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)

*bandings not landings

Damn you autocorrect

I own and let out a 1 bedroom flat. My tenants are usually young single people who could not afford the mortgage on the flat and probably would not want to buy that one if they did- it’s near a tube and is no doubt convenient for them as they build up their careers and save for an eventual home purchase. A few have been from overseas and have not stayed in the U.K. permanently.

What’s wrong with that?

The question is when? The answer is quite some time ago. I think it was under the manorial system in around 5/6th Century. There weren’t the same protections then and landlords administered their own form of justice.

After WW1 most people rented their homes or lived in tied accommodation with very limited protection. Even as late as the 1970s, landlords could say “No blacks or no Irish”. Home ownership was at its highest in the 1990s.

Unfortunately high ownership levels meant the sale of the nations assets and reduction of availability of council housing under Thatcher.

If you go back to Ireland and The Famine, exacerbated by very wealthy absentee landlords and hugely cruel middle men, you’ll see exploitation of those who cannot buy their houses is rarely about the person with two or three properties trying to raise additional income but about those who gain power from ownership of very large numbers of properties. Retailers- supermarket giants - buying up large areas but neither developing or renting, but letting the properties rot to the point where previous objections to planning disappear.

Holiday cottages are double sided. They clearly take up local property but also bring employment, money to local economy and offer service people want. Many are not suitable as main homes and would be out or reach of majority, too far from resources such as schools and shops or, like ours unsuitable for a mortgage.

What is perhaps needed is very strict market control of both long term and holiday rentals to protect tenants and local people. A strong enforcer of housing standards would be a good first step - people should not be living in mouldy, damp, squalor in this day and age. There needs to be no right to pass local authority homes on through generations and there needs to be a removal of right to buy with investments in local authority (or charitable trust) owned housing which is not for profit.

@Pyewackect

Because this country isn’t the Soviet Union.

Don’t be silly. The system we had pre-1989 was very much capitalist, it just wasn’t this uncontrolled.

We spent most of the twentieth century staring askance at the USSR. Someone would have noticed if we had a communist housing system too.

If you don’t understand housing economics at all, maybe just don’t comment?

So if making money from property is bad, in what realm is making money good? Is it bad to profiteer from people's need to eat? Is it bad to profiteer from children's need to be educated? From sick people need to be helped? This seems nuts to me

There are plenty of issues with bad landlords in this country but it is not they who are keeping house prices sky high. There simply aren't enough houses in certain parts of the country to meet demand. Either increase supply or reduce demand and the market will rebalance to something more sensible.

Hopefully this will be one good thing which comes out of the pandemic. An increase in partial or even full-time home working makes it possible to live much further from the office than it once was which should allow the demand side to move to cheaper parts of the country. Likewise an increase in hot desking will free up office space for conversion into flats in the more expensive parts. City of London already have plans for 1,500 such conversions.

4.6 million (20%) of the 23 million households in England rented their home from a private landlord in the 2 years from 2016 to 2018

1 in 5.

Not actually that high and certainly not the overwhelming majority this post would have you believe.

www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/housing/owning-and-renting/renting-from-a-private-landlord/latest

Buy to let is not the problem. It is the preponderance of second homes which stand empty for most of the year

Oh and we need to close the loopholes which allow second homes to pay reduced or no council tax.

@SusannahMartin

So if making money from property is bad, in what realm is making money good? Is it bad to profiteer from people's need to eat? Is it bad to profiteer from children's need to be educated? From sick people need to be helped? This seems nuts to me

This question has been asked several times, but nobody has addressed it because it doesn’t suit their narrative.

@LittleLottieChaos People owning houses to rent out are providing a service. Many are having to pay a mortgage to provide that accommodation and earn very little from their investment.

Do you feel the same about hotels? Or the holiday rental market?
Are you against people buying a home to rent out as holiday accommodation (and profiting from it)?

Or restaurants where people eat?
Or pubs?

All of these places provide a service and profit from it.

I blame housing benefit subsidies. Rents just went up and up.

@DdraigGoch

Oh and we need to close the loopholes which allow second homes to pay reduced or no council tax.

