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?

@dontdisturbmenow

So yes like it or not, their business has become a social one with the effect that the government has no choice but to regulate and tax it heavily Be careful, a poster earlier accused me of lying when I mentioned that was how some people viewed the business of bring a landlord!

In no way do private landlords should care for the social housing crisis. Most pay taxes on the rent they receive, that's enough contribution. Housing our society is not my business.

Taxes, yes. It costs the taxpayer vast sums to house homeless families (who, in the past would've found homes in the secure rent controlled private rental sector or social housing).

Well YANBU to hate your landlord but there are some excellent landlords around. Don't tar them all with the same brush.

@Puzzledandpissedoff the thing with Housing Benefit is that it effectively increases rent levels, making it harder for the poor. A lot of people think that rent is based on the landlord's mortgage but actually it is correlated to earnings. Hence why london rents have so low yield i.e. even though the mortgage + landlord tax + repairs are high, people in london realistically do not earn enough to pay higher rent. Housing benefit distorts this market, it puts money in the hands of renters to give to their landlords, thereby inflating the amount they can afford to pay. And if HB gets reduced for some reason, the landlord is still going to ask for the same rent. People staying on housing benefit even after retirement is still going to be expensive for the state.Being a landlord is all well and good but taxpayer monies should never be paid to private landlords.

Which is why the only solution to the housing crisis is either mass home ownership or mass social rental for people who can't afford to buy.

@dontdisturbmenow

I don't know why people bring up the NHS in this discussion. There are no reasons to compare the two. Two totally different industry and business. One is public, the other isn't.

That's the problem. Both should be public.

@maddiemookins16mum

The right to buy should never have happened. Maggie just wanted rid of houses the Govt didn’t want to look after anymore.

And still it continues! In England, at least. Scotland, Wales, and NI have finally banned it.

@SheepandCow if both should be public then there would be no private home ownership only state ownership. Anywhere that’s happened has not worked out well for the vast majority.

Scotland Wales and NI are sensible then!
In England we're lumbered with Boris and co who obviously don't care.

@User158340

Who needs 22 houses?

Crooks and fraudsters and money launderers. Property has always been popular with criminal gangs.

Sheep and cow , like I said earlier , Boris and his chums then. They Easily fall into that category.

[quote CayrolBaaaskin]@SheepandCow if both should be public then there would be no private home ownership only state ownership. Anywhere that’s happened has not worked out well for the vast majority.[/quote]
Until the disastrous right to buy, we'd achieved a reasonable balance. It's a bit like having an NHS (albeit a better funded and managed one) with the option of private healthcare as an extra. Not to replace good NHS care but more for private rooms and the like.

Lots of other countries manage their housing better than us. Is it Austria that has excellent mixed private/public housing estates? It's something like that (might not be Austria?). Diverse mixed estates - doctors and lawyers living next door to cleaners and shop workers (and disabled and long-term ill). Some of their estates have their own swimming pools, I believe.

Maybe other countries don't have the same mentality about class and home ownership we seem to have here.

@CayrolBaaaskin 80% of singapore live in government built housing, it is also the 4th richest country in the world. Hasn't worked out well, eh?

www.gfmag.com/global-data/economic-data/richest-countries-in-the-world

[quote UsernameSpoosername]@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...[/quote]
But you choose to have children, therefore need a larger rental and have less left for saving a deposit. Other people choose to stay in cheaper house shares and save their deposit before having children. I have a daughter and a nephew the same age. She’s tonight signing contracts on a 4 bed detached family house having stayed in a house share until getting married and buying a first house four years ago. No children yet. He’s paying over a grand a month in rent and has two children. Choices.

@ApplePie86

Sorry but YABVVVU

It was entirely your choice to rent the property and pay a third of your salary for the privilege.

If you don't want to rent then save up a modest 5% deposit and buy somewhere with a similar government scheme to previous owner.

Just as you have chosen your job, your landlord has possibly chosen to be a property owner/developer or whatever.

Just because they own multiple properties doesn't mean they haven't worked exceptionally hard to do this.

