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?

@UsernameSpoosername

Buying council (affordable) housing & renting it out privately is disgusting & should not be allowed... At any time but ESPECIALLY during a ‘housing crisis’ in a lot of areas.

Landlords like to act like they’re ‘offering a service’ or ‘providing homes’ but it’s all horse shit.

They’re earning £££ from it, obviously. If people weren’t allowed to purchase additional homes then banks would have to lower their expectations of people applying for mortgages (& rightly so!!) Or loads of us would be bloody homeless & there’d be loads of empty houses. Wouldn’t make sense would it?

& before someone chimes in with ‘But, but, but some people WANT to rent!’ Fine... CHOICE is fine.

It’s being forced to pay 1.2k rent a month (can you tell this is my personal experience yet?) for 8 years, never being 1 minute late. But being refused a mortgage (which would be around £900pm) because apparently, I’m just not trusty worthy enough.

All I need to do is... save 20k! While paying 1.2k rent per month! 😃

& breath....

YANBU op. Fuckkkk!

This with bells on.

I own a nice 3 bed semi detached house in a good area. I pay the same each month as my friend who lives in a small 2 bed terrace which is tiny compared to mine. She gets no parking, has unseen to damp and no chance of affording more in the foreseeable.

As my mortgage goes down, her rent will increase.

The government don't do anything because they or their families are the ones who plan to exploit it at some point. Look how many houses Tony Blair has to his name. It's sickening.

I hate high earners in the same way. How dare they work hard and get paid for their effort.

Thanks for finding the figures, @safariboot ! But does 26% of purchases being BTL not drive down supply and therefore increase demand/ prices?

So if we don't have LL what do you suggest .

What, ALL Of them?

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

Not at the moment but when its stabilises there is no reason for them not to come back. So not so ignorant there.

I think your anger is pointed in the wrong direction. Its easier to blame a landlord than it is to blame successive years of governments artificially propping up house prices, selling off of social housing, of chronic underinvestment in both stock of social and private housing - demand for both way outstrips supply leading to increased rents and house values.

Even now the government is doing all it can to avoid a crash by propping up the market with stamp duty holidays.

In an ideal world there would be plentiful stock of good quality affordable social housing, but sadly that isn't the case.

House price inflation has given fantastic returns over the past 20+ years - our family home has risen about 65% in value since we bought it in 2012. We haven't done anything to 'deserve' this increase in price, the market has determined it.

@SheepandCow

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

I wish this made any difference. I totally agree there's a difference between moral and legal responsibility.

I really don't hate landlords, but I think it should not be possible for relatively comfortable people to kid themselves that they're being decent (or even kind) when housing others in sub-standard accommodation.

The big issue with renting is that, in theory, tenants can insist on things like heating, hot water, or basic maintenance. It looks good on paper. But in practice, there is very little to stop a landlord from spinning things out, avoiding repairs, or providing an inadequate service. And often, in my experience, those landlords are so out of touch, they don't even realise they are doing something inhumane. They rationalise to themselves that it's all ok, really.

I rented a house where the boiler kept breaking. Each time, the LL would agree it should be fixed, and he'd send someone out to tinker with it. And each time, a few days later, it'd break again, and we'd be without heating again. It went on for months. One time we came back home in early January with our baby to find it had broken and the temperature was below freezing; he claimed to be shocked and suggested we use an electric heater.

From his point of view, that was quite ok. Sure, if it were his own home, he wouldn't have chosen to live with this sort of problem, but for tenants, that was quite ok. He'd done his job. People had lived like this for generations, hadn't they? Babies had survived in houses where there was no central heating, so what was the issue?

I said to him at some point that the big victorian fireplace in the living room was something families had used as heating in the past, and he just didn't get it. He genuinely seemed to believe we were just being a bit soft to expect reliable heating.

I wish I could say this was the only LL I've had who was completely out of touch with reality, but it's not. Too often, people convince themselves that they're providing a wonderful service when they're deliberately allowing people to live in shit conditions so that they can maximise profits.

@DreadingSeason2020sFinale

I hate high earners in the same way. How dare they work hard and get paid for their effort.

There is not much effort/ skill required to be a landlord compared to a high earner like a doctor or solicitor or engineer.

@rwalker

So if we don't have LL what do you suggest .

Ideally, affordable government-owned housing.

Right to buy is ridiculous in my opinion. The first house we purchased was from a man who had bought his house for peanuts off the council, he then rented it out to presumably pay off his very small mortgage and then sold it to us for about £200k more than he purchased it for. At least your landlord didn't do this, he presumably bought it for a fair market value.
I do think your anger is misplaced. These people did nothing wrong, it was the government who allowed this to happen.

