to think those who demonised BTL landlords are (partially) responsible for rental crisis

[LargeDeviation]

Many small landlords are selling because:

• mortgate interest is now only partially deductible for tax
• S21 evictions are being stopped, meaning it will be impossible to kick out bad tenants; the courts are too backed up to actually enforce any evictions even when it's allowed anyway
• Onerous EPC rules coming in which will cost huge sums to rectify
• More and more registers, inspections and paperwork

At the same time, landlords have spent the last few years being jeered as being unethical - and many MNers haven't been shy to raise their voices about that.

The tiny minority of renters fortunate enough to be able to afford a deposit and mortgage might be happy; they will have a bit more choice and a slightly lower price. For other renters they are having real problems.

Shelter and other housing charities should be campaigning for more landlord friendly policies such as easier tenant evictions and restoring full mortgage interest deductions for tax if they want to improve housing availability on a large scale, but they won't because PR-wise it will be a nightmare as their changes will be seen to disadvantage individual tenants.

Yes, there are other factors too - large scale immigration; planning system broken; not enough housebuilding; more singletons/split families and fewer intergenerational families - but landlords selling up because of government policies and societal ostracism is a major cause.

I am not a landlord but have been in the past - there is no way I would become a new landlord in the current environment.

Those who called landlords rent-seeking scum or similar should feel ashamed.

www.getreading.co.uk/news/reading-berkshire-news/slough-landlady-fined-house-hell-25177922.amp

It's all very well slating BTL landlords (and I'm not one) but if they continue to sell their rental properties, private rents go up. Making it harder for people to save for a deposit to buy and having the reverse effect of improving equality.

I know, honestly my heart bleeds.

That's a sweeping generalisation. One of my friends is a HMO landlord. The rooms are really nice and have en-suites. She interviews prospective new renters as demand outstrips supply and she wants to make sure that they'll get on with the rest of the house.

It's another way for people to reduce their rent so they can save some money for a deposit if they so choose. They're not all hellholes run by greedy, uncaring landlords.

Other friends are non-HMO landlords and they spend a lot of time and money making sure their tenants are happy. I don't think any of them make any money from the rental income, only if property prices rise.

Sorry but it’s totally wrong IMO that six or more adults should be required to live cooped up with strangers in what is often a smallish terraced house that was never designed for such purposes.

How have we got to this point where people are living in such small spaces and overcrowded conditions? It’s shameful. Everyone should be entitled to their own home in this day and age, whatever their income.

Definitely. But sadly the nuance has long gone from any debate about landlords and the rental market.

The rental market is far from ideal, like our dysfunctional housing market, but the hatred towards landlords is often ludicrous.

Couldn’t agree more, the house we rented out is a real loss to the rent pool. We were super landlords. Didn’t deserve the shit o got on here 😂😂

I can see that on the large scale this is a problem.

But I think there need to be exceptions for people who are letting the only house they own, but still have a mortgage on it. Whether they need to relocate for a couple of years, or are in my old position of having to move in with my parents for five years to care for one of them and needing to let my house in order to pay the mortgage.

Are you joking? Landlords have been treated as holy cows by all governments since the 1990s. They have been given so many tax breaks, so much special treatment, no registers, very lax rules, have provided mostly awful quality housing that isn't maintained and have seen massive unearned equity in their properties whilst heavily contributing to the housing crisis and pushing up house prices. Even now they can still claim a 20% credit on their mortgage interest. They have caused so many problems to this country and the next generations.

Ah, water off a ducks back. I really cannot care less what people think. Mostly because the haters don't have the intelligence to think beyond their noses.

We're keeping ours as long as our tenants want to stay there.

Sorry but it’s totally wrong IMO that six or more adults should be required to live cooped up with strangers in what is often a smallish terraced house that was never designed for such purposes.

It's not, it's a large detached house. No-one is required to live in it. People choose to live in it as it's a nice room, they get on with the other people in the house and it's cheaper than renting a one bedroom flat. Some of the people are away a lot with work so it's a good option for them.

She could fill it twice over and has to turn people away. Sometimes you can't win on MN. I've seen loads of comments that elderly people shouldn't sit in large houses taking up valuable space that could house more people (not a view I share). But it's also wrong when it's rented out to a group of adults looking for rooms.

