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?

@Racoonworld do you have any knowledge at all about inflation/cost of living now vs our parents generation? Or do you just like judging and putting down your own generation?

Christ even on a thread like this some people can't resist the urge to boast about how much their property has gone up in value and how they are mortgage free. Talk about tone deaf. If someone they know develops health problems they probably react by talking at length about how healthy they are

It’s nobody else’s fault but your own that you can’t get a deposit together to buy a house, and people that can shouldn’t be prevented from doing so (repeatedly, if they do choose) simply because some can’t.

God that's such a depressing attitude.

Just for the record, it wasn’t Labour who began and continued incrementally to scrap the substantial tax advantages for landlords with mortgages, which so unfairly weren’t available to owner occupiers - and also abolished the automatic 10% ‘wear and tear’ allowance.

Incidentally council houses were being sold off well before Thatcher. A dd bought a former council house that had been bought by the former owners in 1971. Dd paid almost exactly 100 times the 1971 price.

So why didn’t Labour under Blair scrap Right to Buy?

Answer, almost certainly because they thought it would lose them votes. Plenty of Labour voters profited from RTB, a good friend of mine included - a diehard Labour voter, but very happy to buy the house where she’d lived for over 40 years.

[quote YoungScrappyHungry]@Racoonworld do you have any knowledge at all about inflation/cost of living now vs our parents generation? Or do you just like judging and putting down your own generation?[/quote]
Yes actually. I’m not saying it wasn’t easier for past generations, but I was replying a pp who said twenties were for having fun not saving all your money for a house deposit. Unless people came from wealthy families that’s exactly what they had to do back then, save when they left school for houses, and what those of us have who have bought houses now have also done. It’s not putting down my generation, I’m actually really proud of all my friends and myself who have chosen to save and have now all got good houses at a relatively young age, despite the extortionate housing prices in the south east. It shows that not everyone in the younger generations is partying and holidaying away all their money in their twenties and we can (and have) done it too.

In past generations they had to leave school and work hard/save hard to get a house. Your twenties before kids are the best years to save, it gets much harder after that. Too many people want to go to uni and have fun, go travelling, spend money on nights out, cars, holidays, tech then complain when they hit thirty and have no savings for a house deposit.

I could only save a deposit for my flat because I was able to live at home despite my good job & not spending all my money on tech & avocado. If I had to pay private rent it would have taken me longer & by that time house prices had increased too much.

I don't understand the mentality of pulling up the ladder behind you. It just makes it harder for your dc.

I think YABU. My husband and I are both research scientists too. We have done all the postdoc grind etc. We saved and now own a house in the South East and have a bunch of children too. We are mid 30s. We spent our early 20s renting too.

In past generations they had to leave school and work hard/save hard to get a house
I think some people don't seem to grasp the very basic point that house prices are lot more unaffordable now than they were in the past

IMO many people who live outside London and much of the SE, often have no conception of how expensive housing has become in those areas.
I would never have believed even back in 2009/10 that a nothing-very-special 2 bed flat in Tooting - hardly a fashionable area - would be routinely priced at £500k or more - and at the peak of the market in 2016 it was more like £550k. Utterly crazy.

@AlpineSnow

In past generations they had to leave school and work hard/save hard to get a house I think some people don't seem to grasp the very basic point that house prices are lot more unaffordable now than they were in the past

Did you miss the part where I said I am in my early thirties and in the south east? I know exactly how expensive housing is now. I bought in my twenties at the peak of house prices and it was a real struggle to do. The mortgage wasn’t the problem, it was the deposit and not coming from wealthy families we had to save all the money ourselves. It can be done especially now when house prices have actually stagnated down here so aren’t going up and up each year at the moment. But realistically it isn’t going to be doable with today’s prices if you spend a large amount of money on holidays going out, and takeaways, you have to choose what’s more important to you and go with that.

YABU to hate an entire category of people who in truth have done nothing illegal, but are simply making money within the rules. If you don't like the law / system - write to your MP or campaign for change.

You would be perfectly reasonable to hate the system that has allowed this - right to buy without replacement stock being built, successive governments failing to regulate the market to make it affordable and workable for ordinary people.

I rented for over a decade while saving up my 10% deposit for a London house. I had two landlords who broke the law to the extent that the house was unsafe and we had to report to environmental health (death trap wiring, boiler wrongly installed and with fake safety certification). Guess what the authorities did? Fuck all.

Later on, I became a landlord for around 2 years due a change in circumstances, this has now come to an end. Trust me, for every dickhead landlord there is a dickhead tenant to match. Bad people end up in all walks of life.

But none of that means anything to the point you are making - you have a broken system which causes prices to rise and rise, and you have poor regulation and controls with desperately underfunded councils unable to enforce even major breaches of the rules.

