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?

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

There is absolutely nothing accidental about that. It’s a conscious choice to retain two properties for the financial benefits.

@ArranBound

This all started in the 80s with the Right To Buy scheme and the effects are coming home to roost now. YANBU at all, OP.

This, as well as banks and mortgage lenders being told by the government that women's salaries must be taken into account as well when considering mortgages as it was discriminatory to assume that women would just get pregnant and leave work, hence bigger mortgages were granted which meant that house prices rose exponentially.

@MaudHatter I’m in Brighton. There are only 3x 2 bed properties on rightmove for 1k or less a month. We have 2 children so need a 2 bed. So not for considerably less we can’t. Maybe if we wanted to bring our kids up in a tower block in the roughest part of town...

Sorry OP but YABVU - you chose to rent this house from this landlord. To own 22 properties, they have obviously worked hard to buy them as they wouldn't be able to have this many mortgages. Just as you've chose to be a scientist they've chose to work as a LL.

Yes there are negatives to renting, higher rent than a mortgage would be for the same property, not being able to save as much to buy etc. However, there are also benefits that come with it, if something breaks (boiler etc) you don't need to pay out the lump sum to replace/repair it, if shit hits the fan you can leave/claim HB etc without having your home repossessed.

If there were no LL's out there what would you have done when you needed to move so suddenly? You have said you don't have the money to buy and wouldn't qualify for council housing so where would you have went?
Why should LL's make the rent cheap when that is their source of income that they've worked hard to afford?

Also I have to laugh at your ignorance if you think it’s realistic for first time buyers to be offered a 95% mortgage

Also, this reply to a PP was very rude - that's exactly what the governments 'help to buy' scheme is for, and literally thousands of people have bought their home with only saving 5%. Maybe have a think about that before calling other posters ignorant

Low interest rates on mortgages have reduced interest on savings to not much more than 0 . People who can will invest in something to make money. It’s a vicious circle !

I own a property & think renting has a place, I often use air bnbs. However for the younger generations it's terribly unfair & hopefully we will see more tax hikes on 2nd homes.
We need more social housing & fairer rents.

Yes we're pretty much at a stage now where people are buggered without two incomes. It's terrible for single people.

Right to buy and buy to let were (still are) especially devastating for the disabled. Too often excluded from private housing, but the supply of social housing has been so severely depleted.

(I'd be interested to know if the Blairs let any of their properties to disabled tenants in receipt of benefits).

To own 22 properties, they have obviously worked hard to buy them as they wouldn't be able to have this many mortgages.

More like their tenants or the tax payer has worked hard to buy them for the LL.

To own 22 properties, they have obviously worked hard to buy them as they wouldn't be able to have this many mortgages.

🙄

User - I’m sure it’s maddening to spend so much on rent . It’s so difficult to save for a house once you have children and the expense of maternity leaves and childcare . At least you’re secure should either of you ever loose your job . Mortgages aren’t the be all and end all.

@Lou98 Help to Buy is for new builds only- I don’t want a new build house, nor could I afford one. I just want a little flat in good condition.

They may have “chosen” to work as a landlord, but I work on my feet all day whilst they drive around in a Mercedes and put a call into a plumber once in a while. Hardly comparable “work.”

Help to buy is for developers. They are overpriced in most cases.

@Smallsteps88

To own 22 properties, they have obviously worked hard to buy them as they wouldn't be able to have this many mortgages.

More like their tenants or the tax payer has worked hard to buy them for the LL.

How do you think they've bought them initially and been able to make a profit?

Don't understand this mindset of putting other people down about their choices for income - to qualify and buy they've still had to work hard for their money. Yes there will always be LLs out there who take advantage etc but the majority are making a living from it, just as anyone chooses their job.
For what it's worth, I do rent and we pay a lot more than our (ex council) house is worth, but it's a choice we made, we didn't have to take the house, we could have left the area to find somewhere cheaper etc but we didn't, it's a house in an area exactly where we wanted it

The issue isn’t landlords, it’s generations of government housing policy.

Social housing should have been kept as just that but since people were allowed to buy it up then they had every right to do it. Similarly, if housing was the best investment, people had every right to invest in it. It never SHOULD have been the best investment and should have been taxed properly which they are only now starting to address, far, far too late!

Other countries have lots of social housing and rent controls so don’t have our same obsession with home ownership.

I don't think you can blame individual landlords, even buy-to-let.

The problem is the system that allows them to do this. As someone else has said: where would you live, otherwise?

What we need is tighter controls on landlords, and more rights for tenants. It should not be an appealing proposition for someone to be a buy-to-let landlord.