Two of our kids dont want to buy, they're young yet (30s) so may well change their minds but see a mortgage as just a massive debt

I dont know what you mean by 'who do you think you are fooling?', there are some people who dont want mortgages, it just isnt true to deny that

I also suspect that many many more would rather continue to be renters if the rental system was not so expensive or unstable/poor quality.

Well said 👏

Not in my generation. We were the first generation to get shafted and we know how our parents lived. There was no private rental market worth speaking of prior to the late 90s, and somehow most people were better off. You are deliberately ignoring the fact that house prices were pushed up by the greed of the buy-to-let generation, as your kind always have.

It is true that renting may be more normalised for younger generations, simply because the culture has changed. The late 90s are now as long ago as the first Beatles records were for us then. It’s nothing to be proud of, that younger generations are so used to being shafted that they think of it as normal.

As for the insults being thrown around, I have never met such unintelligent and unthinking people as those who are born to wealth. They have never needed to live off the resources inside their heads only. Their inability to think beyond the current status quo - despite the damage it is clearly doing as we slide faster and faster down the slope to socioeconomic collapse - is very obvious.

Bring the cost of housing back down to the same cost relative to wages as it was when my parents were buying, and let’s see then how many still want to throw money down the drain on their landlords’ hobbies or feckless children.

I dont know where you're from or your version of history but there certainly was a huge private rental service and always has been

Social housing as a concept wasnt really well embedded until the 30s anyway

Neither of my parents were lucky enough to live in social housing as children in the 30s and 40s, their parents privately rented rooms which were absolutely hovels (south and north London separately)

Come the 50s to 70s, they again rented privately, not quite so hovelly

They bought in the 70s using a council mortgage

I rented in the early 90s, again privately.

Many people will prefer not to buy a property and thats simply for flexibility, to deny that is ridiculous. Its not about whether its normalised or not, Im simply correcting your assumption that no one would prefer to rent.

I dont know who you think you're talking to by using terms like 'your kind', WTF

I corrected you on your mistake, you clearly dont like being put right.

Good god. I wasn’t talking about the 30s and 40s. I do not know why it has become the norm on this website to compare to that time. Well I do of course.

If you want to look up some history you may want to check out some small events that finally forced complete changes in European social history between 1939 and 1945, and the social and economic changes that occurred afterwards. You may also like to consider that those changes were merely accelerated from a change that had begun earlier, after similar small events of 1914-1918, which were themselves continuations of trends from earlier than that. Before the great social upheavals of the industrial revolution.

I think the persistent attempts nowadays on this website to make comparisons only to some of the worst times of British social history, along with such upstanding modern places as Korea, tells anyone with any knowledge of history all they need to know about the agendas of those pushing them.

In the 70s and 80s there was nothing like the private rental market that there was today, when buy-to-let landlords have taken over the old council estates and the old estates of two-up-two-down housing in their virtual entirety everywhere. It was a struggle to find private rentals for adults anywhere outside of major cities - and even for students in main cities there were far fewer, as there were fewer students.

@ParsleySageRosemary i understand what your saying and your right, there were plentiful council homes generally in the town you wanted. You’d go on a list, wait a few months and be housed. No having to be forced homeless, no worry about rejecting that home.
there also wasn’t the expectation that a landlord you’d make a profit monthly, the long time equity was the profit you made. Sometimes the rent covered the mortgage, sometimes it didn’t, so a lot of the time it was only cash buyers who did it. Knowing the house would go up in value over time and that’s the profit.

What changed in the 90’s was the start of the social housing crisis and realisation they had to start paying tenants benefit directly so they could rent privately.
it was sold as a way to give people a choice and to get away from the “council estate” stigma.
the reality it was hiding the issue of not enough social housing.

buying and renting out became more attractive, mortgages were a piece of piss to get, for any value. Just self cert and interest only. Suddenly it was big business and more and more were jumping on. Self certification pushing prices sky high. Until 2008. Then we all know what happened.
instead of letting the fall happen the government bailed it out.
massive mistake, we are in a much worse place now for the needed correction to take place

@Damnautocorrect

You're spot on except for the detail where the government removed regulation from the banks/building societies, just as prices were riding.

We bought our first house in 1999 when you could only borrow 3x sole or 2.5x joint salaries. After regulations were removed, lenders allowed ever increasing multiples to fuel the increases. In addition to the self cert you mention I think it went to 7x at one point. Lunacy.

We bought a 3 bed for £83k, which had risen from £60k within the 2 years we were saving a deposit. I remember thinking it was insane and how they couldn't rise any more. How wrong I was.