They closed years ago. There is no longer any council tax reductions for empty properties.

I'm in the process of selling my first house. I'm also renting. Not because I can't afford to buy a house like the one I'm renting but because I'm trying to work out what works for my family before I commit to anything. The property I rent is 15 miles from where I wanted to live. I could have bought a similar house in the town I wanted to live in. Because in my area there are plenty of houses to buy but hardly any rentals. It took me 6 months to find a rental.

We’ve just bought a holiday home which we will use as a family and rent out during peak season. I don’t feel at all guilty we’ve worked hard to pay our own mortgage off and afford this. It’s a good investment in a beautiful spot. In all honesty, whilst I don’t wish anyone ill will, I don’t have any guilty feelings at all about doing this. I, like most people, only genuinely care about myself and my loved ones.

Xcross post @SusannahMartin and @Dinohat

So a question OP, where would people live that don't want to buy or don't have a deposit to buy?

Not everyone wants to own their own home so where do they go if there aren't private landlords?

Your argument is silly and flawed.

It used to be that renting was a cheaper option but not anymore
Blame the government for this though. It’s the taxing and imposed requirements on landlords that is causing that issue.

£300 a month more than the cost of the mortgage. By the time you include tax, very possibly at 40%, fees, repairs and keep some aside for refurbishment, you are likely to be left with nothing and actually likely worse off.

It’s amazing how easily some tenants seem to forget the cost of keeping a house in good repair. They want to move in a brand new decorated house but forget that this comes at cost...to the landlord, not them!

In big cities like London many of tenants are migrants who are not planning on staying long, they are only here to work and go back home. Also, no credit rating, not work contracts, often working cash in hand. Haw can you get a mortgage that way? They are the worst for being exploited by unscrupulous landlords but they don't fit your "nice your family" criteria.

UC covers that, so we all end up paying the landlords. We need to stop being reliant on cheap migrant labour and employers need to start paying properly with while keeping employment law.

I am a buy to let landlord and I completely agree with you! was encouraged by my parter to buy a flat to "get on property ladder" but I really struggled with the ethics of it. It's rich people being able to get richer because they are already rich. We now own a home together and rent out this flat.

It has basically funded me to do a degree for the last few years, which I have massively appreciated, but I will sell it as soon as I start earning money again - and I want to sell to people who will live in it - not to people like me!

Several office blocks near me have been converted into flats. Unfortunately many are empty as they have been bought by foreign investors. Many countries have a law that non citizens can only buy one property. I think we should have similar here. New homes should not be deliberately kept empty for years on end.

@SusannahMartin

So if making money from property is bad, in what realm is making money good? Is it bad to profiteer from people's need to eat? Is it bad to profiteer from children's need to be educated? From sick people need to be helped? This seems nuts to me

There’s a difference between profiting and profiteering. Look it up.

If the supermarkets formed a cartel or otherwise started price jacking to profiteer from food, they would face government or legal intervention. Of course they would.

If state education disappeared overnight and everyone had to pay, there would be riots. The right to free education is long established in this country.

Ditto healthcare. That’s why the NHS is so widely supported, and why the US system is so widely criticised. Most western healthcare systems have mechanisms to make treatment affordable to all income groups.

Is this all really news to you?

Blame the system and the government for doing nothing about the housing crisis.

@Swimminginmud

I completely agree with you. I understand not everyone is in the position to own their own home but everyone should be able to feel secure knowing that they have some control over their living conditions and length of stay. It is a horrible feeling to be raising a family never feeling 100% settled, worrying that your rent will go up, or you might get evicted and living in a home that’s falling to bits because you don’t dare complain in case it causes you problems. It makes you feel like a second class citizen made worse when you know you have basically paid off someone’s mortgage and are still scrapping together the money each month to live another 30 days in someone’s ‘nest egg’.

But if that home was not available for you to rent @Swimminginmud, where would you live?

On the streets?

I think you're being unrealistic. Take away all the buy to lets and what are you left with? People who can't afford to buy homeless, living on the street.

There's nothing to stop a person buying a house destined to be bought for btl except no deposit, bad credit history, only need short term accommodation etc.