Rent increase - fuck fuckity fuck!!!

[BlondeWaves]

Moved into my house 2.5 months ago and now having to move as had a letter from the landlord to say rent is going up by 150 a month. I KNOW I am being unreasonable but I am sat here sobbing because I've just settled here with my young child and the thought of having to go through all that upheaval again is so stressful. I can't afford the extra 150, I'm already stretched with the way everything has increased. This could happen again and again and I just hate our government and the way things are at the moment. I have no resentment towards my landlord as I know his mortgage has realistically gone up by more than 150 a month, but fuck, I'm so stressed. Don't even know what I want from this thread, maybe a handhold, maybe to be told I need to suck it up (weirdly I respond well to tough love) but I need something. Anyone there? 😭

Paid even! 🙄

I definitely bought in the wrong area it’s an absolute Warzone but it still worth nearly 4 times what it was in 2000

No idea about stats but most of the BTL flats in my development are owned by accidental landlords and the landlords used to live in the flats. They moved out but kept the first flat. You can see the attraction of doing that, no need for a chain.

UK house prices are not up by a factor of five “or more” in a few years. Average price today is £296,000. One fifth of that is £59,000, and the last time the index was that low was 1996.

Fifteen years ago in 2007 the index was at £190,000, so it’s less than doubled in that time.

Stamp duty is a driving factor in this.

We paid £160,000 in stamp duty when we bought our current main family home. It’s a huge disincentive to sell if you think that you may move back later, or that it’ll be reduced at some point.

@BlondeWaves discretionary housing payments?

I seem to recall that an Assured Shorthold Tenancy must be for a minimum fixed term of 6 months.

Best bet would be to speak to Shelter.

Please go to Shelter, I’m pretty sure the ll has to offer a Shorthold assured tenancy, the minimum being 6 months.

I agree, and unbelievably they are still selling off all the council housing stock in expensive areas. So much of the financial difficulty in this country is a result of the extortionate house prices which swallow up people's life savings or the high rents which prevent them from saving a deposit and are a massive chunk out of their income.

The government, past and present, are aware of this and I don't want to sound all tin foil hat-y but it's not by accident - it's by design. A significant proportion of MPs are landlords for one.

OP no advice as such, but sorry to hear this and really hope you find somewhere more stable for you and your son.

As someone whose rent went up over a £100 last Feb and will likely do so again this coming Feb, I highly sympathise.
Contact your local housing office/Shelter to check it's a legit increase and to apply for DHP.

Sadly, renters in the UK don't have a lot of choice. If tenants are on an annual tenancy, the rent can't change during the period of the tenancy but they can be given notice for no reason at the end of it (this is changing next year, iirc). If it's not a fixed period tenancy, they can serve notice or put up the rent whenever they like.

The rental market is stacked against tenants, unless you're lucky enough to have a social housing tenancy, where you rent from the council or a housing association and tenants have far greater rights.

*ustkidding55 · Today 15:54

Greedy CF. Whether his mortgage has gone up or not he’s still making plenty of profit. Say you’ll move out he might change his mind. And I hope he gets a tennant who trashed his place next time.*

Well aren't you a nasty piece of work,....unfortunately you have no idea how much he is or is not making so your post just makes you sound ignorant.

The rhetoric towards landlords can be very harsh on MN. I've had 2 decent landlordsall owned either 1 or 2 properties and were very fairly priced. It's my current landlorda London-based corporation, who I find to be greedy fuckers!

^yeah, didn't mean to cross out.

And if the tenant is on a low income and entitled to UC/HB to help with the rent, the taxpayer is paying the landlord's mortgage.

When people moan about those on benefits, they don't realise that a fair chunk of the money claimants get is actually buying someone else a house.

I have contacted all my tenants and told them that for at least the next year I will not be increasing rents as I understand things are tough. I have also stressed to them that if they are struggling they need to contact me and I will see what I can do to help as my view is they have always been reliable and I would rather help them through than take on new tenants.

Indeed Marx had thoughts on 'landlordism'. The UK property Ponzi scheme is the empty unproductive transfer of wealth from the young to the old that distorts the market to no net benefit to society or the country as a whole. Young key workers or indeed any key workers particularly in the SE are doomed to a lifetime of precarious renting at the whim of capricious landlords. This must and will change first we need to get the Tories confined to the dustbin of history.

“The capitalist is the direct exploiter of the workers, not only the direct appropriator, but the direct creator of surplus-labour. But since (for the industrial capitalist) this can only take place through and in the process of production, he is himself a functionary of this production, its director. The landlord, on the other hand, has a claim – through landed property (to absolute rent) and because of the physical differences of the various types of land (differential rent) – which enables him to pocket a part of this surplus-labour or surplus-value, to whose direction and creation he contributes nothing. Where there is a conflict, therefore, the capitalist regards him as a mere superfetation, a Sybarite excrescence, a parasite on capitalist production, the louse that sits upon him.” (Theories of Surplus-Value, vol.2, p.328)

As others have said, check your rights as I also thought that rolling monthly contracts came after an initial fixed period of 6 or 12 months. Also check if your eligible for any financial help.
I do think it's unfair for the rent to rise so soon regardless of the reason.

It’s posts like this I want to scream out “help!” To all overly rich millionaire butt heads out there. If I was a “secret millionaire” like on these shows, I would buy you a bloody lovely house Op.
sadly I’m not, and all I can send you is good luck my darling, there are so many people in shit situations right now. Heartbreaking.

And the money that they spend in Tesco is paying for the CEO’s large salary.

These people / the taxpayer aren’t just “giving” landlords money, they are spending it on a service.

In the medium to long term, council housing is self-financing.

The council borrows money from central govt (which is financed by bonds, as above). They use the money to build houses, which they rent out.

When the borrowed money has been repaid, the costs of the build have been covered. The subsequent income from rents (after deducting operating costs) goes to cover the cost of more borrowing, to build more houses.

Families have decent homes that are theirs for life, if they wish to remain there, and the cost to the public purse is minimal. In fact, if everyone on a low income was in social housing, rather than the private rented, the saving in benefits could conceivably make it cost-neutral.

This was how the post-war housing need was met, and it worked really well until RTB was introduced and councils lost vast swathes of their housing stock.

And of course any society which has tried to organise themselves around the principles that Marx expounded, where the workers all keep the surplus value of their labour, people end up having to eat their own dogs to avoid dying of starvation.

As it turns out, you see, societies like those end up needing guards with machine guns stopping people leaving, whereas societies like ours have people risking their lives in little boats to join.

Yet still some people contrive to mess it up, and it’s apparently never their fault.

Thatcher thought council house tenants to be non-aspirational and likely to vote Labour so she set about privatising social housing and here we are.

Marx was and is a useful tool and lens to understand the mechanics of the modern world but only a fool would try to build a society on it's unrefined dogma. The inference of your last sentence is that if you can't afford a house and therefore a degree of financial independence then it's your fault. If only our nurses had a couple of buy-to-lets on the go they could afford to care for the less well-off sort of vibe.

@ToInfinityAgain yeah, accept it or get a proper job. HTH.