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)

I just checked on Rightmove for properties to let in my area, which is very 'residential'.

There are none right here but two within a mile of my house.

I then checked where my nephew lives and rents a house, also residential, there are three flats to let within a quarter of a mile. Quite nice flats too by the look of them.

Loads for sale in both areas.

Where my 'rental' flat is, I could find nothing to let within a mile. Again, lots for sale.

Of course my searches do not take into account the number of homes already occupied by renters, but on the face of it there seems to be a lot of inaccuracy talked about BTL properties.

It makes me sad & angry when people comment about "lazy, greedy LLs"

I am neither of these

There are some bad LL & tenants

Probably more bad tenants than landlords.

Evil so are you suggesting helping a child to bnuy their first and only home is morally wrong though? I thikn you aren't. you are saying that help is fine as long as your child moves into the place immediately but if they let it out for the first year (as my older son did)( that then becomes the moral offence.

Or do you think any financial help from parent to child includint a parent topping up university costs (which might mean that child can later afford to buy a house whereas one without the university degree may not) or paying for trainers for teenagers is unfair and morally wrong?

@Maggiesfarm

I just checked on Rightmove for properties to let in my area, which is very 'residential'.

There are none right here but two within a mile of my house.

I then checked where my nephew lives and rents a house, also residential, there are three flats to let within a quarter of a mile. Quite nice flats too by the look of them.

Loads for sale in both areas.

Where my 'rental' flat is, I could find nothing to let within a mile. Again, lots for sale.

Of course my searches do not take into account the number of homes already occupied by renters, but on the face of it there seems to be a lot of inaccuracy talked about BTL properties.

I had 38 viewing requests within 24 hours for one, fairly bog standard 2 bed. The rent was market rent (not high, not cheap). People were falling over themselves to make me offers.

The rental market is really competitive. Less BTL is not the solution.

Renting is not the problem, it’s the ridiculous amounts of mo way landlords charge!! It’s should be capped to 20% above the mortgage payment

The existence of bad tenants does not excuse the existence and wide spread tolerance of bad landlords (private or la). Bad landlords are something that we could quite easily do something about. Much of the necessary law exists, it just need enforcement. As a not-bad landlord this is something I'm very keen to see happen. No excuses.

@Magnificentmug12

Renting is not the problem, it’s the ridiculous amounts of mo way landlords charge!! It’s should be capped to 20% above the mortgage payment

So long as their expenses, maintenance, tax etc is also capped?

Leaky tap? No sorry pal, spent my 20% already.

@Porcupineintherough

The existence of bad tenants does not excuse the existence and wide spread tolerance of bad landlords (private or la). Bad landlords are something that we could quite easily do something about. Much of the necessary law exists, it just need enforcement. As a not-bad landlord this is something I'm very keen to see happen. No excuses.

Yes. But they’re not all the same.

@Magnificentmug12

Renting is not the problem, it’s the ridiculous amounts of mo way landlords charge!! It’s should be capped to 20% above the mortgage payment

and if there is no mortgage?

DinoHat: I had 38 viewing requests within 24 hours for one, fairly bog standard 2 bed. The rent was market rent (not high, not cheap). People were falling over themselves to make me offers.

The rental market is really competitive. Less BTL is not the solution.
......
That's interesting though not surprising, we are always hearing that there is a shortage of properties to let.

My flat is let at a reasonable rent (I haven't received any rent since beginning of February btw & am paying the mortgage:-) ). However I intend to sell it when I can, probably six months or so depending on what the current tenants want to do.

@Magnificentmug12

Renting is not the problem, it’s the ridiculous amounts of mo way landlords charge!! It’s should be capped to 20% above the mortgage payment

That doesn't make sense. Number 32 anystreet the rent is £800, number 34 it is only £200 because the landlord only has a very low LTV ratio. Number 30 is free because 20% of nothing is nothing.

@D1stancePlanet5

It makes me sad & angry when people comment about "lazy, greedy LLs"

I am neither of these

There are some bad LL & tenants

Exactly.

I rented when I was young and had no problems. My children and nephew have too, nice places with good landlords.

I'm an extremely good landlord, probably a push over, but I will not be a landlord for long, hopefully. My nephew lets the flat next door to mine to a friend of his, just to cover mortgage and maintenance (we both inherited flats).

@Magnificentmug12

Renting is not the problem, it’s the ridiculous amounts of mo way landlords charge!! It’s should be capped to 20% above the mortgage payment

If this comment doesn’t sum up the level of critical thinking I don’t know what does 😬

Agreed, FTengineerM, what does 'mo way' have to do with anything? Motorway?

Further to my previous post, my tenants are £2,300 in arrears and no payment has been made for 120 days. I had an email from the agents about it. I had given them some leeway because of circumstances but now I feel they are taking the proverbial. I still have to pay the mortgage and service charges.

The sooner I can sell that flat the better.

We are thinking of doing buy to let. We know we won’t inherit anything. We own our own home. We have built up some money in our business. It isn’t getting any interest at the moment. I don’t want it just sitting there dwindling in value. Why should big property developers get to make all the money from property development? If there is money to be made from the property market then we hope to get involved. Where we live most of the people we know that have money do so because of family money, inheritance from previous generations houses going up In value or selling off family businesses. I don’t want my own children missing out. At the end of the day I will do everything in my power to give my kids the best start in life. Don’t most people do that? Our kids generation will have it hard and I want to work to make sure they will be ok.

I've got a buy to let, will eventually live there when I retire. I get a good rental from it way better than the SIX pounds interest I got from the bank each month.

