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

Surely you need someone willing to stay in them for the property to be profitable though. You are assuming that if all landlords do this, there would be an abundance of holiday makers willing to stay. If there is over supply of holoday homes you would still need to drop your prices and spend money on the property anyway. The only thing left is to sell if there is no regular income from it, or move in yourself.

when you look at it like that, selling does seem the better option. I can see what you are getting at.

I'm curious about this, is this about being green?

I have heard that there will be unattainable modifications put on home owners. Is this anyone who owns a house? Or just those being let out?

Is it the UK?

Do you own your own home or do you rent?

Just sell it. You are not a martyr or a hero. And thank your tenants for paying your mortgage/pension for the last ten years.

Acceptable standard for who? As I said the environmental impact of producing and installing 20 UPVC windows is far greater than the impact of not changing the windows, the impact of ripping out a perfectly functional heating system to install a new one which is marginally better consumes a huge amount of initial energy in production. As I said I don't particularly like a double glazed house because I like a cooler environment personally therefore single glazing suits me and I am not ramping up my heating to compensate so why should I have to do something environmentally damaging to meet an arbitrary standard.

An acceptable standard defined by the government. Please show me your calculations regarding environmental impact (UPVC vs aluminium double/triple glazed and gas boiler versus air source/bore hole and array ground source heat pumps) because the energy consultants we have spoken with and the SAP calculations produced for our properties (pre and post upgrade) would not suggest what you are claiming at all.

house prices are too high not because landlords keep buying them up. If that were the case rent would be dirt cheap. House prices are too high because there are not enough houses - to buy or rent. Until we start building on a massive scale - rental
companies, social housing, private housing all of these sorts - we are not going to
solve the housing problem.

we are run by the NIMBY, moaning Tories though (although Boris did try to loosen planning regulation but this was extremely unpopular with the grey vote) so we are fucked until they get kicked out.

Why on earth would she sell at a discount to someone she doesn't know? Would you give a complete stranger thousands of pounds? And tat person could just sell at a profit and buy somewhere else anyway.

@Notlosinganyweight "Surely you need someone willing to stay in them for the property to be profitable though."

My costs for owning are roughly
£1100 annual service charge
£40 ground rent
£300 landlord insurance

If the flat is empty i wouldn't have to pay for electrical safety checks, annual gas checks, etc but i would then have to pay council tax (its a teeny studio so on the lowest band).

So say very roughly my annual costs for having an empty untenanted flat would be £2,500

I bought my studio for just over £60k 9 years ago.It was a cash purchase so zero mortgage. Id guess its now valued somewhere around £130k-£140k.

So you can see that average house price gains far outstrip annual costs. So even sitting empty it would kind of cost me cash, but overall still gain. House prices can go up as well as down obviously but long term they tend to increase so if there is a downturn in the market i just wouldn't sell.

Who said anything about upvc vs aluminium or gas boiler vs air/ground source heat pump? Those may be relevant your property and may be a good choice, but those aren't the universal choices! Do your calculations include the environmental impact of production and transport of goods or just the ongoing costs in terms of bills etc?

Everyone hates landlords. It’s an amazing Tory PR trick designed to get renters onside (which they are largely exploiting via companies, I expect. I’ll eat my hat of the likes of Jacob Reese Mogg doesn’t own housing in one for or another. Social housing, probably.)

1. Tenants might be ‘paying the mortgage’, but not the other costs associated with owning property that renters don’t see. Landlords have building insurance, pay gas, electric and fire safety checks, maintenance and upgrade costs and bear the costs of running a business and the cost of the tenancy itself. If you can’t get a mortgage, because you don’t have a deposit the landlord is providing that to you free of charge. If you can’t get a mortgage because your credit isn’t good enough, then you are benefitting from your landlords credit rating. There are costs and problems associated with maintaining a credit rating good enough to get a mortgage. Of course it’s ridiculous to say that a landlord is allowing you to use their deposit free of charge. Almost as ridiculous as it is to say that the tenant is paying the mortgage. I’m reality, renting is a partnership. The tenants usually need a deposit or a good credit rating, and the landlord provides that in return for some of the costs of finance. Some landlords abuse this, and we need good legislation to prevent them being bastards. Painting us all as bastards anyway means the nice ones will sell up. Will that help?

