Landlords are hated but

[Parsley1234]

I am a landlord tenants been in situ for over 10 years very happily in a character Victorian terrace rent raises minimum I leave them alone get repairs done in a timely manner however from 2028 I will have to either sell holiday let or leave vacant the property as the modifications are untenable for me. Double glazing adding internal walls to make small rooms smaller etc. We are in a housing crisis this is going to make it worse and for all of you who want to have a go at landlords maybe look at the government housing policy first

They're not given houses. They're in hostels and detention centres. Maybe you should stop reading the red tops . . ..

But that isn’t what’s happening. Or we wouldn’t have a rental crisis.

@dianthus101 i don’t think you understand complex issues

the housing market is just not that simple.

for example often people rent smaller places before buying bigger.

so in your unbelievably simplistic scenario of one person buying so one less person out of the rental market….

a couple are living in a small one bed so they can save to buy a family home. They buy a three bed house being sold by a landlord. So now there is one a one bedroom flat available to rent but no three bedroom house.

the family who was renting the three bedroom
house can’t buy for all sorts of reasons - often they can’t afford it. Where does that family go?

I rented for many years and had different landlords, have to say I feel for both sides. There are landlords that are genuinely good, do not do it for the money and these new rules will screw them over (and potentially their tenants too).
But at the same time, some of LL's can be money grabbing greedy **.
I remember going to view a flat and this woman (mid 30s) got out of her fancy car, said how she owned 10 properties and took me into this absolutely disgusting flat, I was truly shocked she thought someone could live in a place like that. It was a total slum. If you have so many properties and they are a total dump, then maybe sell at least one and use that money to make the remaining ones livable? Personally, I could never ever try to rent something so disgusting to other people.
I hope this group of landlords will be forced to either sell or do thing up properly.

👏Well done you. I am very similar. I was bought up in a very poor household, no working adults, no holidays or car. I worked very hard and bought my own 1 bedroom flat. Met my partner and moved in with him, so rented out my flat. I am not greedy. I have a job and any extra money I make from having a flat goes towards my DS's future. That is not greed, it's just trying to do my best with what I've got.

Of course we would still have a housing crisis because there are not enough properties available for people to live in! You are not increasing the number of properties available for people to live in by buying one that already exists.

Putting it another way, if you buy a property from an owner occupier you will have increased the number of properties available to rent by one but the number of people wanting to rent will also have increased by one because the previous owner occupier now needs to rent somewhere to live (as in the post above). It will therefore have zero effect on the number of people wanting to rent vs. the number of rental properties.

@Lunar270

Amateur is not meant to be derogatory at all and doesn’t mean you are a poor landlord, just that it’s not your main or only income (it actually means to do something for the love of it, not for a living). I don’t know what else to call landlords who don’t depend on their income to keep their families fed and housed. Hobby landlords? Small landlords? Side-lets? 🤷‍♀️

Portfolio Landlords (Professional landlords? Career Landlords? Full-time landlords?) have generally taken out interest only mortgages, and then remortgaged each property every two years and bought one (or sometimes two) more with the equity. They very quickly need to be managing them full time, and I imagine it pays fairly well. That’s why they use interest only. They’re building portfolios. It’s pretty common for businesses to lease premises and large, costly equipment isn’t it?

These are obviously two extremes of Widow-let’s-property-to-raise child and Ruthless-Bastard-builds-exponential-property-empire. I imagine that relatively few landlords are dedicated career landlords in this way, and most landlords are smaller fry. But it leaves three points which the ‘the tenants are paying your mortgage and raising house prices’ belief doesn’t account for.

1. There are lots more landlords who have just a few properties than have huge portfolios. You are much more likely to be addressing one that isn’t a Ruthkess portfolio landlord than one that is.

2. Someone with just a few properties is not likely to be doing a lot of buying up of properties and driving house prices up. Aggressive portfolio landlords may well be. But the vilification of landlords isn’t bothering them one bit, and the tax and legislation changes won’t affect them much either. They’re shielded in limited companies or largely exempt.

3. Which kind of landlord do you think is selling up due to changes brought in by Rishi and his Portfolio Landlord wife and his Tory mates? So what’s happening to residential letting?

Landlords have been (relatively) small and diversified in towns and cities and to some extent across the country as the landed gentry have begun to be eroded since the wars. It’s now fast being taken over by big business in the way that shops have been. Where large chains are the norm and small independents the exception. I don’t think that will be a good thing for renters, residential buyers or the country in general.

The family renting a three bedroom house would look for other rental accommodation if they couldn’t afford to buy. I’m not sure of the relevance of your point.

I am giving a simplistic scenario to try and make you understand the basic maths not because I don't understand that the housing market is not simple. If you buy a property that already exists you are not increasing the number properties available for people to live in. You are just moving things around.