What's worse for me is landlords renting out houses for 'supportive accomodation'. They are raking it in to the detriment of vulnerable people. The landlord can claim housing benefit for 2 bedrooms for each person even though there is only one spare room for carers per house. So for a 4 bed house with 5 residents (reception rooms used as bedrooms) the landlord can get housing benefit for 10 bedrooms!! On top of charging the vulnerable residents extortionate top ups for broadband/utilities.

That’s where the real feelings are displayed for me though, all the talk about landlords mortgages ‘being paid off by the tenant’, how evil they are and ‘rent should be capped x amount above mortgage payment’ blah blah

Going after someone who has a BTL mortgage is IMO stupid, they are taking an enormous risk, if you don’t pay rent very often they can’t pay the mortgage or at least it would negatively affect their quality of life if they had to cover 2 mortgages eventually leading to financial ruin. A landlord with a mortgage is firstly paying the bank for borrowing the money so that YOU can keep using the property freely if you continue with rent payments and even if you don’t unfortunately, probably put a hefty chunk of their savings into it which could be a bottomless pit if the house is trashed.

Landlords without mortgages would appear to be in the most lucrative position since there’s less risk from non payment from the tenant/damage to the property. I haven’t seen those mentioned nearly as much as mortgages ones on this thread; that’s where I think the jealous comments come in.

@Xenia

Evil so are you suggesting helping a child to bnuy their first and only home is morally wrong though? I thikn you aren't. you are saying that help is fine as long as your child moves into the place immediately but if they let it out for the first year (as my older son did)( that then becomes the moral offence.

Or do you think any financial help from parent to child includint a parent topping up university costs (which might mean that child can later afford to buy a house whereas one without the university degree may not) or paying for trainers for teenagers is unfair and morally wrong?

No I’m not, I don’t think I’ve even hinted at that. Otherwise I wouldn’t have suggested my wealthier friends do the same for their kids. Whatever they do, whoever they become in life, they will need a home and I wouldn’t want anyone’s children to live the life of an un chosen rented.

The problem is it’s the volume that it happens at. It’s not one persons problem, it’s not one persons fault. Everyone has a good reason, until we fix the cause of affordability and the availability of social housing.

@SummerBreeze1980

What's worse for me is landlords renting out houses for 'supportive accomodation'. They are raking it in to the detriment of vulnerable people. The landlord can claim housing benefit for 2 bedrooms for each person even though there is only one spare room for carers per house. So for a 4 bed house with 5 residents (reception rooms used as bedrooms) the landlord can get housing benefit for 10 bedrooms!! On top of charging the vulnerable residents extortionate top ups for broadband/utilities.

Yes it's disgusting.

It's usually the most slummy type of accommodation too. Poorly maintained, landlord doing the bare minimum of repairs, if any at all.

Most of the people living there would, in the past, have simply been housed in their own self contained home. The most vulnerable would be in genuinely supported housing. Back in the days when landlords let to tenants on benefits. Now they don't, because they can instead let to the first time buyers they've priced out.

So vulnerable people live in slums paid for by all of us (taxpayers) at ten times the cost of normal housing benefit rates.

Talk about a broken system.

The low interest rates is major part of the problem. Governments (Labour, Tory, and coalition) have deliberately kept them low as part of the inflate house prices scheme.

and if there is no mortgage?

I've written upthread about renting when younger. The best landlords were those who owned outright. The rents were more reasonable and the landlords themselves were too (no discrimination against tenants on benefits or students or pets or children).

The main problem today is the housing situation is out of balance. That, and the lack of social housing. Also the ridiculously low housing benefit levels.

There is a need for some private landlords - for younger people not yet settled, for people working away from home, for temporary and short term lodgings.

But - we now have too many and growing numbers of individuals and families permanently locked out of establishing a stable life, putting down roots and becoming a member of their local community.

I wrote yesterday I checked out first time buyer type homes to see what's going on. Lots were marketed specifically at investors.

First time buyers are having to compete with landlords - and too often getting priced out. They then rent off the landlord who priced them out. This in turn pushes the group who used to rent into homelessness.

We need a better balance.

@Magnificentmug12

Renting is not the problem, it’s the ridiculous amounts of mo way landlords charge!! It’s should be capped to 20% above the mortgage payment

So what if the boiler needs replacing? Who are you suggesting funds this? You do realise that they have to pay out more than just a mortgage? And then what happens when the mortgage is paid off? How much do you think the tenants should pay then?

freakonomics.com/podcast/rent-control/

Some relatively simple immediate things that would help the situation.

A) Private landlords when it's someone moving in with a partner/getting married/needing more space for a growing family renting out their old flat/house.

The above is not so terrible, so long as they're reasonable with rent levels, accept benefits (government needs to increase benefit amounts), do timely repairs, don't go overboard with too frequent intrusive inspections (not a thing when I rented in the 90s).

B) Private landlords through inheritance. As with A).

C) People looking to 'invest', competing against first time buyers, pushing up the prices, buying one home after another.
That's a big no.

D) Increase housing benefit levels to market rent. Explicitly ban discrimination (and against students, families with children, pets, etc).

E) Security of tenure. Ban no fault evictions - but make it easier for landlords to evict genuine problem tenants, i.e. wrecking the home, serious anti social behaviour, wilful refusal to pay the rent, etc.

D) and E) would be a major part of the key to helping ensure the success of A) and B) without doing too much damage to individuals, families, and society.

Finally,

F) Raise interest rates. Stop encouraging debt and the unsustainable house price bubble, and stop punishing savers (those saving for deposits, pensions, or disabled safety net).

G) Build more social housing (and end right to buy in England).

Will all or any of this happen? I don't know but it should.