Removing regulation was, IMO, the catalyst for the subsequent increase from £83k to £300k, which is what the house is worth now.

I am not sure it is about “demonising” landlords. People with extra money bought 2nd properties to rent out/let out as the return on capital was better than being in the bank (zero interest) and also there was capital growth. Now that has shifted and you can get 4 per cent returns in the bank with no hassle so many of those people will just sell anyway.
I think what the government are trying to get to is professional landlords with big portfolios and properly managed maintenance routines, like the types you get in Europe. Not X, Y and Z renting out 1-2 properties. The government hope the private sector will deal with the housing crisis for them. Some house builders have moved into rentals and if those portfolios could be capitalised on stock markets etc. that could work. Modern, basic housing with good insulation at reasonable rents with fee paying tenants - the kind of thing pension funds could indirectly invest in.
It is also a big mistake to cap higher earner pensions so badly, because then they have no where to put their money other than in property so lots of richer people have been buying second homes and AirBnBs for this reason too.
Lastly, the government really needs to get a grip on foreign investors and empty lying properties in UK in larger cities. No properties should lie empty in a country with a housing shortage. You get the same in places like India because people are too scared to let out in case tenants never move out and cease paying. If foreign investors can buy into a professionally run outfit that pays a steady return that would be much better.

had bad tenants absolute scumbag parasites.

What about the absolute scumbag landlords?

Let's get something straight. Being a private sector landlord is not a social benefit. It is a business. You do it to make money. Like any business you should be regulated to ensure the health and safety of your clients and to ensure fairness. Intervention has been caused, as with all other regulation, by the absence of these things on a voluntary basis by far too many landlords. If you want to blame someone, blame those landlords who have been responsible for obscene profiteering whilst endangering the health and welfare of their tenants, leaving people living in unhealthy and dangerous circumstances. The government never acts to regulate because everyone is being nice and doing their best. It does so only when forced to by too many tragedies and bad scenarios.

One thing the govt. should IMO do, is make it a lot harder for LLs to evade paying tax on their rental income. At the moment, if you don’t have a mortgage and don’t use a letting agent (plenty of LLs have/do neither) and don’t live in an area where you’re obliged to register with the local council, then AFAIK there is nobody you are legally obliged to tell that you are letting a property. The SA tax form doesn’t ask for addresses, only how many properties.

I’ve heard (albeit 2nd hand) of LLs who think declaring the income is a mug’s game - in one case a married couple, both doctors. I dare say it’s rife, especially among the sort of LLs who let substandard accommodation and demand cash in hand.

That said, I know that won’t solve the basic problem, which is a dire shortage of decent, affordable council/HA accommodation.

TBH I do think some (I dare say too many) LLs deserve to be demonised - whacking up rents just because they can, failing to attend to basic maintenance/repairs, trying to screw tenants out of their deposits, not to mention letting properties that are substandard in the first place.

I say all that as a LL myself, just one property, which I’d be happy to live in myself. Despite urging by the letting agent I used to use, I have never whacked the rent up just because I could. I’ve always had, and still have, very good tenants who I hope will be happy to stay in their home at a rent that’s extremely reasonable for the type and area.

For various reasons, I doubt that the property - a filthy dump needing masses of work when I bought it, not to mention an absentee LL (the freeholder) - would ever have sold to a non-cash FTB anyway. At the time, lenders were looking for any reason to refuse mortgages, and an absentee LL was certainly one of those.

Problem is reading this you get the idea that all landlords are munificent charity givers, helping out the poor and afflicted at great cost to themselves.

Whereas the landlords I have met in real life seem to be little more than thugs, monopolising a scarce resource to extract as much cash off the backs of poorer people as they can while expending the smallest amount of money possible in the process.

Where is the truth ? Probably some way between those two extremes.

IMO society is heading towards a time of greater poverty. The COL crisis means that people are going to have less money. And this is going to put landlords and tenants into an even more adversarial position as poverty really begins to bite. Not a business I would like to be in atm.

And a lot of landlords are getting this. And rushing for the exit while they still can.

Exactly, dodgy Dave is hardly going to come on and tell us how awful his 'property portfolio' is and how he's charging exorbitant rent for little return.

No one ever really thinks of themselves as a bad person, even criminals will justify their wrong doings and consider themselves misunderstood when challenged.