To think renting shouldn't be this effing difficult?!

[mrsmmrsimrsssimrs]

Never known anything like it is right now (we're in London). Used to be, you'd register with a load of agents, properties came up, you'd get viewings then deliberate a bit over which was best until you found the place that best suited your needs. Obviously you wouldn't always get it, or at least first time, but you'd find something in a month or so after one or two unsuccessful offers.

Now - 40 people trying to view each property, offers have to be in within literally hours or you miss it, properties snapped up sometimes before you can even view them. Viewings seem to be like gold dust. Some properties the agents seem barely bothered about getting access to so they just sit there while you call them daily trying to get in. Agents are rude, dismissive (not all, but significantly more than I remember in the past). Hardly any properties becoming available in the first place then a mad rush to try and see anything that does come up. Passive aggressive comments about how flexible we can or can't be, despite basically no flexibility from the agents themselves.

How is anyone meant to find somewhere to live in these circumstances?! We've been looking for well over a month now and are no closer to finding somewhere than when we started. Eviction in 2 months and we can't just keep our whole lives on hold while we try to find places - it's taking up significant amounts of our working days and as we're both in retail we're not going to be able to do that much longer as it's obviously going to get somewhat busy between now and Christmas.

I've never felt more like cattle in my life.

Highly likely.
thanks to the Tory government it now costs money to be a landlord.

imagine you may have had a bit of a deposit and Decided to buy a rental property as your pension.

PREVIOUSLY the interest element of the mortgage was tax allowable & many were on interest only mortgages.

£500 a month rent income, £400 a month mortgage, gave £100 a month to pay towards insurance and general maintenance, with tax being paid on what’s left over.

landlords were in it for the long term growth in the housing market (or in some cases short term growth!).

now. The tax is payable on the £500!
so it’s £100/200 (or more) tax £400 mortgage (that might have gone up) plus costs.

even with rents going up, you can see why some landlords maybe withdrawing from the market or looking for long term stable tenants.

another Tory idea that’s worked perfectly to help people own their own home! 🙄
this rental crisis was forecast when this tax regime change was announced 5/6 years ago.

In Ireland the main website used by LLs and letting agents had 980 properties listed, for the entire country. The percentage of those offically homless and being housed in hubs, shelters, hotels and B&Bs that are fulltime employees is steadily increasing. Its a combination of factors incl lack of social housing, a slowdown in building across the board that means those that want to and can buy are looking at less choice and higher prices so stuck renting, investment funds buying up places that are for sale, Air B&B, the Ukranian crisis and landlords selling up because they pay so much tax its not worth it.
My ll is talking about selling and there is no where for us to go, if we find somewhere it will be down to pure luck and someone knowing someone that knows of a place....... Thats if we can affford it, rent has pretty much doubled in the housing estates we used to rent in a decade ago and obviously our wages have not!

This thread is exactly why the upcoming housing crash is a good thing. Housing is a human right and it shouldn’t be like this.

Sounds like that girl got a right bargain staying there for free for all that time. No doubt she’s done it before and she’ll do it again. If she’s forced to repay anything (which I doubt) it’ll be something insulting like £1 a month. What a disgrace.

How is that going to help

The Tories put up taxes on landlords by removing the ability to deduct interest expenses from their profit. Surprise.. lots of them sold up. Yes, putting taxes UP can actually cause social issues.

We are LL, we had a tenant who didn't pay before Covid and the changes in rules during the pandemic and court delays meant it took nearly two years to get him out. Meanwhile (after lockdown) he was on insta wining, dining and shopping. He still owes us 25k. It's been horrendous.

As pp have said the s21 changes and the EPC changes make it very difficult to be a landlord. Ours are old properties, wall cladding will be hugely expensive, ugly and we're worried that in two years they'll be considered a fire risk or will stop buildings breathing, so we will sell as flats become empty.

@InCheesusWeTrust as per 1992, rents dropped, housing became more affordable, BTL won’t be so appealing. A safe decent home is a human right and the shitshow in this country should never have been allowed to happen.

Friend of mine had a horrendous time trying to find somewhere in London recently. She was viewing 2 bed flats that were on for £1450 a month, and the agents told her she was missing out on places, because in reality, they were going for more like £1700/800 a month by people who could over bid. She was weeks from being technically homeless, before finding a place owned by an acquaintance.

