To think there should be tighter controls on mortgages for buy to lets?

[ovidivo]

Surely stopping people from having mortgages for buy to lets would make properties more affordable for people. I'd see this stretch to corporate land lords too.

There are good & bad landlords like everything else & similarly tenants
There are several posts on MN asking how to make extra money;
Rent out a room in your own home = good
Rent out a property = bad
Pay into an employee pension = good
Rent out a property = bad
The property I currently live in was on the market for 1 year + & it's a doer upper/needs lots of modernisation. It's an ongoing , slow project.
Some people assume...

fair enough Lyra (although even on rereading your comments, it’s not obvious that’s what you meant to me - albeit I have had a few 🍷)

But the point about there being a disproportionate number of people expressing hate towards landlords on MN stands... as ably demonstrated by contentedsoul who has conveniently forgotten that without landlords, people who couldn’t afford to buy... or didn’t want to buy... would potentially be homeless.

It’s a bit like the attitude towards people being invited to evening only wedding celebrations, or asking for cash for wedding gifts. It seems to get far more MN members frothing at the mouth than in real life.

What rubbish.

BTL mortgaged are already harder to secure than residential.

Residential you need a 10% deposit
BTL is a minimum of 25%

Resident mortgage interest rates are substantially lower than BTL

BTL property stamp duty = an extra 3%. That’s (for example) another £8.4k on a £250k property.

Private landlords fulfill a need. Many can’t afford, or don’t want to be an owner occupier.

Landlords who have no/low mortgages will likely still charge rent at market rate imo

Most definitely agree with this, in general

Our friends own 2 flats that they rent out in zone 2 London, always going for higher than the going rent rate or putting it up after 12 months.

The properties are mortgage free, bought with very generous family money/inheritance

I guess that's their prerogative- you need money to make money and it is indeed true that the rich get richer

Meanwhile me and DH are trying to scrape every penny together to buy our first place, but that's just life

I agree there is a need for some private rented accommodation - but one reason that some people can't afford to buy (and therefore need to rent privately!) is that there is now more competition from btl landlords.

Government does seem to have decided a few years back that this is an issue, and put in train some quite significant tax changes. Other changes as well - are letting fees to tenants about to be banned in England (I think they already are in Scotland?)? But I suppose all these changes have to be gradual, because government won't want to risk major sudden falls in house prices.

The voice of Generation Rent is getting louder,and the government will need to listen more and more to that voter.

Would this include people who own holiday homes too

"The voice of Generation Rent is getting louder,and the government will need to listen more and more to that voter."

This

I will vote for any party that promises to take the Buy-To-Let market to task. I think the derailment of that gravy train is long overdue!

Everyone I know hates the current situation.
Personally I'd like unearned incomes such as the huge financial gains enjoyed by the landlords to be heavily taxed....to the point where it becomes pointless keeping the property.

Bit like the greedy person in front of you in a buffet....fills their plate high with the nicest offerings and leaves the rest of the queue behind to make do with what's left.

Just G R E E D!! plain and simple.

It's already harder to get BtL, tax changes have been happening for last 2 years and that is why number of BtL mortgages dropped significantly.
Yet prices kept rising. Why? Because now FTBs are filling up the gap and... Voila... New competition amongst themselves.
This thread sounds rather utopian, not to have landlords. Where will people who can't afford to buy live? In the imaginary social housing?

It's shit how rental market is. I agree. Maybe rather petition the government to make sure there are more secured tenancies rather than wish for landlords to go away on MN🤷‍♀️

Most people don’t have a bit to let mortgage, they gave a standard mortgage with permission to let,
Which may or may not attract a premium

Permission to let typically lasts 1 or 2 years, then you have to move to a buy to let rather than residential. So I think that is unlikely.

It's true house prices have continued to rise nationally - although in London they've recently fallen slightly and the growth elsewhere may be slower than it would have been without the btl changes.

If ftbs are competing at least it means a ftb rather than a btl gets the flat or house - if you think owner occupation is a good thing, that may be a good result!

Cookit - we had permission for 7 years.

@Cookit after @ILoveMaxiBondi I looked into it and she's right for us, I can't speak for most people but military personnel just put a change on their mortgage, there isn't a time limit (well I suppose leaving service and/or buying another house would end it) and we don't have to pay extra either.

My lender did 2 years and from speaking to other accidental landlords (yes, yes, yes I know - but we’re talking about people in relationships where two people own or where they are seconded out of the country)I know (about 6) 2 years seemed generous. Maybe it’s different for military?

At the end of the day the house was never going to be for sale and it’s s 4 bed family home that people moan aren’t widely available and are being turned into bedsits and all that ... so if it wasn’t rented out what a waste to have it stood empty.

@NorthernSpirit yes this, and tax is no longer deductible on interest after 20% - being phased in.
A lot was done on the BTL market a few years a go (tax change on interest, extra stamp) especially for individual landlords rather than companies. But because it was done by a Conservative government no one remembers maybe.

@Cookit yeah I guess so www.gov.uk/government/news/boxing-day-deal-on-mortgages-for-armed-forces

In some areas there are selective licensing schemes, with controls on fitness to be a landlord and so on. And some HMOs have to be licensed as well under mandatory HMO licensing - I think the rules were tightened on this last year so that more rentals fall within that category?

So gradually the costs of being a landlord are increasing, which may mean it becomes less attractive.

But the basic problem is that to make house buying more affordable for owner occupiers, house prices need to fall. Which of course has implications for those who already own, including those owner occupiers who have recently bought and would be in negative equity. (And in some places would be in negative equity even if they bought longer ago.)