To think that if you private rent your life should not be dictated to by the landlord whose mortgage you are paying

[Nursejackie1]

So many of us are stuck in private renting with no choice paying over the odds, while landlords are making a mint. Most landlords have all these rules that you can’t decorate without permission, can’t even put a wall hanging up without asking. Often can’t or need permission to have pets, have regular inspections. I pay loads for my home and due to that cannot save a deposit. My kids have never had their bedrooms decorated in the way I would like.. having to stick with plain magnolia. Why should somebody else decide whether my kids get to grow up with a family pet or not? AIBU to think that if you are paying somebodies mortgage for them then while you are in that house you should be able to treat it as your own within reason and not have your life dictated to and controlled by them?

peonies but you presumably DO get things repaired and repaired. Whereas many tenants are left without heating/water/cookers/with mould etc for weeks and months. Often with children in the house. It's hardly a privelege having no control over these things.

@Nursejackie1 It's SO EXPENSIVE to to a tenant switchover, that's the thing. More than 2k, between agency fees and the inevitable fixing that you need to do in the garden etc, new stuff and so on. It's horrible. There's always a panicked 3 days of cleaning and discovering more stuff that needs to be done. Our current tenants are friends of the family, have done wonders with the garden and are generally lovely.

My land lord is lovely. Charges well below the market rent. And keeps the house well maintained. And she lets me have cats.

and believe me there are far more rules that a landlord has to adhere to than you as a tenant

You have a choice to be a landlord or not, but not whether you need a roof over your head.

I'm a landlord. Last time my tenants asked if they could paint I paid for the paint for them. I have had the same tenants for over 10 years and haven't put the rent up in that time (my mortgage has actually dropped in that time so no need to).

Maybe you need to look around for nicer landlords.

I think the scheme the council here has run for the last few years should be rolled out (sadly I think it'll be scrapped after the pilot, which is madness).

Landlords register with them. Properties are inspected once a year to check they are properly habitable rather than just existing. The landlords provides proof of all the relevant checks and insurances (and shows they know their responsibilities). The rent has to be reasonable for the area.

Then the tenant, often waiting for social housing, but not always, knows they are getting a decent landlord who has willingly gone through that process. It goes along as a normal tenancy would apart from the annual inspection being one more thing the tenant does have to allow, but it is in their interest as the LL doesn't want the council getting involved with enforcement.

Any issues and the housing officer will act as a bit of a mediator if needed. The council have found they've saved money as they are not being brought in by desperate tenants when problems are so bad that enforcement is needed for repairs. The housing officer also tends to know who has availability and who doesn't, which works well when someone in a property is offered social housing as if there is someone who can move in immediately LL's will let a tenant go immediate so there's no hammering of a couble rent in a notice period.

It works really well. Tenants especially know that if a LL says "yes I'm part of that scheme" that the LL is bothered enough to fill in the form, show the proof of gas certs etc and allow the annual inspection so they know they are getting a ll that gives a shit.

For tennant's and people concerned about the rights of tennant's, it is worth joing the Acorn Union. They work really hard for tennants,; in despitus with LLs, where housing conditions are substandard etc

acorntheunion.org.uk/

while landlords are making a mint. Most landlords have all these rules that you can’t decorate without permission, can’t even put a wall hanging up without asking. Often can’t or need permission to have pets, have regular inspections. I pay loads for my home and due to that cannot save a deposit. My kids have never had their bedrooms decorated in the way I would like.. having to stick with plain magnolia. Why should somebody else decide whether my kids get to grow up with a family pet or not? AIBU to think that if you are paying somebodies mortgage for them then while you are in that house you should be able to treat it as your own within reason and not have your life dictated to and controlled by them?

Apologies Nursejackie1, I read this as an issue towards your current LL rather than a general statement.

I would suggest that your requests are discussed prior to signing your contract. You, and the LL, have a choice whether to enter into the contract on that basis.

Maybe you need to look around for nicer landlords.

@LakieLady

You’re right, there aren’t many investments that can provide both capital growth AND income and houses are included in this.

We have our properties mortgaged and mostly make a small loss year on year, we’re reliant on the capital growth alone. You’ll find that unless landlords have inherited their houses the same is true universally for landlords.

And I have actually had a landlord who specified what colour the bedding had to be in each room. Yes she was barking mad, but she’s not the only landlord convinced she’s magnanimously doing her tenants enough of a favour just by letting them live there.

I’ve had landlords state that I needed to get their advance written permission if I wanted a guest to stay overnight.

Some landlords deserve a slap.

The problem with clauses like this is that some tenants won't realise they are utterly unenforcable. You can put anything you want in a contract - I could put in that my tenant has to make me dinner every Tuesday night, but it's meaningless as you can only enforce certain things in law.

Yet because there isn't enough information out there for tenants some twatty landlords think they have the right to stipulate these things.

crosspelican

@Nursejackie1 It's SO EXPENSIVE to to a tenant switchover, that's the thing. More than 2k, between agency fees and the inevitable fixing that you need to do in the garden etc, new stuff and so on. It's horrible.

It cost me that to replace our boiler, you'd just call your landlord.

No coffee often the 'choice' for the Tennant is this house or homelessness.

My mortgage payments are a third of what people are charging in rent in our area

It cost me that to replace our boiler, you'd just call your landlord.

Once you'd done that the boiler would last you several years. A tenant could have to do that every 12 months on the whim of landlords.

And it shouldn't be a race to the bottom anyway.

"Maybe you need to look around for nicer landlords."

