I do understand that. I would class my lets as part time work, and with a primary school child (for six of the last seven years) and little family help, I would have thought it was not in forgivable for me to use my late husband’s legacy as a supplementary income and work part time. It’s what I would have done if he was alive. It’s one way he can provide for her now. Especially given that it never makes me even an average single wage, and I’m hardly sitting back and raking it in. I do all I can on them myself - cleaning, decorating, repairs and maintenance, gardening, fetching and installing replacement furniture or appliances, disposing of old ones. inventory, inspections, viewings, contracts, deposit schemes, licences, advertising. And bloody re-financing. I used to do ten month lets for students, which is relatively time intensive, but worked well around school holidays (covid put a stop to that) You don’t just let it once, and sit back and take the money unless something breaks! (You might if you have a long term tenant and one house) you can’t have it both ways. Either I’m amateur with a little side hustle making a bit of extra cash, or a professional doing a job in a highly regulated (and rightly so) sector which makes me money from the capital and time I invest in it, just like any other business.
Why isn’t that work? Feels like work, when I deep clean three properties every June on my own. Or re-decorate one top to bottom every July. It would be work if I paid someone else to do it. It doesn’t ‘not count’ because it’s on a rental property. Also, if my husband had had a pension, and I was now living off that, who would care that I ‘wasn’t working’? It’s considerably more passive, pays fewer taxes and could be just as problematic invested in say, energy shares. Yet no one would even ask. Why scapegoat on property so much? It’s also keeping me off benefits and laying taxes (well, it was. Now, not so much) - or is that preferable? Also, do you know how much widowed parent’s benefits have been slashed? Cos I do, and it’s a disgrace.
I honestly think it’s a Tory ploy to get the renters vote. And then I think you need to be very careful about buying into it. Because if there’s one thing you can guarantee the Tory’s will protect, it’s their own interests, and for a lot them property will be part of that. And unlike me, they DGAF if you think they’re leeching-bastards trousering any cash they can, because they are. Divide and conquer. It won’t affect the actual bastards either (notice social housing is exempt from the latest EPC upgrades?) just the better ones, who try to provide decent properties for a decent return. And which landlords would you like to sell up and which to keep renting? The windows and pensioners like me, or say, the likes of Sir Slumlord-Peer-Hog’s Housing association empire, who is using his housing association to harvest taxpayers money via some of the poorest people in the ropiest properties and profit from housing benefit? And I’m getting in the neck for renting to students! (most of whom have first homes, and chose to go away to uni for the experience and lifestyle!)