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?

Have you tried the Help to Buy scheme?
I have 3 girlfriends who did that in London. Ok these were smaller apartments but it got them on the property ladder.

It sounds like you would like your own place.

I'm with you OP the last house I rented we had an agreement that I could decorate as long as it was painted back to magnolia by time I left. In the advert for the house it also said "no pets" I took that to mean no dogs so I told him I had a cat and he said it was ok.

I love the way the landlords assume anyone defending tenant rights. I’m a homeowner, we’d paid off our mortgage by 40. At one time we were accidental landlords. We, like you, have been lucky. I’ve done that and had many Starbucks and wide screen TVs. I’m not magically morally superior to renters.

Housing is a human right, that takes priority over capital building for landlords. Change the UK system to one like other countries where decoration, flooring and minor repairs are the tenants’ responsibility, in return for security of tenure. Let people have pets and hang pictures. Treat everyone like fucking human beings.

I want to just say thank you to this thread because after I posted those photos of my toilet ceiling the earlier I also emailed them to my landlord and said please can we sort something about this! She emailed back and said “oh god that’s awful, yes go ahead and redecorate!”!!!

We are just selling, we have spent A LOT on our property to make sure it sells.
See I've just sold a property and I didn't spend a penny on getting it ready. It sold on the second viewing, didn't even make it onto the agents website.
If only you'd made better choices when you'd bought your property, never mind.

Jon65 I don't need to look at the law, the tenant wants to decorate, I said she wasn't blaming the landlord for not buying, so your comment doesn't make sense neither does your comment about not buying a 30k car, good for you, nowhere does it say the OP brought a 30k car so this is the reason she can't buy a house. thisisacrazyidea your smugness is sickening, get off your high horse, no one cares if you or the other stuck up idiot has got relevant insurance

@gamerwidow touché

@Tobe123 op has children, plural. I of FS says it costs a family 75k per child from birth to 18. The ops choice to have children before secure housing.

It's no good blaming landlords for the fact that you can't buy. We're filling the gap left when councils sold their properties off under the Right to Buy.

But now that so many lls are being penalized after the introduction of harsh new tax rules, they're finding it's not worth the hassle and they're selling up. This means that the number of properties available for rent will be drastically reduced. They'll be bought by owner occupiers.

It is, directly or indirectly, the fault of every single landlord that some people are locked out of buying. The property market needs a massive overhaul. Housing, as Chariots above said, is a human right - it shouldn’t be for profit. We shouldn’t even be in a situation where people are relying on other’s need for a home to fund their pension - I would like to see a ban on owning more than one property per person. There is literally no need to own multiple houses unless you want to profit off other people’s inability to own a secure home. If that was the case, nobody would end up being accidental landlords either. And I say this as someone who will be buying a property soon (my first) - purely for the security. I don’t intend to sell it and make a packet, I intend to live in it forever

We saved whilst renting, took a few years but it can be done.

Cannon are you actually that fucking stupid that you can’t understand not everyone is born to a supportive family that will allow them the opportunity to study hard and get a good job? What about kids in care, thrown out the system at 18 with no support or guidance, but sure they should just ‘try harder’. EVERYONE is only a few pay checks away from homelessness. Let’s just imagine you and your partner were both made redundant, didn’t have family able to lend you money while you looked for other jobs, and hey presto, you’re racking up debts to cover the mortgage because temp work doesn’t pay enough and the bailiffs are at the door. Maybe some people’s rent is is too high to allow them to save anything towards a deposit on top. Maybe the minimum wage should be raised so it’s actually enough to live comfortably on and doesn’t mean only people earning at least double that can ever hope to buy a house! If you genuinely think that only people who have, in your eyes ‘tried hard enough’ should be entitled to a secure place to live that they can make a home, you are, and I cannot stress this enough, a cunt

Jon65 I just think you sound so black and white, 'she chose to have children before she secured housing* sorry I didn't know there was a rule book of life on the order you are supposed to do things. What if she hadn't have had kids, what if her parents said it's time for her to move out so she was forced into renting, had no room to save money due to rent prices being so high, so after all this she still can't buy a house and has no children due to putting them off trying to save for a house and all because we are supposed to follow the big plan of life! Hindsight, hindsight, hindsight, everyone's situation is different and it's so easy to say how something should have been done to not be in a situation but it's not easy to see in the beginning all the time! I know people who live at home on low wages and still struggle so god knows how they will ever even afford to rent!

Maybe you should have studied harder, got a better job, earnt more

Jesus H fucking christ. Are you somehow not aware of the rise in house prices as compared to the rise in wages over the past 20/30 years? Do you realise how many people (a good chunk of 20 and 30-somethings) are unable to get on the property ladder? Do you not read the news, ever?

This isn't about one person making terrible choices and blaming landlords. This is a systemic problem across the entire country.

We saved whilst renting, took a few years but it can be done.

Yes, it can be done if you have enough money coming in to save. Otherwise it can’t. Or it can, but ‘a few years’ becomes 20 years.

I saved while renting and was able to buy in the end. I am bloody glad of it, but I’m not so naive as to think everyone is in the same position I was.