Hating on one group rather than focusing on the real causes of the issues just makes you sound immature. You would do better to think about possible solutions to the systemic issues.

OP Racoon has found the answer for you. All you need to do is stop your expensive holiday and takeaway habit and you'll be able to buy a property on your own while paying rent. Sorted! She was able to buy with a partner/friend "we had to save all the money ourselves" so it must be possible on your own too

You would do better to think about possible solutions to the systemic issues.

Yes OP & could you sort world peace whilst you're at it as well!

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.

That is just pure stupidity. When a lot of your money is going on rent and the rest on bills, in a place where houses cost a lot, it takes a bloody long time to afford a 5% deposit. And then all the people buying houses for rent are just helping to drive prices up.

House prices are rising way faster than wages and without family help, its sometimes very difficult to buy a house in many areas of the UK. Not all areas have 3 bedroom houses for 100k, and we can't all live there due to no work.

But it's fine, if this great reset happens, from the sounds of it all of these landlords with multiple houses will have to give them up, as will we all, so we will all be renting. You will own nothing and you will be happy about it.

@Racoonworld a deposit for my 1st property would now be over 100k, I couldn't save that up and pay in rent in a couple of years.

itsadress, it isn't a huge thing to do to change the system. All it takes is not to vote Tory. We had the best chance of affordable housing we've ever had in the last 40 years last December, but I'm betting some of the people complaining on here voted Tory.

Conservative = landlords and no affordable housing.

[quote itsadress]@Racoonworld a deposit for my 1st property would now be over 100k, I couldn't save that up and pay in rent in a couple of years. [/quote]
Yes, the pandemic fucked this up, but it will come back down to the deposit sizes as before.

You're being ridiculous OP but I understand why you are frustrated. Guess what: I'm both a landlord and a tenant. When I moved to this country with my husband, do you think a bank would have given us a mortgage for hundreds of thousands, even with our good jobs? No of course not, we have zero credit history here. So we are renting and saving. The narrative of 'the oppressed tenant' isn't helpful. The rental system benefits many tenants. Without it I would have been literally trapped in my home country.

We have an ageing population who are more likely to own their own home & a BTL & vote Tory to yes I think it is quite hard.

[quote itsadress]@Racoonworld a deposit for my 1st property would now be over 100k, I couldn't save that up and pay in rent in a couple of years. [/quote]
Okay not sure where you are but The majority of the southeast (excluding London but no most people can’t expect to buy a house in London) you don’t need £100k deposit to buy a flat. My first deposit was under £30k for a house. If I had bought a flat it would have been less, and house prices haven’t risen much in the south east since I bought so similar to what’s needed now. Obviously not possible for everyone if on a very low income, but for the average wage completely possible if you live sensibly, as shown by pretty much everyone I know being able to buy a house or flat by age thirty. Not the best houses or flats but perfectly acceptable.

You’re totally right, but I know a lot of my peers feel that they will never afford to get on the ladder no matter how hard they save so they think “fuck it, may as well go on that holiday and get some sort of joy out of life
Well that's an easy cope out isn't it?

My eldest bought his first home at 20. He started working when he was 17. 16h in a supermarket. He continued whilst studying for 3 A levels. By the end of his A levels, he'd saved £15k. He then got a FT job whilst studying in the evenings and saved more.

He opted for having 'no life' during these years whilst his friends chose not to work but for the summer and spent all the pocket money they had.

He was earning enough and saved for a deposit by his 20th birthday. We live in an expensive area but he got a £110k one bedroom, not the nicest place, not the best area, but he is delighted to have it. He had no help whatsoever from anyone.

Yes it is harder for this generation, but this woe me attitude and I might as well spend my money on luxuries and then feel sorry for myself doesn't do the generation any favours.

My eldest bought his first home at 20. He started working when he was 17. 16h in a supermarket. He continued whilst studying for 3 A levels. By the end of his A levels, he'd saved £15k.

So your son was able to save his entire wage for two years because he was living at home and being entirely supported by you so it’s not true to say

He had no help whatsoever from anyone.

You're right OP but will get some ridiculous ideas spouted on here. The idea that somebody should profit from another's basic human need is wrong altogether.

Did he live on the streets whilst saving, dontdisturb?

One of our dc owns a home and a rental, not even 30. They had help with house deposit and an inheritance. They could have pissed it up the wall but they go to work and listened to advice.
We own two rentals. One houses a family of four, young people with dc who are saving up for their own place. They can't live with parents and just need another year of renting before they'll be the position to buy. I started off renting as did most people I know. Sometimes it felt like it would be impossible to buy a house but we cracked on and did it eventually.
Instead of moaning make a plan.