To own 22 properties, they have obviously worked hard to buy them as they wouldn't be able to have this many mortgages.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

Bless em, bet their poor fingers are bleeding from all that manual labour.

It’s not hard work (in the physical sense ) to be a landlord . Once you’re a landlord , your money is working for you . That’s why people do it .

[quote MsPeachh]@Lou98 Help to Buy is for new builds only- I don’t want a new build house, nor could I afford one. I just want a little flat in good condition.

They may have “chosen” to work as a landlord, but I work on my feet all day whilst they drive around in a Mercedes and put a call into a plumber once in a while. Hardly comparable “work.”[/quote]
I never compared it to your work, just said you both made choices on what you wanted to work as, you chose science, they chose property. You chose your career, not their fault your on your feet all day.

Like I said, it's given you somewhere to live, if there was no LL's what would you do? As in my first post, you've stated you can't afford to buy and don't qualify for council. Like it or not, there's always a need for private rentals so LLs will always make money

@nocoolnamesleft

I had to rent for years as I had to keep moving for my training. I'd have been screwed if there were no landlords.

But, you wouldn't, would you?

You'd just have moved house, the same way other people do.

@Smallsteps88

To own 22 properties, they have obviously worked hard to buy them as they wouldn't be able to have this many mortgages.

More like their tenants or the tax payer has worked hard to buy them for the LL.

And often they don't own them. They get the (interest only) mortgages on the basis of the homes they already have mortgages on.

That racist couple from Kent who owned thousands of homes. They did it this way. Only ever paying a tiny bit of interest.

Also in the 90s when Blair encouraged people to profiteer from people's need for shelter, lots of people got 100% mortgages (no deposit needed), interest only, on the basis of future rental income.

There were many fraudulent mortgage applications too - with people declaring a much higher income than the reality - with few checks.

I don’t hate landlords. I’ve had to rent privately for years. I couldn’t afford to buy, but also my credit file was shot so I wouldn’t have got a mortgage anyway. For a lot of people it isn’t just about affording a mortgage, but the ridiculous hoops you have to jump through to actually get a mortgage. It’s virtually impossible to get a mortgage at a decent interest rate unless you have a near perfect credit file. I would have been homeless on the streets, as I had a job but didn’t qualify for social housing. So private renting was a necessity for me.

Absolutely it's government policy going back decades - but, there's also an individual responsibility. There's a difference between moral and legal.

I voted YABU. I don't think landlords are to blame for the high price of housing in Britain.

64 percent of households in England are owner-occupied. While this is down from 70 percent in 2000, it's still the majority.

About 26% of new residential mortgage lending (not remortgaging) is buy-to-let. The majority of lending is therefore likewise to owner-occupiers. First-time buyers borrowing is slightly above buy-to-let borrowing.

Of course this doesn't consider house purchases that don't require a mortgage. Nonetheless I think it calls into question the idea that private landlords are having a big impact on house prices - they're just not that big a part of the market!

www.statista.com/statistics/286503/england-propportion-of-owner-occupied-households/

www.fca.org.uk/data/mortgage-lending-statistics

Fundamentally I blame high housing prices, for both ownership and rental, on decades of government policy hostile to homebuilding. A simple matter of supply and demand. And current homeowners stand to lose out financially if that changes.

I of course want to see the full force of the law brought down on criminally bad landlords. But I would venture that a landlord with 20 properties has the resources and incentive to do their job properly if they choose to do so. Opportunistic landlords with a single property are all too often ignorant of their legal obligations.

I'm a single mum, I live in an area I can't even dream of being able to afford to buy even a small 2 bed apartment. The money I pay in rent wouldn't cover the interest payment on a mortgage for my rental, therefore renting suits me as I'm able to live in an area I like, my sons father is a 10 minute walk away as is his school.

I'm also a landlord, I own a small house a couple of hours away in a very much cheaper area, that was what I got in my divorce.

The rent almost covers my mortgage, however when I do my tax return each year, I'm actually running a loss of around 5k a year for money I spend on repairs, new guttering, replaced fencing in the back garden, I just had to replace the stove last month.

I certainly am not profiting at the moment, all I can do is consider this a long term investment and hope the property will increase in value over time perhaps giving me enough money to put down a deposit on a home I can live in.

I think you are being bitter and unreasonable to put landlords all in one box, some treat property ownership as a legitimate business which is perfectly legal, some of us are here due to circumstance.

@SheepandCow

Absolutely it's government policy going back decades - but, there's also an individual responsibility. There's a difference between moral and legal.

That applies not just to those who choose to profiteer from other people's need for a home. It equally goes for those who did right to buy.

They're the people who least needed to buy (they had a secure affordable home). They chose to take taxpayer money to buy their secure tenure home at hugely knocked down rates.