I'm so sick of people buying multiple properties for BTL

[flashbac]

So the landlord next door has hoovered up another house on the street for BTL. A nice house that wasn't even on the market but they managed to get their mits on it. Yes I know I sound bitter because I am! I'm so fed up of investors hoovering up all the houses. There should be a limit but with most of our government being BTL landlords nothing will change.
I'm sick of the increasing gap between rich and poor.
now runs and hides because reckons half of MN have a BTL or holiday home

What a fucking joke! No-one would ever have any if this was the case! Average age to have a kid now is about 29. If you think the average 29 year old can afford to buy a house you're having a laugh. And what about the 50% of women who have children younger than that? What 25 year old can afford to buy when the average property costs over £250,000.

Sounds about right I was nearly 29 with pfb- though we bought cheaper it was when eldest was getting near school age - took 10+ pre kids heavy saving, DH moving areas and getting permanat job not expecation of moving every few years.

I think people get muddled with ages and times. I was both too older for first child - much older than our parents - but also too young to have children. Few years later when we bought we were too young to buy a 3 bed -needed as we had kids of both sexes by then - and then ten years later why hadn't we paid the mortgages off by now as they had by our age - had to calmly point out they'd had over 20 years by our age not the 10 years we'd had.

My parents generation several family members ended up emigrating for work - I do wonder if the cost of living will prove a similar push for our children.

@Sommernacht89, okay, with 35 years here you definitely can comment on how situations have deteriorated! You will also have survived at least three recessions... the collapse of house prices after the Lawson boom from 1988 until 95, then 15% interest rates after sterling was forced out of the ERM, a series of global stock market and currency crisis, the largest of them in 1997 and 2008, austerity. Flagwaving is what's left, and a sense of humour.

@Plumtree391

Most landlords will give their tenants plenty of time to find somewhere else and anyway, it can take ages for a property sale to go through. I too would feel sorry for my tenant and would probably let them keep their deposit but at the end of the day, they didn't have to have three children without first securing a proper home. During the 1.5 years they have occupied the house (such as the above example), they could have been looking round and saving money which is what most of us do. That's not so easy when you have children; one kid is expensive, never mind three.

You have no clue do you?

@BrightYellowDaffodil

But repair and maintenance are only ONE part of the additional costs that landlords have! You clearly have no idea what the costs are.

The other costs are, presumably, those that landlords choose to take on when deciding to be a landlord if they know what they're letting themselves in for (and many seem not to). I'm quite in acceptance that renting will be more expensive than owning but it shouldn't be that much more expensive. That's why landlording should be left to professionals who have economies of scale and aren't passing on 100% of their costs to one tenant.

Plus, in terms of repairs tenants, quite rightly as they are paying for the service, put everything that needs fixed to their landlord to organise and pay for, whereas if you were an owner occupier you would do some of it/ a lot of it yourself to save money.

The landlord of the flat next to mine does all the maintenance of the flat himself. Plenty of landlords do, in the same way that plenty of homeowners get someone in because they don't know how to do the work/don't have time etc. And that's always assuming that tenants don't do some small repairs and maintenance themselves, because I sure as hell did.

@BrightYellowDaffodil I think you forget a couple of things - one is that the BTL mortgage agreement often stipulates a minimum rent (someone on here mentioned theirs was 145% of the mortgage payment) AND the fact that the landlord then has to pay tax on the profits (usually 40% I imagine). Not to mention service charges and ground rents if the BTL is a flat.

They then also get hit by double stamp duty and CGT if they ever sell it - being a landlord really isn't the money making scheme it used to be.

I'm an inadvertent landlord and the rent is £400 more than the mortgage payments... so we're literally netting zero.

[quote BrightYellowDaffodil]@Onlinedilema

The non indigenous population should only allowed to rent.

Eh? Why? Is a skin tone check going to be part of the mortgage approval process? [/quote]

I think it's be fair to say British passport or dual citizenship, but indigenous doesn't sound right. You must be ethnically English to rent?

Buy, even

@Juno231 That was me that said about rent values being 145% of a mortgage payment so I certainly hadn't forgotten! I don't know whether BTL mortgages specify a minimum rent because the one I referenced above is a residential mortgage and that clause covers me renting it out while keeping the same mortgage (if, say, I moved overseas in the short term). But even if there are minimum rents, landlords should know all these costs before they go into it and worked out whether its financially viable (although I appreciate that some end up being accidental landlords, in which case I presume they're just trying to cover their costs), rather than hiking their rents later so they're making a profit.

As far as I'm aware the changes to tax arrangements were designed to make BTLing less attractive. Likewise the CGT and stamp duty.

Blame the government not the landlord! We own a second home which will be our income as OAPs because state and private pensions are rubbish unless you’re a CEO!

Don't vote for fat cats to run the country, when the next election occurs.

