To hate landlords?

[MsPeachh]

Last month, I had to move suddenly. I found the flat I’m in now, it had just been bought by my landlord and I’m the first person in after the former owner moved out. It’s an ex-council house that the owner had purchased under “right to buy” and now I have to pay a third of my salary to a private landlord for what was originally meant to be affordable housing.

I’m a scientist in my late twenties with good qualifications and I feel total despair that I might never be able to afford my own home, and I will be lining someone else’s pockets via rent for the rest of my life. Let alone what anyone in a position less fortunate than mine is supposed to do.

To make matters worse, I looked up my landlord’s info on Companies House and I discovered that they have 22 properties in my area! It’s a village on the outskirts of a town where lots of people move when they are ready to move out of the hustle and bustle and settle to raise kids. And more and more of these properties are being snapped up by this landlord. It makes me sick, honestly. I know a lot of people become landlords accidentally in later life due to remarrying etc and ending up with two houses between one couple, but this landlord sucking up 22 houses in such a small area disgusts me. I feel like I’m completely losing hope for the future of people my age and younger as house prices keep soaring and soaring.

AIBU?

We need landlords to facilitate moves when buying isn't an option. I'm due to complete today, anxious wait, but we are renting due to sales of marital properties, divorce etc. I've renting relocating as a scientist before!

As a scientist you will earn enough as you progress, we bought at 31, but that involved sacrifice living in a small place to save the deposit of course, not a nice village. Also top tip - scientists work all over the country (well the world) and within the U.K. university sector salaries are on a scale that doesn't change just because it's Oxford or Cambridge or the expensive SE (London get a bit more more not sufficiently uplifted) so choose yo work where it's cheaper and you'll be owning in no time.

Landlords are not charities they are there to make money
Is it right that they should make money by purloining all the housing stock so that working people with families can never properly invest in their own futures?
Is it right they should make money from a business activity which results in in others never having a secure and affordable place to call home?

You also seem to forget that when you rent it’s the landlord that foots the bill for repairs of if you have a leak hey fix it. No heating they fix it electrics they fix it built in appliances they fix them.

Most tenants don't forgot this & certainly don't need to be grateful, they are the costs of running a business as you said.

For those of you trying to deny that there is widening inequality between generations, you can read about it right here in The Guardian in February:

“Home ownership has collapsed for adults in their prime working age, according to official figures that show those in their mid-30s to mid-40s are three times more likely to rent than 20 years ago.

In a reflection of surging house prices and a lost decade for wage growth since the financial crisis, the Office for National Statistics found that a third of 35- to 44-year-olds in England were renting from a private landlord in 2017, compared with fewer than one in 10 in 1997.

The government statistics agency said home ownership had become increasingly concentrated among people over the age of 65.”

www.theguardian.com/money/2020/feb/10/home-ownership-ons-rent

You also seem to forget that when you rent it’s the landlord that foots the bill for repairs of if you have a leak hey fix it.

No, the tenant pays for it, with the rent they pay!

There is certainly a place for rentals but there seems to be so many landlords who resent spending anything on their properties & simultaneously look down on their "customers".

Yes I would! The interest rate was 15% back then so a £30000 mortgage cost the same as a £120000 mortgage does now!
I was just lucky to have saved up enough deposit and brave enough to take on a mortgage.
Didn’t do me any good the house was swindled from me by a money grabbing bitch.

@MsPeachh it's cause they are spending it on new cars & big TVs though.

When it is 50% for my generation, are you saying half of the population is doing something wrong and people like me are somehow superior to half of the population. I don't buy that!
Some countries have more affordable housing. Some countries are the opposite, many renting for life and very happy to do so.

There is a view that renting is a failure in the UK which shouldn't be but understand why people would feel this way when it is so easy to be evicted.

Smallsteps88 Tue 24-Nov-20 10:17:58
You also seem to forget that when you rent it’s the landlord that foots the bill for repairs of if you have a leak hey fix it.

No, the tenant pays for it, with the rent they pay!

And that’s why the rents are what they are.

If it was a council house the council would pay for the repairs which means we all pay for the repairs in our council taxes

Didn’t do me any good the house was swindled from me by a money grabbing bitch.

Fuzzyduck your feathers appear to be quite ruffled.

** ‘You also seem to forget that when you rent it’s the landlord that foots the bill for repairs of if you have a leak hey fix it.’

‘No, the tenant pays for it, with the rent they pay!’**

No, the rent covers the mortgage in most cases not bills and repairs. Home owners pay mortgage, bills and repairs; I would be very surprised if the rent covers all of this.

it's cause they are spending it on new cars & big TVs though
I think the biggest contributor to make it difficult to own is children.

OP says that ultimately she will have saved enough and will be one a home owner, in her early 30s, which is a perfect age to become a home owner, so not clear where the moan is.