(I also had children before getting a mortgage, because if I’d waited to get a mortgage first I might have aged past fertility by the time I could afford a house to put them in. I was approaching late 30s when we bought.)

So much depends on to whom and where you are born, and a lot of the ‘haves’ out there seem to think the accident of their birth in a fortunate position is something they somehow deserve. I wouldn’t call being brought up in a single parent family following the death of a father AND step father being fortunate. I distinctly remember someone describing my DM as bringing myself and 2 siblings up in poverty. I distinctly remember thinking as a child ‘I am NOT going to live like this when I grow up’. I don’t. I worked my fucking arse off, chose a career that I knew would pay well and owned my first home at 20.

‘Gamer’ maybe I should have added ‘for a decent price’. 7 figure properties are hard to shift atm. It went within 8 weeks. I think the extra money was worth it.

Tobe123 I’m genuinely sorry you think I’m smug. I’m really not, I feel incredibly grateful and fortunate for everything I have.....but it wasn’t delivered to me on a silver plate one day. I do appreciate that there are a small number of people that through no fault of their own find themselves in difficult circumstances (for a long and varied list of reasons). But there is a much larger number of people who seem to think that the world owes them a nice life just by virtue of the fact that they exist.....and I’m just out of sympathy.....don’t complain that you live in rented when you go out 3 times a week, have nice holidays, drive a nice car and want your family of 4 children completed by the time you are 30. Don’t complain that your 2 bed terrace is too small for the 3 children you chose to have, don’t complain that you can’t go on nice holidays when you and DH have decided that you’ll both work 3 days a week to spend more time with DC. Life is about choices and consequences of those choices......and again there is a small number of society whose start to life has been so shitty that their ability to ever make a reasoned choice has been well and truly shafted, but there is a much larger portion of society who are intent on blaming anyone else for their perceived hard deal without ever doing anything themselves to make it better.

The new tax laws designed to discourage landlords will mean that those who can no longer make it pay under the new regime have to sell up at a reduced price so that more people can become owner occupiers who previously were only able to rent

landlords like to frame the situation such that without landlords there would be no properties available, this is not true, when a landlord goes out of business the house still exists and can then be freed up so that an owner occupier can channel their wages into their own investment and build their own family and their own future

There was a news story recently, I think it was in Finland. All homeless people are provided with accommodation. This improved their health & prospects of future employment.
Instead of blaming individual landlords
What about Government ?

EVERYONE is only a few pay checks away from homelessness. This statement just represents the total breakdown of society. I appreciate that it is sadly true for lots of people, but I personally don’t know anyone who falls into this category. For a start if we knew anyone in this position we’d take them in for a long as it took to get back on their feet. I know a family who took in another family for 3 years rent and board FREE until they sorted themselves out. How have we as a society gone so wrong to end up like this?

Although, if we’re going to make any part of the housing crisis about failure of personal responsibility, then it needs to apply to all of it.

You’ve had bad tenants who trashed the place? Well that’s a shame for you, but it’s nobody else’s fault that you couldn’t afford to sit on an empty house until retirement without renting it out.

Your tenants stopped paying rent? Hmmm, instead of demanding that the world owes you a living, perhaps you should reconsider the life choices that led you to this point?

Can’t afford to keep landlording with tax and regulation changes? Time to look at your spending. Bet you could easily cover a mortgage on your own if you stopped buying all those Costa coffees.

thisisacrazyidea you say that, but I really don’t think anyone is insulated. I remember reading an article with a guy who ended up homeless after his marriage broke down and he turned to alcohol - prior to that he’d been head of a creative agency in London on a 6-figure salary. Nobody is immune. My personal opinion is that it started with thatcher’s toxic brand of individualism and selling off social housing. And capitalism, particularly in terms of the property market, allowed to go unchecked. There should be caps on house price rises, limits on how many properties someone can own, better and more extensive rights for tenants, tougher tax on multiple property owners, etc. Loopholes that allow developers not to build enough social housing or not to comply with affordable housing regulations need to be closed.

But of course, the richer you get, the more capitalism works well for you. So MPs who are landlords would never back such reforms.

My preferred solution, as a socialist, would be to have all housing nationalised and property ownership abolished completely. Everyone able to access long term, secure homes that they can decorate as they like. But I know realistically it’s unworkable because there is such a vast variation of the types of housing available.

53rd love your post. There is always someone on MN with a completely different view that I’d never considered. Thank you.

53rd that is absolutely spot on. Fantastic way of putting it

53rd great response

dodgeball yes...I’ve met the previously married, home owning, good job, now alcoholic/drug addict too.......which is why I said ‘there are a very small number of people who ....find themselves in unfortunate circumstances’. There are some exceptions. I don’t agree with ‘nobody is immune’.....even the alcoholics and drug addicts.....no-one held them down and forced the alcohol down their throat/drugs into their veins. (And before I get completely flamed I know it’s much more complex than that,) but for the vast vast majority of people, even people with really shitty starts in life (like my dad) your adult life is about choices, which is how my dad made a success of his before his early death and how his brother has been rotting in a nursing home since his early 60s with alcohol induced dementia. They both had the same shitty start.