@WTAFhappened123

Blame the government not the landlord! We own a second home which will be our income as OAPs because state and private pensions are rubbish unless you’re a CEO!

That is understandable. My ire is more aimed at those that keep hoovering up homes and lining their pockets.

It is jealousy. Did you want to buy another house or are you just angry?
If you were not actively looking to buy then so what difference to you ?

You must be ethnically English to rent

there is no such thing as "ethnically English".

I think what was meant was people who live here as opposed to overseas residents buying up properties and pushing prices up. Denmark and New Zealand do not allow this.

Yes we do live in a capitalist society and none of this is illegal. But I agree with some of the moral arguments posted.
A lot of the problem is affordability, high rents are the cause of a great deal of poverty even among families with two jobs

Just a reminder it was Labours idea originally to allow people to buy their council house, too easy to blame it on Maggie. We used to live in a housing association property which we couldn’t buy but were given the equivalent in cash which we used to put as a deposit on a house. This was in the 80s. I think it was a great idea, it got us on the London housing market. I don’t suppose it happens now.

You must be ethnically English to rent

No, people from all ethnicities rent. To not let to someone on the grounds of race is discriminatory and against the law, surely. That used to happen here in bygone times, eg landlords would specify they wanted 'white' tenants (or more precisely what they didn't want). That isn't allowed nowadays. That's not to say a landlord wouldn't do it because they might, and hide the fact, but most let through estate agents who don't care about such things as long as the prospective tenant can pay the rent.

Isn't part of the problem that interest rates are so low?

I'm a single parent, I got our investment property in the divorce, very cheap small weatherboard house near another small city.

It's had some capital growth, but it's not enough for me to be able to buy a small apartment where I actually live.

I've been saving for years and am now thinking maybe I use that money to buy another rental and perhaps in 2/3 years it may provide me with enough capital between both to buy somewhere to live in (currently in my rental 8 years).
Isn’t part of the problem that you treated property you weren’t resident in as an investment in the first place? The irony in your post!

We all have a chance to do that. Depends on your lifestyle choices.

BTL is its self isn’t an issue - the cost of rent is bonkers though. This is in part, due to ridiculous taxes on the revenue from BTL now. Which means banks (if mortgage) enforce “minimal rental income”. It’s screwing over the people who need to rent (and little chance of ever saving for a mortgage). Also turning your small investment BLT decent landlord off BLT - not worth it. So who wins?? Ahhh the much larger rental businesses. You can invest in these businesses through nice tax efficient ways vs BTL.
Empty second homes - I do think should be banned and like others on mnet, I don’t agree with control. However these don’t give anything back to local communities - holiday homes do.

I agree @flashbac but I am a terrible hypocrite because we’ve got two homes, although we do use both every week ourselves and neither are BTL. I believe that this country is reverting to the Victorian age; there is so much ever-widening gap between rich and poor. We’ve had two homes for 12 years for work purposes, we both have peripatetic jobs and having two places enables us to cut travel time etc. We are now sorting it out as our respective employers recognise that we can work at home effectively (thanks to the pandemic), so as soon as we can, one will go up for sale and we’ve already said we’d prefer not to sell to an investor.

Sorry I think I have used the wrong word. I wrote indigenous but I mean native (I think!)
Basically homes should be available to the British populatuon, lots of countries take this approach.
I'm sorry if I caused offense of course I am not referring to the colour of anyone's skin.
I mean for example, Russian oligarchs should not be able to buy up properties whilst British people cannot get a foot on the ladder.

Cheap lending. Landlords become the market. Perfect storm for another bank crash.

Contact HMRC on those who buy up everything. Too often they are registered abroad and don't pay tax in the UK. The HMRC will investigate no matter what. It might give those BTL who are doing the system akick up the rear-end.

Lack of social housing is a major problem. Something very close to my heart at the moment, I’m afraid.

I understand where you are coming from but as far as I am aware the new high rise apartments blocks are offered by agents to those abroad, in the winter you can see that they are not even let out but used as a bank for their money - this pushes up the majority of the housing market. The council will sometimes get a primary school or a few flats for social housing that tenants access through a different door.
Landlords that live and work in this country generally are good and let to the local population, keep their houses in good order much better than the damp ridden flats that the council rent out. They are usually in roads rather than estates and if looked after have more of a community, some of their tenants staying over 5 years. The greedy landlords who put 10+ single men into a house and those that put tenants into sheds or dig down to make basement dwellings renting out without windows and without permission should have their property confiscated. Most landlords that I know look after their tenants, the house and care or perhaps the opposite would be have some large conglomerate to buy up property, then you could spend all day trying to get through to someone to report that your washing machine has broken down. As they are accountable to their shareholders who live abroad and don’t pay tax in the UK.
Good landlords should be praised and bad landlords should have their houses confiscated and pay a fine that would go directly to the tenant.

I couldn’t agree more, one person’s home should not be another person’s pension. BTL landlords make me sick.