@itsadress

There is certainly a place for rentals but there seems to be so many landlords who resent spending anything on their properties & simultaneously look down on their "customers".

This is so true! Many landlords do massively look down on people who rent. There is not the business - customer customer service culture you get with other businesses.

If landlords consider themselves a business, they need to treat tenants like customers. Not lesser individuals. Sadly i find the people who argue most strongly that they are a business have the least respect for their tenants.

The British property market is odd though. In Holland and Germany, people are happy to rent flats which British people would turn their noses up at. When I rented in Germany, I lived in a high rise apartment 10 miles out from the city as thats all I could find. It was OK really. I was just glad to stop responding to newspaper ads along with 300 other people 5 minutes after they appeared!

I'm Holland, the property market is equally overheated and rentals are hugely expensive. Expect to be living in a tiny studio apartment at the top of a staircase so narrow, it wouldn't be permitted here. Or to buy a small terraced house for your forever family home. There are rent controls, but only for social housing, which is mainly provided by non profit making housing associations. And you have to move out if you're eg a single person occupying a family sized space. In private rentals, don't necessarily expect central heating or furniture. A lot of the rental stock is old, basic, leaky, drafty and shabby.

The state interference in the property rental market in Scotland has now reached such a zenith that I'm considering selling up to buy in Holland or Germany instead.

I'm spending £3500 - £4000 every year on licenses and safety checks. It is over the top - in my hmos, I have to have smoke alarms in the cupboards! With a sophisticated mains operated smoke/heat alarm system with 30 minute battery back up, self closing doors with fire proof seals and even special fire resistant letter boxes, it's much safer than most offices and certainly most council houses with families living in them. All for 4 people. It's also really impractical - just try carrying two plates of food while getting through a self closing door that must by law slam shut in 3 seconds!

I also have to provide 24 hour assistance to my tenants should anything go wrong. And I'm liable to criminal conviction if they cause a disturbance in the street "within the vicinity" of my property!

It's babyfying people in a way that would never happen in Holland or Germany. And most of it is driven by thinking of ways to bring in more income for councils, which are increasingly run like businesses.

Although it sounds like it might be the case now that rent covers more than the mortgage. I looked into letting out my one bedroom flat in London when I got married back in 2003, it certainly wasn’t the case then.

Can anyone tell me where to search in Companies House to find details of a specific landlord, as the OP details at the beginning of this thread?

I sold the flat in the end, I sold it instead as I was moving a long way away and it wasn’t worth the hassle to let it out.

@dontdisturbmenow

it's cause they are spending it on new cars & big TVs though I think the biggest contributor to make it difficult to own is children.

OP says that ultimately she will have saved enough and will be one a home owner, in her early 30s, which is a perfect age to become a home owner, so not clear where the moan is.

Expressing concern and wanting a level playing field for those who won’t be as lucky as me (and there will be more and more people in that position as time goes on). It’s rampant selfishness that has got the housing situation into this mess in the first place.

@dontdisturbmenow the country i am from with 90% home ownership, Singapore, has London style salaries and a shortage of land. It actually has one of the world's highest percentage of millionaires (this excludes property ownership) and quite a few billionaires who have fled to singapore for tax advantages. If it was left to the free market like UK, we would be Hong Kong.Indeed private condos and houses in Singapore cost millions. But that doesn't matter to 80% of the population who live in government flats, you can buy a 3 bedroom 1000 square feet flat for £200-250k in the suburbs (central locations cost much more) while earning a household income of up to £84k (average household income in singapore is roughly £80k).

This shows that the UK can do better in terms of improving home ownership rates. I don't disagree with the continental european model but i think Brits value home ownership too much to be persuaded.

@Trisolaris I said upthread I wouldn't chose to do it because I couldn't be bothered to give the time & energy required.

so not clear where the moan is.

That's short sighted. I own in my 30s & in London. However I have dc & I want better for them & the society they are growing up in.

No, the rent covers the mortgage in most cases not bills and repairs. Home owners pay mortgage, bills and repairs; I would be very surprised if the rent covers all of this.

No. Not all tenanted houses are mortgaged. The rent is paid to covers all bills and repairs. You know, the things the tenant is actually benefitting from being done. The mortgage isn’t the tenants responsibility to pay, it’s the property owner’s. It isn’t the tenants fault if the LL has taken on a high mortgage and have to add some of their own personal income to pay it. It’s the it bill to pay.

It’s their bill to pay.

@itsadress
It’s why as an accidental landlord I break even where I could make a profit. I pay for an agent that I know has great reviews, will sort urgent issues within 24 hours and non urgent ones within a few days. I can’t do it as I have a full time job - I don’t want the headache and I’m not going to leave people with an issue that needs fixing. I certainly don’t want to build a property empire!