I hear you but I’m afraid a month isn’t very long. I feel your pain though. We bought two years ago as this madness was beginning and we thought it was due to Covid. By all accounts this have become been more insane and it nearly broke us for several 4 months. It is supply and demand but I think this is unprecedented.

@Upthebracket22 and how exactly do you think a housing crash will help? What happens if people lose money they’ll need to rent and that market will be even more flooded. Your response is childish.

But if house prices dropped, a lot of renters could afford to buy, thus permanently leaving the rental sector

A crash would be terrible but a smaller correction to prices of 2 years ago would still benefit a lot of people

I don't think it will workout that way now. Demand is bigger than supply and price crash will not change it. If anything might add to it by adding more people to the pool when they can't afford mortgages or lose houses.
Price crash does not happen in vacuum.

Btl is already not appealing hence the issue with supply

Frankly, they wouldn't. Prople always say this but there are not tens of thousands of renters everywhere with deposits.
Sevondly, look what happens to mortgages ehen market wobbles. The criteria tighten.

How many people boight houses in 2009?

I do agree though that the price rise in last two years is ridiculous

How?
The more LL that sell up the less properties there will be available for rent. So the ones that are available the rents will increase on due to supply and demand.
Yes house prices may come down the more properties are up for sale but unless the banks introduce 0 deposit mortgages how does this help those renters?

Yes, but the whole reason landlords are turning to holiday lets is purely because of the tax and legal issues that have been forced on them. If long-term landlords made more money than those doing holiday lets, they would much prefer the long-term as it is less work for them.

It's not really the property price that's the issue though, it's the deposit that FTB need to raise. If the bank requires a 10% deposit and a house has reduced in value by £50k it sounds like a massive drop but it only reduces the deposit required by £5k.

Yeah, but tightening rules will negate that benefit

Actually a lot of renters do have enough for a deposit, the problem is they cannot get a large enough mortgage because prices have skyrocketed so much. There is even a term for it, which escapes me now. But basically, even if you can raise the deposit through saving or family help, you need to be on a relatively high salary to meet affordability for such a large mortgage.

This is our situation, DH inherited a decent chunk of money after his father died, but we are on average salaries and the mortgage we could get would only cover a 1 bed where we live. If prices went back to pre-pandemic level, we would be able to get a 2 bed (we have DC so need 2 bed).

It will be interesting to see what happens to private rental market in Scotland. Sturgeon looks likely to push through a rent freeze and eviction ban. So LL have mortgage rates going through the roof but can't pass any costs onwards. No matter how much a tenant owes or how much they trash property they can't be evicted. It is pretty obvious LL will leave in droves and renting in Scotland will be even more difficult. I am experienced LL and have 8 btl and rented them out for 18 years but I would never btl in Scotland. Nicola has no foresight as LL will sell their properties and she won't have enough accommodation to even home families with small children.

What does Sturgeon mean by an "Eviction ban"?

I keep hearing people on MN talking about LL not being able to no fault evict anymore, but this is a total misintepretation. It just means you can't no fault evict without a substantial, government specified notice period (6 months for new tenancies starting after December in Wales) and you have to wait a while to no fault evict when tenants first move in. But you can still evict for whatever reason you want, and to sell, it is just a slower process, and rightly so.

Hang on so tenants can refuse to pay their rent but can't be evicted?

Bad tenants give all tenants a bad reputation. When I was unemployed and homeless no one wanted to house me, as soon as I said I was on UC the door was shut in my face. I was outright told by one estate agent their properties were deliberately inflated in price so housing benefit applicants couldn't rent from them.

I have sympathy for landlords because it must be awful having a property destroyed and rent unpaid, but we aren't all like that!

It's not simply about the unemployed trashing the house, it's also that 2 full time employed adults are at home so much less that the wear and tear on the property is less. Hence given the choice of tenant (and at the moment the LL very much gets to choose) then why choose anyone unemployed, with kids, with pets etc.

Obviously there are other things to factor in, like tenants who are going to stay long term, so less turn around periods when the property is vacant and needs sprucing up.

But it is very much LL choice at the moment, so why take a theoretically riskier option, they are businesses not charities. The government has a responsibility to build more social housing, and are totally failing at that.