Very unreasonable to hate your landlord for this reason.

It was entirely your choice to rent the property and pay a third of your salary for the privilege.

If you don't want to rent then save up a modest 5% deposit and buy somewhere with a similar government scheme to previous owner.

Because it's dead easy to save £30k, which is "a modest 5% deposit" within kicking distance of most jobs in this country.

@the80sweregreat i feel like its a mental block. the reason why i compare it to the nhs is because British people largely support the nhs (even very right wing people who are against all other public services)and don't question how weird it actually is to people from other parts of the world. The NHS as a concept is very radical and socialist- paying for everyone's medical care and allowing such expensive treatment to be available for free. Many Americans for example are horrified and believe that we are all dying on each other due to the long queues.

The reality is that its worthwhile looking at how other countries do things and how it can work in the UK with all a few tweaks. People protested when the nhs was founded. Now we wouldn't be without it. The UK needed a revolution in healthcare after WW2 due to the widespead poverty and disease. Has the time come for a revolution in housing?

The right to buy should never have happened. Maggie just wanted rid of houses the Govt didn’t want to look after anymore

The problem was a lot of council estates were a big mess. A lot of people just didn’t look after where they lived. In a way it couldn’t go on the way things were.

The idea was that people would look after the place they lived if they owned a stake in the place

In the short term it was a good idea but it should never have carried on.

@fuzzyduck1

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.

How lucky to have had 15% interest! Imagine how many more people would be able to save up for a deposit with decent savings rates. A help for pension savings too.

Another key difference between then and now is the earnings multiples. It used to be no more than X 2.5 or 3. That's changed.

Most people on my council estate sat it out for three years then moved on very quickly.
(They then moaned about ' people that live on council estates'.. )

I don't mind if we don't have the NHS - so don't agree all of us "would not be without it". I want less state provision not more. Also we never had loads of social housing. When we had the rent acts in force (so no private rentals really available that were decent) there were 30 year council house waiting lists. It was not some wonderful nirvana in the past.

If people waited to own a home before having children, the number of childless people would shoot right up. With the ever inflated housing bubble, by the time they own it would be too late.

@Xenia maybe you personally object to the NHS but the NHS is the closest thing the British people have to a religion.And the NHS is a very radical idea to me (and I am pretty left). People just need to see other public services i.e. council housing in the same way.

@xenia I'm curious. What would you want for the disabled and long-term ill wrt access to healthcare and housing? Would you be happy to see them die? On the streets?

Do you support higher wages? Or how else do you suggest low paid workers (in essential roles like cleaning) afford a stable home to live in?

@Xenia getting a mortgage on a flat/house built by the state using my own hard earned money isn't such a radical idea. It isn't for free. I would rather buy a flat from the state (if it was nice and well built) than from the landlord who gazumped me.

Getting free healthcare for life no matter what kind of illness i get-woah that is a really radical idea, i still can't believe it myself!

@Oliversmumsarmy

The right to buy should never have happened. Maggie just wanted rid of houses the Govt didn’t want to look after anymore

The problem was a lot of council estates were a big mess. A lot of people just didn’t look after where they lived. In a way it couldn’t go on the way things were.

The idea was that people would look after the place they lived if they owned a stake in the place

In the short term it was a good idea but it should never have carried on.

But lots of other people - the majority - did look after their homes on estates.

We could've, instead of using taxpayer money to sell off a previous asset at significantly knocked down price, sorted out the minority of problems - including providing mental health and social care (sometimes, if needed, residential).

The stereotyped 'sink' estates came about after right to buy - as a consequence of it.

The NHS isn't free. It's paid for through taxes. It's only free at the point of use.

Neither the NHS nor the welfare state (including social housing) were created for altruistic reasons. A major motivating factor was the public health consequences - and the need to have a reasonably healthy, fed, and housed workforce. Also the need to stave off civil unrest and tackle crime rates (desperate destitute people...).

Wrt the NHS my personal preference is for a sort of hybrid private/public healthcare systems similar to Germany or Australia.