To not feel sorry for landlords?

[CuriouslyMinded]

Honestly, so many people seem to have Buy To Let mortgages that they can't really afford and I can't help but think that if the interest rates are making life that difficult that they're struggling to feed their kids or whatever the latest headline is, then they should just sell their extra properties. There are first time buyers are desperate to get on the ladder for one thing, and also tenants don't deserve to have their rent increased by cash strapped landlords, and no one really needs to own more than one home. It's just so greedy. I don't feel sorry for them at all. I do appreciate that tenants need somewhere to live and not everyone can afford to buy, but part of the reason it is so difficult to buy a home is because so many people have overstretched themselves to own multiple properties that they don't even take care of half the time. The whole system is flawed and awful. Rant over!

Building is the ONLY way out of the rental demand problem.

Unless you're suggesting some kind of a cull?!!

Edited - sorry, that was to Mumda

What about the people that get social housing, progress in their income, no longer have a “need” and they buy the property to make profit.
There is a huge pool of people in social housing that are holding on to properties that are now too big for their requirements or they simply no longer have the need.

Perhaps the use of the current social housing stock needs reviewing.

I have less animosity for landlords that buy at full price, pay more for stamp duty than the above.

Interest rates went low

More people bought (including landlords/ladies)

Prices went too high for most, they carried on renting. (The houses that landlords/ladies bought on buy to let)

Interst rates went up, landlords/ladies started to sell

But the prices are still too high for most new buyers.

So the amount of renters stays the same, but the amount of rental properties has drastically reduced, pushing rents up (supply over demand)

If House prices continue to fall, it'll still take 3-5 years to even out. As more can afford to buy on lower House prices, the number of renters drops, less demand for rentals lowers the price.

Nobody needs to own more than one home, I absolutely agree.
Social housing is managed much better in some parts of Europe, where second home ownership is prohibitively taxed.
It makes me so frustrated that we're in a place where it is supposedly OK to profit from the basic human need for shelter.
I've got acquaintances and colleagues who are landlords and I can't help but to think it's a bit of a character flaw.

Landlords are selling up. Lots of them in fact. Are prices coming down and the number of tennants decreasing?

It is a business. Definitely not a business anyone sane would enter into today unless they are a big portfolio firm.

Lots of houses where my mum lived are being bought and split into self contained bedsits. So houses coming onto the market in her town aren't going to first time buyers. Bedsits take houses off the market possibly for many decades.

No sympathy at all from me. They're mostly people who happen to have the upper hand in a country with a completely fucked up asset/wealth distribution ratio so I don't think they're the devil incarnate or anything but yeah I'm never shedding any tears for them.

Letting agents on the other hand ... if landlords are parasites then letting agents are the parasites of parasites. Never met one yet that didn't need a good shoe-ing.

So to understand what you're saying, you think only the government should own rental properties- i..e literally no private rentals should exist at all? So either its own your house or rent from the government?

I'm just thinking about what that would look like- even somewhere like Singapore which has absolutely massive amounts of public housing does have a private rental market as well.

Or are you saying private landlords would be ok so long as they're renting the only house they own - for example if they're currently not living in it for any reason.

I rent out a flat I can’t sell due to dangerous cladding at a significant loss…. The place is falling in value and the rent doesn’t cover the costs AT ALL. Trust me it’s not all a bed of roses.

There is a huge pool of people in social housing that are holding on to properties that are now too big for their requirements or they simply no longer have the need.

There really isn't.

There are 4 .4 million social housing properties in the UK. Two thirds of those are occupied by pensioners in designated elder housing or by people who are either carers for disabled household members or are disabled themselves. All of these people need long term stable suitable housing, often including adaptations. If they didn't, they wouldn't be there.

For the rest, yes they are working and their rent directly funds whichever provider owns their property, at a rate which far outstrips the cost of providing that housing, most of which has already paid for itself several times over after decades of collected rent. They are full contributors to UK society and they are not the problem here.

Presumably your tenants know they're living somewhere with dangerous cladding?

@Dufflebag - yep! Like hundreds of thousands of others in the UK. The building safety scandal is a national embarrassment.

I just don't understand how they think it's OK to play with our lives while we pay the fucking mortgage for them
Pay the mortgage....yep. let me see....tenants pay £1,000 a month. £400 goes straight to the government in tax. £200 or so ford to pay interests on the mortgage. £200 goes into savings for future repairs and improvement. That leaves £200 a month. Add insurance, gas certificate, and the rest and there less than £100 a month going in my pocket to pay the mortgage....a drop in the ocean.

