Selfish bastards on Homes Under The Hammer

[SquishyBones]

Watching this shit show as I was bored and a family bought a house. The woman then proudly explained that they already own 700(!!!) houses in the area already and are hoping to own 1000 by the end of the year. How the fuck is this even allowed?? AIBU to think selfish bastards like this should be stopped and there should be a cap on how many properties a person can own? Even 10 houses per person would be ridiculous but would stop the likes of these people

RTB allows council tenants relatives to buy the property at a reduced rate and then let the properties out to tenants at an inflated rate, that would otherwise be renting from the council at a fair rent - whilst relative was rehoused in appropriate accommodation

Shock horror: person runs a property rental business.

You can stop with the pearl-clutching now, OP.

Re Thatcher and right to buy, of course it was a rotten idea in hindsight, but at the time, property prices were generally much more affordable, and many lifelong Labour voters - including a close friend of mine - were only too happy to buy their houses at a discount. My friend had already lived in hers for 40 years.

Labour had 13 years during which to repeal Right To Buy legislation, but despite their endless moaning about it, they didn’t - presumably because they thought it would lose them votes.

In fact council property was being sold off well before Thatcher. A dd bought an ex council house that had been bought by the previous occupants in 1971.

Dd paid almost exactly 100 times what the previous owners had paid, and although it’s a relatively expensive area it’s not London - which just goes to show what happened to property prices between then and now.

property developers, hate them

Why. These houses went up on the open market
They were probably in a state and probably needed cash buyers as they were unmortgageable.

Should they just be left to rot? Or someone come in and fix them up and put them back up for sale or rent them out

@Daisy12Maisie

Some people are never going to be able to buy. Bad credit rating, chaotic lives, mh problems etc etc etc. The government are unfortunately not going to provide all these people with somewhere to live. They are selling off council houses not buying more. So landlords need to exist.

How kind of you to lump people with ‘mh problems’ into the same category of bad credit rating and chaos. As if those of us with mental health issues are so incapable of managing our own lives that we need a benevolent landlord. What Victorian workhouse bullshit is this?

God this thread is filled with the most vile opinions.

Porcupineinwaiting I agree, more investment elsewhere, sick of everyone migrating south

the Wilson family [if that's who were being referred to] personify a great deal of what's wrong with 21st century Britain.

All rented property is owned by someone else. She's running a business as a LL renting homes. Just like, some people run a business renting cars, or hotel rooms, or holiday lets.

People who can't afford mortgages, or prefer to rent for other reasons, need people like her to provide property on the rental market. I can't see any problem with that.

Not greedy, it’s their business and they are actually helping out a lot of people that can’t afford to buy by renting out properties. I don’t see the issue?

To clarify I never said rental properties were nice decades ago, I said it was easier to get on the property ladder

I didn’t see the programme this morning but if it is the couple I think it is then they don’t actually own 600 properties but they have bought, done up, rented out then sold with tenants in situ 600 properties.
They actually have around 60-90 properties at anyone time that are in the process of being done up, rented out and sold on.
It is a family business

I never said rental properties were nice decades ago, I said it was easier to get on the property ladder

I think people years ago were a lot more focussed on buying their first home because the rental properties were so disgusting. I know we worked every hour we could to get out of the studio flat we had because it was so horrible. Better to be at work than sit in a depressing room breathing in the damp and mould

There isn't a universal housing shortage. There is a shortage of houses people can afford in the areas where there's work - mostly big cities.

Yes, probably right but there's a lot of building round here on the edge of villages which don't have the infrastructure to cope and suburban sprawl. Big estates going up. I suppose people are expected to live away from the places of work and amenities and keep driving to and from them (an environmental problem in itself) as public transport is so bad.

The worst thing I ever saw was, when in a black cab driving through london, there was a huge block of flats 3/4 of which didn’t have any lights on, the cabbie told me that the flats had been brought by a family to use as a london base, but they had never ever visited/stayed there...
even if they had rented them out, they would’ve been someone’s home.
I do think buying and leaving empty is really wrong.
I think there should be a law like there are with some holiday villages... they sometimes have laws which say they can’t be lived in more than 45 weeks of the year or something... maybe empty homes can’t be empty for more than 30 weeks of the year or something...

