To think private rent increases should be limited to inflation only

[Fancymice]

We are currently applying to rent a 2 bedroom house for £785 a month. The same house was up for rent previously 2 years ago for £695.

The seems like a massive increase, and other houses for rent on the area seem to have gone up by the same or even more. We're currently in a 3 bed for £850, but it has a dreadful damp problem. No doubt our landlord will paint it and put it back up for £900/£950.

Aibu to think private landlords should be limited in how much they increase rent? I understand that there is limited supply, so landlords are taking advantage of this to put up prices, but like most people my wages are not increasing on real terms and having a somewhere to live is quickly becoming unaffordable!!

There needs to be something done about rent being capped. Where I live the latest craze is to charge £6 to 800 for a house share.

Maybe stop for foreign investor landlords would be a good start as well. The ones who snap up cheap property after property never having stepped foot in it and then don’t even spend their profits in the local economy.

I don’t think my landlord would even know what the outside of my house looks like let alone who we are. Just house purchase number 6 out of 34. He just rings his property manager and says he wants more cheap houses of X size and no more they Y spent.

When I was young a bedsit was common. One room to live sleep in a kitchen with shared bathroom do they still exist?

Friends son an EA in Manchester sold a complete block of flats off plan to a Chinese consortium,

rent should be based on the monthly mortgage repayment the landlord has on the property, up to 90%
So you expect the Landlord to subsidise the tenant for 10% of the mortgage, agents fees, insurance, repairs and maintenance, gas inspections, hefty service charge fees if it's in a block, the risk of the tenant defaulting on their minimal contribution to the cost of the property?
What about people that are renting out an unmortgaged property that they have inherited, or is the home of someone that has had to move in to care - are they expected to let tenants move in rent free?

Some people are completely batshit.

We should have rent control in the uk

@Hankunamatata

We should have rent control in the uk

Then you get slummy properties as we used to have

We are renting in France, extremely desirable city centre area. We’ve been here for 14 years: in all that time our rent has increased by less than 100€, less than 10% in total because it is pegged to cost of living increases.

Mean while, we rent s couple of flats out in the U.K. also desirable, city centre. The rents have increased by nearly 60% in the same 14 years. We’ve even said no to a few proposed rent increases (from our agent) as they seemed to be following straight on from a previous one.

Even though it is as business and we generally treat it as such, I think it would benefit society for the cost of rental housing to be controlled by something other than what-can-we-push-them-to? Market forces

My tenant didn't get a rent rise for five years but insurance, boiler inspections shot up plus energy performance certificates we also paid for anything they needed for their home DIY wise house and garden.

Got advice from friend in HA who said a ten percent rise was reasonable, one tenant offered five percent the other paid. We're still £200 per month below what others are asking for the same type of property.

If we get a sniff of rent control we will sell knowing our tenants are in no position to buy.

This year we put in new windows which were blown for them.

Frankly at this stage in our life if they weren't so nice we would sell

Now many people have the prospect of giving all their salary to a landlord with little hope of owning their own homes. I think it’s more resentment than jealousy
No offence but I don't really care for the reason why my tenants are not owners. It's none of my business and if they move one day to but a house, I will still be a landlord to someone else who can't or doesn't want to buy.

It's not a personal situation so why resentment? You might give all your salary but I'm not pocketing it all to enjoy what you can't. It doesn't work like this at all, the government made sure of that.

There was rent control in the UK, I think until around the 1990's.

A few years ago I worked for a charity that owned a portfolio of rented residential property (an endowment from many years ago). Properties still under controlled rent were about 20% of market rate, and cost the charity annually in order to keep up with repairs and maintenance, rather than generating income.
Over the years they'd either had to sell off property that became available with the proceeds going towards maintenance, or where they could afford to, completely refurbish prepertie to let out at market rent and subsidise the controlled rent ones. The controlled rent properties were a massive drain on the income that should have been going towards their charitable purpose.
There was a bureaucratic process to increase the rent every few years - often a day or more of admin to secure a monthly increase of £1 or £2, and from memory a deadline that if you missed, you then couldn't increase the rent at all for a certain number of years.

your mortgage increased by £200 a month every couple of years
Mortgage rates have been low since the crash of 2008 - but in earlier years, a mortgage payment that only increased every couple of years would have been very welcome.

I think the resentment comes from people being able to buy when houses were a lot cheaper, or they bought their council house incredibly cheaply and now they are able to rent the same house for rents that many people on ordinary salaries find crippling, because they are paying the landlords mortgage, all his costs plus a profit for him. How can they then save to buy their own house so they are not stuck renting all their life with the real prospect of poverty in old age. I however blame the government for this because I think they have deliberately encouraged this to keep people poor unable to get assets themselves. It’s going to be really bad for the next generation who can’t get help from their parents.

Frankly at this stage in our life if they weren't so nice we would sell
Exactly the same here. When they moved in 4 years ago, I prayed they wouldn't move out in 6 months. I now almost hope they'll announce they are moving so I can sell.

I have t increased the rent since they've moved, done all the repairs, checks etc...I don't have the heart to ask them to move when I know there are no similar properties in the town, let alone at this rental price. They are nice people.

No other business owner would expect to end up with an asset worth several hundred thousand pounds without putting in any of their own money.

DW wanted to buy a two-bedroom flat to let out this year, despite me pointing she would be lucky if the rent covered her related outgoings. She would have put up a 250K deposit, paid about 30K stamp duty and might have had to spend 10K to 20K refurbishing. Her mortgage (constrained by her salary of just under 100K) would be 325K. Please tell me how she can make hundreds of thousands without putting any money in, so I can pass on the information, she's clearly doing something wrong.