@dianthus101 bur the point is that not all rental properties are the same. surely you can understand that.

a family house available to rent has been swapped for a one bedroom flat.

or it might be geographical. A landlord sells a flat in London to homeowners who move out a house in wales. So now there might be a house for rent in wales - where less people want to live - but one less house to rent in London.

or someone has been living with their parents to save a deposit and buy a house from a landlord. Their parents aren’t going to rent a room in their house when they leave. So one less property to rent.

or someone moves out of a house share to buy and buys a a two bedroom flat from a landlord. So now there’s one free room to rent in a house share - but one less two bedroom flat that a family could rent.

there are many many examples like this.

And the family needing a three bedroom house has to pay more rent in my scenario becaus there are less three bedroom houses available or live in a smalller house with a reduced quality of living.

The Scottish Government has gone crazy with requirements on landlords and now requiring all holiday lets to be licensed and upgraded to similar standards too, I think costing landlords several thousands each year. Now they want to introduce rent controls and obviously if providing accommodation to this standard costs more than it brings in in rent, then something has to give. It would partially crash the property market, and those ready to buy at that point in time stand to benefit from it hugely.

As far as I can see, the main result of this is that a lot of private landlords will sell up to large corporations who will operate at a lesser level of personal responsibility and tenant misery will increase in the long term. This is what has happened in other countries who have tried similar systems.

Even in England, the EPC requirements massively benefit new house builders because the requirements are designed primarily to be applied to new builds, not Victorian or older properties which are more energy efficient in their own way, not least because they have been there for longer and have already paid back their own carbon deficit over the many years of their existence!

And I suspect those who stand to gain are somehow supporting these policies either directly or indirectly.

Honestly, its becoming like life under a communist regime here at times at the moment, we've been banned by Nature.Scot from parking near our local beaches now because some people were camping. So they are really difficult to access due to no public transport.

So you are saying that by being a landlord and preventing people from moving out of house shares into their own home, moving out of a one bedroom rental flats into three bedroom house of their own, leaving a room in their parents’ house to a house of their own, you are increasing the number of properties available and helping the housing crisis. How kind of you.

@dianthus101 no. I saying that the impact of the changes which are the subject of this thread will have a disproportionately unfair impact on renters.

some - but not all - renters are economically disadvantaged.

so it is a policy meant to help renters that is only going to make life harder for renters.

as you have so brilliantly demonstrated - a lot of dumb people come up with dumb solutions to the significant housing issues in this country - and unfortunately some of those dumb people are also in charge of government policy.

Your examples don't demonstrate that all.

Can’t argue with stupid 🤷‍♀️

I'm still renting. It gets me down.
My landlord is actually a nice enough bloke. Totally disastrous about getting repairs done, and the place is falling apart. But then he keeps the rent low, and I'm able to save a little bit. The prospect of ever being a home owner currently feels hopeless. Landlords generally own more than one home. Sorry, but that makes them somewhat to blame for the housing crisis.
If people want to be landlords, go ahead, but admit it's usually a selfish venture, making relatively easy money from people much poorer than themselves; please don't pretend it's altruism in even the slightest way. That's the bit I find offensive.

Exactly what I was thinking.

Please try not to be patronising.
Affordable homes are simply not being built fast enough to make more than the smallest impact on the housing crisis. Which is why it's important not to squeeze the already woefully insufficient supply of rental properties. Of course we all know that if x thousand affordable homes could be built then we could magic away homelessness but that's not going to happen.
Yes landlords need to be made more accountable for the condition of their property but there's no point putting so much bureaucracy in place that they decide not to bother to rent out their properties.

We have 30 properties that we rent out in Scotland. Our main - and only - income.

We are attentive, friendly and understanding.

The slander against landlords is unbelievable. Worked our tits off to get to this stage. Shitting ourselves with the ever changing rules. And the rise in mortgage base rates.

Yes.

That just wouldn't work. Social housing is not going to supply luxury rentals. Or extra bedrooms for those that want them for their eow children for example.

I'm not. It wasn't me saying that!

Sorry, but how can anyone justify owning 30 properties? It's obscene.
Most of your tenants probably work extremely hard too.
You've made a choice to be landlords. Many tenants don't have a choice.

It would work perfectly well. Luxury rentals, available to people who can afford them and choose to live in them, would continue to exist obviously. What percentage of the rental market do you think that is? And what percentage of them are owned by small landlords? What do you think happened in the days when there was enough social housing to go round?

So the proposal is for a Singaporean style housing system? 80% housed in basic apartments rented from the UK Housing Service and the remaining 20% rent privately or buy?

Maybe we should adopt their compulsory social saving system and sort out the NHS while we're at it?

I'm not being sarcastic. Could a party succeed with this kind of proposal?