It depends on the area. Tenants in some areas are competing against a lot of other prospective tenants for rentals, and in reality don't get a huge amount of choice. If dc are settled in schools even more so as you are then tied to a particular area.

I’ve always decorated flats that I have rented and allow my tenants to do the same and if neutral colours not been asked to repaint or ask my tenants as long as it looks clean

One tenant put up black and silver wall paper it went with their furnishings and redecorated it before they moved out and informed me they would before I asked which I think that is fair enough

I agree OP, private renting was the hardest time for me. My landlord was fine as a person but clearly in it for the money and didn’t care it would be our home. I think tenants should be allowed to live in a house as if it were their own, they’re more likely to respect the landlord and take care of the house than when they’re seen as a money maker. Magnolia walls and lack of photos is depressing. So what if the next tenant doesn’t like it, they should also be free to decorate and make the home how they’d like. I understand contracts are often temporary so it would be a waste of money on the tenants part and pets/nails can damage a house causing the landlord money loss, but when you make that choice as a business option you have to expect some things you wouldn’t like happen. I eventually bought my own house and the freedom is great, but not everyone is able to doesn’t mean they should have to feel like squatters in a landlords house.

think of it like this....
you have leased a car for a year, it is white, and you think white is boring, but you cant go and have it painted blue/red/green etc because its not actually your car
DING DING DING
its not actually your house so you cant just do shit without asking the actual owner, its not rocket science
dont like the rules? move somewhere cheaper and save up a deposit, kinda like the actual home owner did

Of course private rental btl's have driven up house prices and of course landlords are richer than tenants.

To take the latter issue first, landlords own. They have assets. Not all wealth is seen in the bank - we need to get out of the mindset that money on a banksheet is all and resources are irrelevant, here and elsewhere. Tenants do not own. Tenants have nothing more in many cases than the clothes in the (landlord's, often) wardrobes. This is a huge discrepancy and it is nothing more than facile duplicitous lies and hypocrisy that enables the rich to overlook it.

For the first issue, let's pretend you have ten houses and ten families. Everyone has one each, no problem, prices are normal. One family, being older, pays their mortgage off earlier and decides to leverage their sudden wealth and become a btl landlord. Now there are ten houses and eleven wanting them. Prices go up to satisfy demand, the first family can still afford it, the youngest can't and become tenants with no assets. Next, the second oldest pays off the mortgage. Now we have ten properties and twelve families wanting to own. Prices go up.

Do you see when it is laid out like that? Of course the greed of landlords drives up prices for everyone. It is very simple, supply and demand. The way the well-off have been trying to pretend it isn't happening and that they are not simply leveraging their excessive prior-earned wealth at someone else's expense has been sickening for years.

The multiple ways in which the well-off in a society can leverage prior wealth to force all poorer people into poverty have been well understood for years. It happened in Britain in the Victorian Age (even if we didn't have numerous examples in the ancient world and ancient laws against usury to draw on). The public sector was one compromise that worked well against until it started becoming corrupted. We need it back, and we need systemic guards against it becoming corrupted again.

This thread has made me so sad.
"So many people thinking that renting makes you an inferior human being with no rights and deserving of no respect - and that you rightly deserve to be treated with the utmost contempt.
The kind of contempt posters are showing on this thread.
The OP post goes so much deeper than redecorating (although that is the visible sign of inequality). It isn't about the colour of the walls. Ultimately, it is about feeling you have a home, somewhere you feel safe and happy."

Well said @Mythologies. All the judgmental, I'm Alright Jacks on this thread should take a long hard look at themselves.

Do people really think that those of us renting custard yellow woodchipped flats from indifferent landlords turned down large, tastefully decorated houses from reasonable landlords and CHOSE the inferior set up? That we can just move whenever we fancy a change?

Wow can't believe some of the comments on here. If you have a buy to let can't you claim tax relief as a business cost? People who gave a mortgage don't.

Also some people could easily afford a mortgage on a property because their rent is a lot higher than the mortgage but they fail the affordability test that mortgage lenders have to apply.

Of course I look after the house. Of course I would put things back as they were before leaving the house. - but your LL doesn't know this and is frightened by all the horror stories you hear.

It is unfair and it's awful for decent renters. The system does need overhauling but at the same time as greater rights for tenants, there also need to be a quicker and easier eviction process for the LL. The fact that tenants are advised to default and have to go through he eviction process to be council housed isn't fair on the LL. Also when tenants just stop paying for whatever reason, even if it's not totally their fault. I've seen this happen to friends and is what I dread. The eviction process is stressful, costly and takes a long time and also needs overhauling. This is as much a bugbear as your concerns op, especially to the small time LL.

I agree to redecoration and picture hanging in my rental house. I agreed to a pet for my long term tenant who has proved herself to be trustworthy. I wouldn't agree to a pet for an unknown, unproven tenant as I want to protect my investment. The bad actions of a few spoil it for the majority.

"If there were no private landlords, you and many others probably would have no place to live. Like it or not, I think you and all other private tenants need to remember that."

Well, the houses would still be there so presumably someone would still live in them (unless existing landlords decided to keep them empty long-term, which is possible eg when owners are working abroad and decide its too risky to let them out.)

If all private landlords (including corporate landlords) sold up, prices would have to fall to a level at which people could afford to buy to owner/occupy - law of supply and demand. (The flaw in this argument I suppose is if people buy them to have as second homes ie holiday homes, or as an investment left empty, but I suspect that would be quite a small proportion of the current private rental stock.)

That we can just move whenever we fancy a change?

But of course you can "just move", Mockney. That's the Mumsnet answer to everything remember? "Just move".