Greed of ‘buy to let’

[LittleLottieChaos]

When did people start to think that they should profit from housing? It all feels incredibly Dickensian. Pees me off when I see housing being listed as buy to let investments rather than ‘here’s a house for a nice young family to live in’. Especially with the market so horribly skewed right now.

It is shocking that people seem to think they have a right to profiteer from those less fortunate by whacking on high rents, that more than cover their mortgages. Legit: you need one house, one house only. Or maybe I’m missing something... or these are genuinely just bad people.

Interested to hear how people justify it? Do you just think, fuck ‘em I want to be rich? Do you not think about the morality?

(I rent but am saving to buy an appropriate house to live in... not to profiteer from)

It's a business transaction! If you don't want to rent their property, then no-one is forcing you to.

Lots of assumptions made on here about landlords.

I kept my small two bed when I moved in with my partner. I rent it to a lovely couple from Romania who can’t get a mortgage here. I haven’t put the rent up since 2015 when they moved in. I don’t make much profit each month, but see it as an investment for the future (as my pension will be shit). Certainly not a case of ‘fuck em I want to be rich’ and I can think of far worse moral crimes.

Agree with you OP - buy to let landlords are greedy and selfish.

But what happens to the agricultural workers, teachers, nurses, car mechanics, shop workers, care home staff, joiners, plumbers etc - all good jobs which allow people to live outside cities, who don’t head off to university but stay in their area and can’t find affordable homes.

I grew up in one of these areas and have now seen 2 generations priced out, local towns and villages with no real sense of community because the populations are so transient.

@user1497207191 - exactly my point. Empty properties need to be taxed at e.g. 60 per cent of deemed market rent. Should apply to holiday homes too. Otherwise we will keep having dirty money from abroad interfering with our housing market because it suits our property builders. Holiday lets are fine - it is more ethical and better for the environment/local economy to holiday with less mileage anyway.

I agree there needs to be a rental market but this need doesn't justify the existence of a rental market where landlords can make huge profits off their tenants. There should be some regulation. I think it's disgusting that housing has been commodified the way it has been.

I agree 100% with cracking down on foreign investors. So many of the new build flats in London and elsewhere, have been largely targeted at foreign owners, often in China and SE Asia, many of whom don’t even rent them out, but just want a ‘safe’ place to park their money.

@Rufus27

Lots of assumptions made on here about landlords.

I kept my small two bed when I moved in with my partner. I rent it to a lovely couple from Romania who can’t get a mortgage here. I haven’t put the rent up since 2015 when they moved in. I don’t make much profit each month, but see it as an investment for the future (as my pension will be shit). Certainly not a case of ‘fuck em I want to be rich’ and I can think of far worse moral crimes.

Indeed. Unless you are a big corporation (& they must have some regulations), I doubt anyone who lets is of the ‘fuck em I want to be rich’ mindset. What kind of a chavvy, vulgar thing is that to say?

@Remmy123

You are wrong OP.

I saved very hard at a young age to buy a flat that I have rented out for many years. That flat is my pension / my kids uni fees / my savings so that I remain independent and do not have to claim off the state.

How come you never did the same?

Erm... I’m 32, houses no longer cost what they did perhaps when you bought in which era?

I have what you call ‘a job’ that job pays me money, and that money I am saving to buy and house and support my family in our futures. I do not ‘claim off the state’ either, because like you, I am lucky enough that I don’t need to. There’s no shame in it for those that do, and you should reframe the way you think - people having to get financial support because they cannot pay rent or feed their family is 100% necessary and shouldn’t be resented.

I won’t be making a huge profit of my tenants. The rent will cover the mortgage and insurance, capital improvements and decoration will be met by me.

I’m doing it as I want a guaranteed asset for retirement. My company only matches 3% of my pension contributions so this is a good way for me to sell when I am older to release money to pay for me to live and fund any care I may need.

@WWYD2020

Wow *@LadyWhistledownsQuill* what job do you do that’s banned until spring 22?

Events sector

Even where it is - technically - legal for some events to go ahead in reality the organisers are still cancelling.

There are lots of reasons for this - the long lead times (6-12 months) for event organisation and lack of certainty from central government about where we'll be in 6-12 months. The lack of insurance cover available for COVID cancellations means it's a huge risk. Brides not wanting to cut down their guest list to 30 and so postponing for another year. Etc etc.

As someone who makes a living from the events sector, but has no control over whether or not the event goes ahead, I've already lost most of my contracts for 2020 and 2021. Currently the realistic best case scenario is being allowed to work again from spring 2022.

Interested to hear how people justify it?
Who are PEOPLE?

As already explained in many posts, there are not one sort of landlords, but people in very different situations who have become landlords under various circumstances.

Do you blame all of them? Just because you are frustrated with your own situation?

@Bluedeblue

It's a business transaction! If you don't want to rent their property, then no-one is forcing you to.