That's if I'm lucky...that tenants do pay every month and don't cause damage. £200 a month for repairs is actually not enough as the roof will need to be done soon.

What I get is the increase in equity but to get that I need to sell, which more and more landlords are doing because the rent does NOT come anywhere close to paying their mortgage.

It might be satisfying to blame landlords and assume they make a fortune from their rental and therefore deserve all they get. The reality, without needing pity, is however very different for many.

Yes we do need rental property.

But it would be better for it to be provided by a mixture of:

• councils, at social rents for those on the lowest incomes, including people with disabilities unable to work
• non profit housing associations, for affordable rents, for key workers and students
• large organisations eg pension funds etc with stable access to funds, economies of scale to manage repairs and maintenance, for all other private rentals.

individual landlords tend to result in a very variable output - slum landlords who dont repair/maintain, a few decent types, and a few profiteers resulting in wealth and assets concentrating in the hands of a small number. Its not a good outcome for the economy or for society.

Vivainsomnia your post is why small landlords doesn't work. You can't absorb periods where the properties acquired at too high a prices can't generate enough yield to cover borrowing.

A big institutional long term landlord would have a huge portfolio at varying yields, in different cities etc, and could weather the numbers being temporarily worse in one area knowing that over time, the debt is likely to inflate away to a point where rentals easily cover mortgage.

I agree. BTL should never have been allowed to get out of control like it has done and is one of the many reasons that a lot of the current generation of young people won't be able to buy.

If we had big listed portfolio landlords wealth could also be better spread as the government could offer isa schemes where young people were incentivised to invest in these as vehicles to save for deposits, and thus benefit from property value growth while saving to buy themselves

Yanbu. I don't feel sorry for private landlords at all. Not a tiny little bit. Not accidental landlords, not landlords trying to earn a pension, not buy-to-let landlords, not property developers who've lost money. None of them.

Interested to read back on the thread to see opinions on if/why I should feel sorry for them.

The value of my mortgaged property is likely to go down now - should anyone feel sorry for me? If not then don't feel sorry for private landlords!

Individual btl landlords make little difference to the rental market compared to huge developments owned by large investment companies.
@CuriouslyMinded if you have a private pension then you will be investing in rental properties indirectly and their success will make a difference to your wealth. Look at Grainger plc, they are the uk’s largest private landlord.

Vivainsomnia your post is why small landlords doesn't work. You can't absorb periods where the properties acquired at too high a prices can't generate enough yield to cover borrowing
Well it does once your mortgage is paid and you don't have to give 40% to the tax man anymore.

Sadly although understandably, renters often don't understand that many landlords pay plenty of taxes.

They want more social housing, at extra cost to the government reducing taxes coming from landlords! It doesn't add up unfortunately.

To qualify it better, I have so far paid over £70k in taxes from one rental!

I rent one of my houses to a woman who fled a war zone, shall I ask her and child to leave? Or what about the family of four who get below market rent as they take great care of the place? Or what about the single mother? Please tell me which one you’d like me to boot out first? I’ll of course give them first refusal on buying the property when I sell it…

People are crying out for rentals where we are and there's none to be had that's not landlords fault

Of course it bloody is ! If so many greedy BTL landlords hadn't bought up property and been part of prices increasing ( amongst other factors of course) these people might have stood half a chance of buying themselves. Honestly baffled that you think none of this is their fault ?

Why do it, then? Why do you feel the need to borrow money to pay for a house to let out to people if it's such an expensive pain in the arse? And why is considered acceptable for tenants to pay so much more than they would if they were paying the mortgage? It's a broken system, and landlords have no defence.

I'm 36 and just bought our house last year. The reason we didn't buy earlier was due to 2 reasons. 1) I was a student or on a short term contract and 2 we didn't have a big enough deposit.

We bought as soon as my contract was finally made pernament. 3 years ago my landlady decided to sell her house. We had 2 mo ths to find somewhere new to live. I was 3 months pregnant. We finally found somewhere 30 minutes walk from our old house / my work.

When we moved out 18 months ago the rent increased by 50%. Its gotten way way worse. In my town of 250,000 people there are 25 3 bed properties to rent at the moment all of them several hundred more then what we were paying only 3 years ago. People can't save for houses if there paying that much on rent but supply and demand is setting the prices.

We need more homes not ll to all sell up