to think the new rules on no fault eviction - means people won't want to be landlords?

[DragonMama3]

What do you think?

Didn't this come in years ago? The moment when decent landlords leave is when they end section 21 completely.

My family have been landlords since 1991. I have now taken over management of the properties to help my mother .

All properties are priced 300-500 pounds less market going rent. Because we are decent landlords, we have mutual respect between our tenants. And the oldest has stayed 14 yrs now, the median 7 yrs and the newest 2 yrs.

My mother is barely breaking even but she's adamant we will not raise the rent that our tenants are left in hardship or have to move out.

There are decent private landlords out there. And we intend to stay.

Not all thank you very much. One of my tenants has been in my property for 10 years and still paying the same (extremely reasonable) rent. She's a good tenant and I'd rather keep her there.

DH is desperate to do BTL and this is one of the many reasons I won’t agree to it. I’m just terrified of getting someone in who won’t pay rent and we can’t get them out. I’m so sorry to all the people who pay rent on time but, as usual the minority spoil it for everyone.

If they stop paying rent you can evict them, even after the reforms. It does take a while though.

I imagine a lot of landlords will change over to air bnb instead, especially if in a holiday area.

Are water companies parasites profiting off an essential need? What about supermarkets? Food is vital so why don’t they sell it at cost price?
What is it about landlords that is different in your view?

IME there rarely is any thinking behind these things, Emma, so we get the law of unintended consequences and all that (and your example of the difficulties around short-term rentals was a good one)

What government actually want is a nice headline to whip up those who can't - or maybe prefer not to - think beyond "serves the LLs/tenants right".
They say politicians think of the next election and statesmen of the next generation, but unfortunately we don't have many statesmen/women around right now

Yes someone was telling me about a rented flat going over to being a London serviced apartment at the moment. I am not sure if that complies with the terms of the long leasehold but that is another story.

I am sure the military families mentioned will need decent housing from private landlords. My sons are only letting their one house until either they sell to buy somewhere else they prefer to live or they move into the house.

When the state changed the law so that landlords could not set their main cost (interest on a loan) against the rent loads of landlords had to sell up as they were taxed on profits they did not make. The state has the right to change those rules and it probably did mean more houses went to first time buyers but it is really easy to see why so many landlords left the market couples with the 1.3m new people coming to the UK a year which I think is 740,000 net immigration - it is a perfect storm for shortage of housing in cities where there are jobs and no different from New York, Sydney and many other places. China has a property market collapse at present and lots of new blocks with empty flats in them so I suppose it does depend on the country.

Does he even know how BTL works?
Contrary to popular perception the profit generation isn't in the rent, but the capital appreciation of the property.
With house price rises + a chunk of mortgage paid off by rent LL's equity increases, they can then leverage it to buy another house. Or borrow for repairs etc off the back of it, you get the picture.

This house of cards obviously collapses when interest rates shoot up and/or house prices drop. As is happening now! Not a great time to be doing it.

It's different if you inherited a property + a good chunk of cash. Or, have already paid off your mortgage.

We might find ourselves becoming LL's as we might work abroad for a bit but don't want to give up our lovely house. We'd only consider moving if we can get the mortgage down to a small amount... charge below 'market rate' rent and all the money will go straight to a separate account for repairs, management fees, insurance etc especially if the place gets trashed.

At no point in time were we considering that it might make a 'profit', depending on how unlucky we are might even incur losses but it's the price of keeping our family home. If we do decide to settle down abroad we'll sell it, but obviously it takes several years to gain permanent residency and I wouldn't want to have to return to the UK and go through the whole buying process again. It was difficult enough with the chains and whatnot when we first did it

What I find frustrating about the tinkering and the knock-on effect of a lack of rental properties is that it makes things extremely inflexible. There are multiple applicants for every property now in many areas as it is. Landlords tend to prefer tenants who are going to stay in the property for a long time, so those looking to rent between property purchases, or having returned to the country from living abroad, or on a work contract, or any number of similar scenaries, now wind up in a situation where they can't actually get rental accommodation.

UK housing market is messed up and the government seems set on making it worse.

A healthy housing market would look like the following.

1. Ownership for people on normal incomes intending to stay in a place for a while
2. Social housing for vulnerable people and those on low incomes
3. Private rentals for students, young people and people moving around for work and other reasons

Squeezing out private rentals will make the present situation worse I think. Some ideas.