This is where your wrong. When you’ve kids in the local school, one about to change school so your mid application to the next one, they obviously want to go with their friends. Your current landlords given you two months notice and this property is the only one that fits that catchment. You have no choice.

@LadyWhistledownsQuill

However, unless you want the governtment to buy/build hundreds of thousands of social houses, private landlords are needed (which will come out of your taxes, which the govt will have to raise to pay for it!)

I absolutely want the government to build more social housing - it would cost a lot less than the £23.4 BILLION currently paid out in housing benefit which ultimately ends up in the pockets of private landlords. For context, that's 2.9% of total public spending (OBR, 2018-19 stats)

Building or buying social housing would absolutely work out cheaper in the medium to long term - and the government would have an asset to show for it at the end

This.

So not only are but to lets making it harder for would be first time buyers to get their own home, the rental payments for those on housing benefits are being paid by the taxpayers to these same landlords.

The social housing budget is £23 billion per year . For that at an average house construction cost of £200k you could build 115,000 council or community houses per year. Plus the Government/ tax payer still gets to keep the houses.

You sound very blinkered and naive.

My DH and I have never owned a home, always rented. We move all over the world for very well paid work so it isn't worth bothering to buy a house at the moment. Currently we're renting a house from my friend who had to move back to her home country to care for her elderly mother. She couldn't sell her home quickly enough and would have been in a complete mess financially if we hadn't agreed to rent the place. Since moving in with her mother she barely makes ends meet.

Not everyone who rents is poor. Not everyone who owns is rich. The world is not black and white.

Social housing don’t want to deal with a lot of the problems that come with being a landlord. The manage,net of it all is adding to the costs. They much rather let private landlords deal with non payment of rent, problems with neighbours, maintenance and the rest.

The whole of end-days capitalism is rotten to the core, but considering that premise, landlords are no worse than anyone else. There are plenty of good ones and a few bad apples. And fundamentally we all keep choosing capitalism with both our votes and our lifestyles.

We rent house out we bought it in 2014 for 113k as FTB which was overpriced we have had to fix the roof and electrics. We rent it out because we would have lost money if we sold and we wanted a bigger house why should we lose money ? We are good landlords we don't put the rent up and we will wait until it's worth a but more .

@Xenia
*I am keeping the records for the houses each of my two sons lets out. So far the rent is less than the costs of repairs, agents etc as is common with many landlords and if the property values also go down in a sense you are providing a charitable service to the less well off (or in my sons' case to people who are better off than they are).

Oh dear. Sounds like they should find a different arena for their 'talents'. They clearly haven't got the hang of this if they are actually losing money on being landlords.

but there are areas of the country who rely on tourism and without holiday lets would not get that custom.

There are many areas that now rely on tourism due to locals being forced out the area as a result of people buying holiday homes, leading to no resident community. This happened to my dad's hometown in Italy, where it was a thriving small town and in no way relied on tourism. It then started to get a name as one of the 'undiscovered Italian towns' and more and more tourists came which led to many people from the UK buying the 'cheap' properties there (cheap in comparison to the UK but just affordable for locals), paying prices that locals couldn't compete with. Many were forced out the town and to other areas, the only ones remaining being those who were able to make a living from the tourists. Now outside of tourist season the place is a ghost town because all those homes are empty. All the shops and infrastructure that was there for a living, residential community, is now gone. The town is now centred on tourism, which it never ever was before. People buying holiday homes destroyed the community. I see the same thing happening in many communities around me in the north of Scotland.

The fact that so many on here see a rental property as an asset IS the problem. It shouldn't be something that people have to rely on to fund their retirement. People should be able to rely on decent pensions which actually cover their living costs in retirement. We don't have decent pensions in this country, therefore it's totally understandable why people invest in buy-to-let, but while understandable, it's not great for the common good.

For those claiming that they have their buy-to-let so as not to be a burden on the state, you are literally shifting that whole burden onto your tenants.

For those claiming that they have their buy-to-let so as not to be a burden on the state, you are literally shifting that whole burden onto your tenants.

And it's a complete fucking irony when those tenants have to claim housing benefit to pay the landlord's high rents, who then kids themselves that they're not a burden on the state.

I get you are upset OP because you are trying to buy. Atm you are competing with Landlords and Investment Portfolios because you are at the lower end of the market.

But for the rest of the housing market BTL is not really causing an issue yet the prices are increasing at rates even higher than lower rungs. I hate to break this to you but the first step on the ladder is comparatively easy compared to the next jump.

How do people justify ?

Because everyone has different circumstances

They clearly haven't got the hang of this if they are actually losing money on being landlords
It’s not about having the hang of it. The government has changed the rules and are now taxing heavily on letting. They have introduced new costly requirements almost every year. They are making it harder and harder to evict bad tenants. They have also made it more costly to sell on, so sadly, for some landlords, they are in a catch 22 whereas whatever they do, they are set to lose out.