Unfortunately this is the fault of the government for allowing this, but no one ever protests or holds the government accountable for the housing mess in this country, letting people buy up multiple properties to rent out which just pushes up house prices so people renting are very unlikely going to be able to save up and buy a house for them selves and will have to continue paying off the landlords mortgage, low interest rates, help to buy, shared ownership have all pushed up house prices and get first time buyers into more debt if they can afford it, you need the bank of mummy and daddy now days to afford to buy a house.

YANBU.

I have no problem with landlords who own one or two houses. Not everyone can afford to (or maybe even wants to) buy.

But I absolutely cannot stand the professional landlords who suck dry all the affordable homes in an area.

I work in this area and there is one landlord around here who snaps up any house listed for under 130k within hours. It annoys me so much seeing their name pop up time and time again knowing they are taking essentially all of the FTB homes in our small town.

I'm sure government owned housing would be fantastically and responsively maintained... Just look at forces housing - grim grim grim.

My DH rented a room in shared houses through the whole of his 20s to save for a deposit. If you're renting a whole place on your own it'll be a lot more expensive - that's a trade off you've chosen to make

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

Could be any number of sources. Inherited the first one, let it, got a mortgage against it for a second one, let it, etc. Or just inherited money, bought property. Bought cheap at auction etc. No reason at all they bought 22 properties off their own hard work.

@DreadingSeason2020sFinale

I hate high earners in the same way. How dare they work hard and get paid for their effort.

Work hard?! It is unearned wealth, if we were all on this forum 20 years ago there wouldn't be this problem and we could all buy a house on an average salary, you wouldn't need to be a high earner, people got lucky all them years ago buying a house and think they have somehow earnt the £100ks their house value has gone up

@rwalker

So if we don't have LL what do you suggest .

Social housing.

All very true, but where are people supposed to live while they save a deposit? I had to rent for years, extortionate rent, add to that extortionate childcare costs and it took an inheritance to be able to buy a house. Granted I had a good time in my twenties and wasn't saving massively, but I would hate to think people have to leave school and suddenly knuckle down to house buying. There should be a few years for having some fun. You can't get that time back. Add to that some landlords (as with any cohort of people) can be awful. And it's scary being held hostage by a bad LL when the rents are shooting up. As it happens my rent led to a MH breakdown for me and I'm still suffering the effects.

@Smallsteps88

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

Could be any number of sources. Inherited the first one, let it, got a mortgage against it for a second one, let it, etc. Or just inherited money, bought property. Bought cheap at auction etc. No reason at all they bought 22 properties off their own hard work.

That's all speculation though, there are millions of LLs out there, I personally know one who owns a few flats in a city who worked his way up in a high demand, physical job, eventually bought his own house and then bought his first flat outright with his savings when he was in his late 40's, he now owns 5 of them. They are also all rented out at a fair price and lower than most in his area which he can afford to do as he owns them outright, also meaning there's more guarantee of having someone in them. The fact is, nobody knows other peoples situations. Like I said, like it or not, there's always going to be a need for LLs

@PinkFondantFancy

I'm sure government owned housing would be fantastically and responsively maintained... Just look at forces housing - grim grim grim.

My DH rented a room in shared houses through the whole of his 20s to save for a deposit. If you're renting a whole place on your own it'll be a lot more expensive - that's a trade off you've chosen to make

Funnily enough, I grew up in forces housing. Very affordable and rent was even adjusted if there were issues with the property. Repairmen came within two days. The affordability allowed my parents to buy their own home outright eventually and because you cannot buy forces housing, it freed up a house for a new young family starting out. How council housing should be done, IMO.

@PinkFondantFancy

I'm sure government owned housing would be fantastically and responsively maintained... Just look at forces housing - grim grim grim.

My DH rented a room in shared houses through the whole of his 20s to save for a deposit. If you're renting a whole place on your own it'll be a lot more expensive - that's a trade off you've chosen to make

That's not logical, though - to say that you can't hope for an ethical housing policy because it might be worse than the current situation. Of course, it might turn out corrupt interests won out. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't hope for better.

Most people rent shared rooms in their 20s, don't they? It's normal, unless you have fabulously wealthy parents.

Like I said, like it or not, there's always going to be a need for LLs

No need for them to be private individuals profiting from it though. Social housing authorities are also landlords.

@Smallsteps88

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

Could be any number of sources. Inherited the first one, let it, got a mortgage against it for a second one, let it, etc. Or just inherited money, bought property. Bought cheap at auction etc. No reason at all they bought 22 properties off their own hard work.

Probably profiting from insane house price rises on their first home.

One issue is too many wildly unsuitable people become landlords.

Fraudsters, money launderers, rapists, anybody - all sorts of crooks and ne'er-do-wells. I don't believe a criminal record bars you from letting property? Tenants are very vulnerable.

But, @Lou98, do you think that he wouldn't have been able to find another way of earning money if that route had been blocked? If the government had made it less advantageous to be a landlord, would he really have been totally unable to make a living doing something else?

That's where we need to start, IMO. If being a LL is always the easy option, people will continue to do it and do it badly.