viewing I got speaking to the neighbour who informed me she pays £750 a month to rent her house privately!!!! I was absolutely stunned. This is a fairl;y grotty, tiny two bed terraced house in a rough part of Manchester (Central though which pushes the price up).

Intrigued I went on rightmove and found the house I currently rent for £380 a month is on a street where the houses are £700 a month to rent!!!

I am stunned! I've never private rented so never knew the cost. I will appreciate my HA property so much more now.

Both houses are worth about £120k. That's a lot of rent for 120k house. I can understand high rents in desirable areas but these are not. I earn 29k and couldn't afford to rent privately. How do people afford it?

AIBU to think there should be some cap on how much private landlords can charge?

We pay £750 for a 3 bed.

We earn £28,000 between us. It's a bit of a struggle at times but not totally unmanageable.

I live in the SE and the rental situation is dire. Extremely competetive and massively over priced.

It puts a lot of strain on young families - we haven't a hope in hell's chance of ever buying and the rental market is becoming increasingly daunting itself.

Until I got married a couple of years ago I earned less than you and rented privately in London. Would not even know how to go about getting HA. I think it's different if you have a child though as I was prepared to rent in a shared house with housemates and also some not great areas.

And you can receive housing benefit for the extortionate prices, but what good is that when 99% of properties don't accept "DSS" :(

JigsawBat couldn't be more true!

We've been fortunate to move into DPs parents whilst we save our bloody asses off for a deposit. We just couldn't save enough whilst renting privately.

Sadly many people don't have the option of staying with family so we do count ourselves lucky.

I think me and DH have accepted we will never own our own home.

I'm pretty surprised you can't afford private rent on 29k salary. Also confused as to why you get assistance (but don't know how it works). Plenty of people manage on far less than that. If you're taking home roughly £1800 a month and only spend £380 on rent what aside from usual bills are you spending the remaining £1400 on? Rent/mortgage costs are usually around a third of your monthly salary (often nearer half in London).

A huge section of the population can't afford it. That is why our housing benefit bill is so high, because they get a majority or all of their rent paid by other taxpayers, which goes to private landlords.

If housing benefit was cut or fell, rents would fall as it currently places a floor on rents in most places as landlords know the housing benefit (Local Housing Allowance in the private sector) is the minimum they can charge.

It is pretty scandalous that both NuLabour and the Tories would rather give rich people who already own a home more money for another home to how poorer people rather than just building millions of houses.

However, all politicians seem to mostly be in it for selfish reasons and many of them are landlords themselves (yes, many Labour MPs are also landlords), so they don't want to get rid of this gravy train.

Hopefully this government will have the guts to finally bring in a Land Value Tax so people can't make money speculating on housing and housing can return to something that people live in rather than something people accumulate in order to exploit and leech money out of other people.

It is bloody hard for young people now. It is virually impossible to get social the town I live, so every young person who moves out of their parents ends up in private rented. Couple that with low income and you have some very desperate people all cooped up in areas

Not all landlords are making a profit off the back of ridiculous rents.

Some landlords are landlords by default - because they can't sell for some reason.

If they have a mortgage on the property, then rental needs to cover the mortgage. Add to that the cost of renters who don't pay, renters who trash the place, maintaining and servicing a property etc, etc... it's not as one sided as some people feel.

The whole housing situation in the UK is a mess. People need to be able to afford a mortgage. We need more housing. Tenants need to be protected from unscrupulous landlords. landlords need protecting from unscrupulous tenants. The whole things needs reforming.

I've always rented privately but I feel really lucky to have found a flat that I really love, for the ridiculously low rent I'm currently paying. I live with a constant, low level fear that my landlord will sell up one day and I'll have to move, because I know I'd be paying a lot more for somewhere not nearly as nice anywhere else.

Private renting is the pits!! We rent it cost us £5000 just to be able to move into this flat, It's 2 bedrooms and an old conversion, we pay £850 every month, I work and my DP works and we have 2 dcs, we just can't afford to get a mortgage atm, Have to pay off the £5000 loan we took to move into this place ( we had no choice, Old LL was selling and we had to move , if we didn't get the loan we would've been homeless and the council said they couldn't help until we were made homeless and even then we were only likely to be put in a b&b and not even one in our town
Sorry about the rant, it just bugs me!

Not really sure what HA is, is it the same as housing benefit. Can't work out how anyone earning 29k gets help with rent. I left my husband 3 years ago and had to go into a rented place with my son (Essex in an expensive area). I was earning about 33k, no financial help from ex and I didn't qualify for help with anything. Ended up paying 1k for a small 2 bedroom bungalow, there was nothing else rentable for under that price.

I don't really agree though with capping private rentals. What about accidental landlords who end up in a position that they have to rent their property out. Being a LL can be a costly thing (yes I know I know LL's are generally hated on MN) and many still have mortgages etc to cover, it's really not as black and white as some would think.

I was a LL for years, rented out my place when I moved in with my exDH. Thank god I kept it on though, best thing I ever did and luckily I only had to rent a place myself for 10 months before I could get back into my own property.

AIBU to think there should be some cap on how much private landlords can charge?

How would that work?
Would you impose a cap on the prices of properties? If you do, what about people who bought at top price and end up in negative equity?

How will you factor the actual costs of being a landlord? Even if there's no mortgage, maintaining a property cost a fortune and many tenants have very little regards about the place. I don't even mean trashing the place, but just look at advice about clothes drying, and how many tenants think nothing about putting them on radiators, not opening windows then complaining about mould...
When you get a new tenant, you have to redecorate and possibly modernise kitchen/ bathrooms possibly changing the carpets.

Of course there are so dodgy landlords, but there are many more who are very decent people who don't make any money from letting their property.

It's a bit simplistic to just blame them about the current prices.

I live in the SE.

I was paying £500/mth for a house on a salary of 12k 20 years ago & supporting three much younger siblings without DSS support. If you have to do it, you just get on with it. You're really lucky that you have a HA property.

HA is housing association, they bought a good chunk of council run housing out a good few years ago. So most places don't have "council" (local gov run) properties anymore, they have "HA" (private run) properties.

Nothing to do with housing benefit.

£1500 for one bed in London here. Do extreme shift work so need to be close to work, so an unavoidable cost. 1/2 salary for 2 people each month.

Can only dream of £750!!!

Oh and, here at least, if you rent privately you will only get the equivalant of required HA property in housing benefit.

So while an identical 3-bed in my area would be 125 a month, I only get the equivalent of a 2-bed in HB. The top up I have to pay myself.

We're in SE London zone 2 and we pay £1500 rent in 2 bed flat

(When applied to HA tenants this what's known as the "bedroom tax", however it has applied to private tenants much longer than since the "bedroom tax" introduction)

One more thing - a lot of private landlords can't rent to HB recipients as their insurance or mortgage provider doesn't allow it, it's not their choice

£750 for a 2 bed in Manchester central? That's cheap. We pay £625 for a tiny 1 bed flat in Salford.

i hate renting privately but cant afford a deposit to buy.

i pay £750 rent for a 1 bed flat