Assuming that all landlords are renting dumps is also unhelpful. My Victorian terrace rental is a D. My own house is a D. Assuming the EPC is worth the paper it’s written on, I then live in a dump too. I have no plans to upgrade my own EPC, it’s fine. (but I will update my tenants’, of course)

HMOs and social landlords are exempt from EPC upgrades. That means that both the poorest and most vulnerable tenants, AND the most profitable and grabby landlords, who are also benefitting from taxpayers money in the form of housing benefit, are exempt from the latest regulations. Guess we know where the Tory donors (and likely many of the party) have their money invested, then…….

Lots and lots of landlords have sold up following covid. Estimates say that rental stocks are down fifty percent, creating a rental crisis. Anyone noticed the house price fall? No? Though not. So if these grabby landlords were so evilly raising house prices by hoarding them, why haven’t they crashed, letting all the first time buyers in on the good deals? It’s what everyone said the bastards should do. Only many have, and instead of lots of renters being a position to buy, now many renters can’t even rent. Hmmmm.

So maybe, just maybe, it….wasn’t evil landlords driving the prices up? Maybe landlords were providing a service which has now been restricted like everyone said it should be, and now short supply has increased prices. Oh dear. I do feel for renters, but having been unfairly vilified for so long, it’s harder than I’d like.

I haven’t actually had to change much about my practice in the twenty years I’ve been renting property. Which shows that I have been a good landlord, because my standards didn’t need to be raised - I was already meeting current standards. And I was in favour of the all the legislation so far, because it meant all renters got better homes, not just mine. But I’m not in favour of the EPC raises, because it’s not fair. Social landlords are big businesses profiting off tax-payers money in the form of housing benefit, and they are exempt and are renting to some of the poorest in society. It seems unfair on both small landlords and on social housing tenants (who are surely most in need of energy efficient homes) that they should be exempt. And many HMO’s are similar. Not all HMO’s are slums, but many are as close as legally allowed, and they are the most profitable of properties for the most basic of accommodation. It seems immoral to encourage (in fact all but force) smaller landlords to shift to them because they can’t profitably meet EPC standards any other way. And private landlords shouldn’t be expected to provide a social service at no profit. Social landlords should. But they are exempt…..

In tarring all landlords with the same brush, and being so nasty towards landlords, renters (and others who are in the all-landlords-are-bastards camp) are driving good landlords out of the business, and leaving the bastards behind, coining additional profits from the limited supply (because real bastards don’t care if the peasants think they are bastards). This is both raising rents and lowering standards, because the actual bastards are exempting themselves and their mates. Maybe consider that before posting your kneejerk reactions about landlords. I don’t care. No one hated me for being a landlord twenty years ago, and no one I actually know thinks I’m a bastard now. It’s Tory manipulation to scapegoat small landlords so the actual bastards can hide behind big companies and pretend they are on the renter’s side. They are not, but it’s not me who voted for them, and it isn’t me who will suffer.

@notanothertakeaway , I can see how it could be illegal if e.g. a property was sold for well under market value, in order to reduce or eliminate capital gains tax.

I’ve personally known a case of this - the place ostensibly on the open market, but it was a pretence. My offer of around £220k was turned down for what seemed a very weird reason - only to find a few months later on nethouseprices that it had sold for around £186k. It was a former rental, so maybe it was sold to a son or daughter, as well as reducing CGT - or else to a mate, to reduce CGT - but with a hefty brown envelope transaction thrown in.

Whether such people ever get caught I wouldn’t like to say, but I suspect not.

Why should a lovely Victorian property lose all its character (you need to build inner walls to add insulation hiding the lovely picture rails etc). In conservation areas you can't just remove the windows and add double glazing, they must be beyond repair and even then it's often like for like wooden windows which look lovely. The conservation officer would have a dicky fit if you said you were building internal walls or adding a composite door.

It's is going to push more and more families out of areas they have grown up in. My husband would love to go back to where he grew up we own our house so can buy a Victorian house, the one he likes at the moment only has the potential to be a D.

At the end of the day no one if forcing the tenants to rent the D band property and no one is forcing us to buy one. If we don't want to take the hit on the bills we can stay in our modern house on the outskirts of town.

My Victorian terrace rental is a D. My own house is a D.

My detached house built in 1995 according to the building regs of the time (double glazing, some roof insulation, cavity wall with the interior being thermalite blocks) is also a D. Lots of houses which are not remotely 'dumps' are.