@unlikelytobe

There isn't a universal housing shortage. There is a shortage of houses people can afford in the areas where there's work - mostly big cities.

Yes, probably right but there's a lot of building round here on the edge of villages which don't have the infrastructure to cope and suburban sprawl. Big estates going up. I suppose people are expected to live away from the places of work and amenities and keep driving to and from them (an environmental problem in itself) as public transport is so bad.

And here - 3000+ houses and zero road, school, public transport improvements.
Planners use ridiculous words like "sustainable" to justify inadequate parking - there's 1 bus service, nothing on Sundays, no trains, trams etc but they are trying to "discourage" car use - yeah sure thing.

@GertrudeCB are you for real? Housing is a scarce commodity and they are hording it and making a profit from those that can not afford to own.

I've always loathed that show. At the time I was watching it, developers could get a reduced mortgage on buy to let properties! How was that ever fair? They could undercut normal families struggling to get on the property ladder.

I suppose if a landlord was fair and treated the families decently, I guess that's ok ish but I'd much prefer families owned their own homes. Renting has always seemed to me, a road to nowhere

At the time I was watching it, developers could get a reduced mortgage on buy to let properties

When was this and what was this.
I have never heard of any reduced mortgage on btl properties. If anything you had to put more down than an average mortgage and they have as far as I am aware always been slightly higher interest rates.

The problem with landhogging is unlike hording other things like cars they cannot expand supply to meet demand as we have planning regulations. If there was limitless supply on building regulations (and i could be in favour of this) so effectively houses could be built on any piece of land you own then this problem would go away. There is also the interest on a loan that can get written off against tax as a business expense (provided houses are held in a limited company which if they have 700 they will) which is of course unfair to allow them to compete against owner occupiers in this way.

So absolutely in a housing crisis there should be a level playing field by removing interest as a tax offset able business expense. Also in an industry where supply is regulated via planning regulations i absolutely believe demand from BTL should be regulated to mitigate the price increase caused by their excess demand. For what it's worth I have no issue with people owning multiple houses using earned cash i have every issue with people borrowing money to speculate on property and then the taxpayer having to bail out the banks if it goes wrong. 2008 set a moral hazard that should never be repeated.

@unlikelytobe yes. That's happening a lot on some really unsuitable places.

Anyone who know the Forest of Dean knows the issues the geography of the ares imposes on any development. Yest we have an inordinate amount of additional houses that we apparently need.

There are 458 long term empty houses. The Distict Council doesn't have a waiting list, so nobody knows how many people actually want to live in FoD that currently cannot, yet 4000 new houses must be built!

In an area where 2 rivers make travel out difficult, lack of roads and other infrasructure (public transport etc), escarpments, hills, a whole bloody forest, mining, flood plains, etc etc.

So far houses are being built in places called The Watermeadows.... the water table is the grass... and local planners are being overturned left right and centre. So there are houses being built in areas where water has no place to go... except into areas that have never previously flooded, roads, farmland, houses and homes that have been dry and safe for centuries!

And I am regularly called a NIMBY when I post about it here!

@rattusrattus20

the Wilson family [if that's who were being referred to] personify a great deal of what's wrong with 21st century Britain.

Don't they?

Not the Wilson family

AIBU to think selfish bastards like this should be stopped and there should be a cap on how many properties a person can own?

Tell that to:

Elizabeth Windsor
Charles Windsor
Duke of Westminster
Trinity College, Cambridge

and so on.

But mainly: tell it to the Queen and the Prince of Wales. I think you'll find they own many many real estate properties and make quite a bit of money from them.

CuriousaboutSamphire

I know the FoD very well. Yes, another area being ruined by bad planning decisions. I sympathise.

It's a business. So why not. And it's providing employment.