1. Build more social housing and stop the right to buy
2. Stop this nonsense of insisting that people are voluntarily homeless unless actually evicted. It's clogging up the courts and stressing out both tenants and landlords.
3. Make interest tax deductible again
4. Keep section 21 but increase the notice required. Start with 3 months but increase by perhaps a month for every year of tenure up to 12 months total

I think the government are trying to force landlords to provide social housing because they don't want to but that it isn't going to work.

@Puzzledandpissedoff

Ah, I see. I think the plan for the future is more of these blocks owned by corporates, but maybe they will offer tenants more security, who knows.

@Alligator456 "I think the government are trying to force landlords to provide social housing because they don't want to but that it isn't going to work."

exactly, that's another reason I think we will see more rental only blocks of flats.

I have never had a positive experience with a private landlord- the very term "Landlord" is absurd as if the tenant should be a "Serf", subject to a "Lord".

The more of them that get out the better, the rules and laws should leave only professional landlords, who can provide a proper service, set to a legal standard.

How are you defining "professional" landlord please?

Don't be ridiculous. Plenty of people, like my dh and his brother came into renting ‘accidentally’ benefiting financially from an inheritance for example. It’s a business, yes and will hopefully be our pension too, but they are fair landlords (we’ve just had 5k worth of work done in the property). We’ve had great tenants in the main, apart from one who was a fraudster and ended up in prison a couple of years after we evicted her for swindling someone else out of a significant amount of money.

Oh and dd at uni has a good landlord this year, so much so they’re staying for next year too.

And we are prob asking a bit under the market rate. Would rather have decent tenants than be greedy.

@Daphnis156 Not sure the big company version will be an improvement. There will probably be a call centre with a 60 minute wait to speak to a human if you need a repair.

Also if the government makes conditions too difficult there won't be any company takers for the role either. See care homes and child care for sectors already stuffed up by the government through ill thought regulations and unrealistic levels of funding.

Wrong. 'Professionals' are worse because they have the money to turn any complaints into a long-drawn out legal battle. They can pay the few that win but the majority of tenants won't have the money to even start. Furthermore, if one company owns, say the majority of property in an area tenants even with valid complaints can be blacklisted.

Also, what exactly is the government going to do if a company is deemed a 'bad landlord'?
The company owns the houses. The government can't take over their management (if they even WANTED to they'd build social housing, no need for all this private landlording in the first place).
As I said the property, tenantless is still an asset so worst case the company can just kick the tenants out and leave it empty. Where do you expect them to go?

'Rules and laws' are only valid insofar as the resources available to defend them. So many naïve people happily bleating on about rules do you know how much going to court costs? How much time, effort paperwork etc even dealing ombudsmans requires (and how they're usually powerless anyway just telling you to taking it up legally?)

I lived in a flat with mould-covered ceiling for a year, currently my mates are living in a London flat with no hot water. Hasn't been for 6 months. Owned by a company, it still hasn't been fixed despite months of complaints, escalation, etc.

What rules do you propose that can make this better exactly. And how would they keep big companies in check better over small private LL's.

I saw on the news recently that renting is cheaper than buying in most parts of the country.
Even with the current very high rents a quick calculation of what it would cost a landlord proves this - they have to pay 6% interest on purchase cost plus voids plus repairs plus insurance plus agency fees.
The past couple of decades have given profits through price increases but that’s much less likely now.
The people shouting about parasites seem to think the government should just look after everyone and don’t actually care about the reality of discouraging landlords. As long as landlords don’t make a profit sod the people who need a rental.

People have no idea what 'profit' even means.
Property - BTL or owning your own home is a long game. Most LL's WILL make a profit. Probably. But over a period of several years.
Most people think it's as simple as 'rent = profit!' Even if they acknowledge that mortgage costs have to be deducted from rent they think LL incur no other costs.

My family have been landlords since 1850.

YANBU.

There is a massive problem with student accommodation in the private sector in Glasgow because the Scottish government have changed the law so much in favour of the tenant. Landlords aren't interested in renting to people for 9 months or a year, knowing they have no power to get them out at the end of the agreement if they choose not to go.

There are lots of people who do not want to own a home for all manner of reasons - students, people working on a 1-year or other short term contract, people sussing out an area before committing to buy etc etc.

i bought 12 months ago, and it would certainly be cheaper to rent an identical house after considering mortgage, insurance, upkeep, maintainance, etc.

yes eventually I’ll own the property - but not until after my retirement age, and not until I’ve paid two times the value in interest.