Who said anything about upvc vs aluminium or gas boiler vs air/ground source heat pump? Those may be relevant your property and may be a good choice, but those aren't the universal choices! Do your calculations include the environmental impact of production and transport of goods or just the ongoing costs in terms of bills etc?

Yes, of course these were taken into consideration. That's why I was asking for your comparable calculations on environmental impact. I would like to compare your data with those we have, if you would be willing to share your sources.

@Grumpybutfunny not all Victorian properties (still) have character features! The thing that put us off internal wall insulation is the radiators being in the way - we don’t have any picture rails, cornicing etc at all. No high ceilings either which people seem to think all Victorian properties have. If you did have picture rails etc you could carefully move it onto the new plaster.
For the windows they don’t even need to be replaced if you put secondary glazing instead - had this in a listed place I lived in before. Like a second window inside your window.

@Lovethemarsbars

But if there were no private rents and not enough housing stock and you couldn't get a mortgage - what would people do?

Are you an advocate to outlaw private renting?

I’m not a fan of melting ice caps.

Get the double glazing installed.

@Parsley1234 · Today 11:32
@Dotjones you do realise you can be prosecuted for selling a property under market value ?
Under what legislation?

I don’t see how that would help as we are talking about property specific information and as I keep pointing out every property is different hence the EPC recommendations that may be totally appropriate for one being nonsensical for another. There are some recommendations that are eminently sensible and make real sense on a cost benefit basis, other suggestions not so much. For example installing a wind turbine costs 15-25000, saving 590 a year. Increase of points on EPC 12. That to me is a different kettle of fish from roof insulation cost 1500-3000 saving 690 a year increase in EPC points 9. If you can’t see that one of those is a more sensible and realistic suggestion then we are on very different pages!

I’m not a fan of melting ice caps.
Get the double glazing installed.

Gotta agree - and low energy bills at a time when so many are struggling are making our tenants very happy and were therefore well worth the investment in our properties.

All the landlord haters on this thread, I ask you one simple question:

What would YOU do to create more homes for people who want or need to rent?

The country needs private landlords to provide housing stock for people who can't get social housing. Apart from the usual response of 'build more homes' with no thought of how/where/when that will work, what is your solution to the lack of homes?

Bringing in expensive legislation to bring rented homes to a standard in excess of most private homes will force private landlords out of the marketplace, because, contrary to what the pps on here think, it's difficult to make a fortune being a landlord.
So where will the tenants go then?

I visited a Victorian end of terrace house in London Borough of Waltham Forest fairly recently.

This had been acquired by WF Council and improved with every energy saving method they could think of.

Lots of people visited using (free) tickets. They did explanatory tours. The energy improvements they did included:

Under the floorboards spray on insulation (done by a small robot car ) - they had to cut a 30x30cm hole into the floor board to initially place the sprayer. It was then guided by computer from the room. Ground floor only.

A heat source pump in the back garden.

Internal insulated plasterboard (so slightly smaller rooms).

They kept the old glazing as it was reasonable but not worth replacement.

Solar panels on the roof at r back of the house and part of the kitchen made into a room for the giant batteries to store energy.

Something under the bath tub to remove and reuse the heat that old bathwater has before it goes into the drains.

There was a multitude of other stuff too.

They spent £67,000 on energy saving improvements in this conservation area 4 bed house.

The Council plan to let a local family rent it and will monitor energy usage.

It was really interesting to see and hear how it can be done, but how long would it take to save £67,000 in energy costs?

Some private rentals and some private landlords are needed but the point is there are too many and that is having an impact on younger people who may never be able to afford their own homes. If it's a bit less profitable and there are fewer landlords as a result that will be a good thing.
If you want to sell do so. There will be enough people who still want be landlords and people who want to buy so don't feel that's the economy will collapse without you.

There are lots of legislation that covers tax fraud and way too extensive to quote the legislation in full here. But the principal tax fraud offences are:

• fraudulent evasion of income tax

• fraudulent evasion of VAT

• cheating the public revenue

• providing false documents or information to HMRC, and

• fraudulent evasion of excise duty on imported goods or smuggling goods (eg cigarettes, alcohol)

The majority of these offences are created by statute, with the exception of the offence of cheating the public revenue, which is a common law offence, expressly preserved by the Theft Act 1968.

The majority of these offences are also triable either-way (ie they can be tried in the Crown Court or the magistrates' court).

The common law offence of cheating the public revenue is indictable only (and can only be tried in the Crown Court).