LL wanting to put rent up - Twat!

[SantanaBinLorry]

This is the 5th house ive lived in with a shit back door.
They are aaaaaall unusual sizes, of course! I swear LL's must think we're fucking stupid, maybe we are!

Its the faux surprise... YOU FUCKING KNOW THE DOOR IS SHIT....why are you just now, 30 odd years after owning the house realizing it might need fucking replacing.

Don't get me started on the 80% of the double glazing that has blown - most with broken latches, the hall way full of black mold, the stair carpet that was fitted by monkies, the frayed carpet at EVERY door way, no extractor in the bathroom - more black mold. The stain on the kitchen ceiling from a leak (not our fault) 2 years ago
Outside tap broken, inside tap dripping 2 ltrs a day, over flowing guttering and the back fence has just blown down. Also the fact we offered more rent each month at the beginning of our tenancy as we were desperate to secure the property, and we are STILL waiting for our new TA since the renting regulations changed in Wales last year.

Txt this morning to say he was putting rent up by £50 from next month.

I know I'm not unreasonable, hes a twat and I just needed to rant.
I've rented all my life, will never own, late 40's and two teens and I'm just sick of being treated like shite by moneygrabbing bastards!

I

This is a genuine question but why do so many landlords act like they’re kindly providing a charitable service by exchanging a place to live for money? Every single post about a landlord has someone replying ‘NOT ALL LANDLORDS I LET MY HOUSE BELOW MARKET RENT BLAH BLAH BLAH’. So? You aren’t doing it out of the goodness of your heart - it clearly makes financial sense - and you’re lucky enough to be able to do that and have that choice. And there are SO MANY SHIT LANDLORDS who don’t actually follow rules and treat it like it should solely be a profit making exercise with no responsibility other than to collect the rent. If you aren’t like that then fine, why get your knickers in a twist? The op obviously isn’t referring to you.

Housing in the UK (which is where I am based and presume a number of MN are too!) is an absolute shambles - privately renting is often the only option for people.

Not a landlord, not a tenant either so don’t really have a horse in the race. But it is curious!

I am a homeowner and a landlord. I also rented myself for many years.

I remain firmly of the opinion - borne through bitter experience - that most landlords are indeed money grabbing bastards who seem to think that landlording should be 100% profit and no expense.

There is a huge power imbalance between landlords and tenants, and it creates a terrible sense of insecurity amongst tenants.

As for having 'no interest' in buying a house, I find that the vast majority of young people want to do just that. Some of the biggest attractions are being able to deal with maintenance promptly rather than waiting infinite periods for the landlord, a sense of security that's unachievable when the Section 21 Sword of Damocles hangs permanently over your head, redecorating in a shade other than magnolia, and owning a pet.

If you hate being branded money grabbing so much why don't you just sell up 🤷‍♀️

You think people are renting because they have no interest in becoming a homeowner and taking responsibility for property maintenance themselves?

What a joke

Because presumably they are attempting to do som good, rather than just screw over their tenants. You can run a business where rip off your customers AKA rogue trader style, or you can do a good job but charge more. And I've never met a plumber who wasn't in it for the money.

Well, she has to live somewhere. I'm glad I don't live where she does, house sounds grotty.

I'll get flamed for this. The flip side is BTL mortgages have sky rocketed. We've just remortgaged and gone from making £200 a month 'profit' (not actually profit after tax) to loosing £50 a month. We don't want anyone to loose their home so we increased the rent by the £50 to 'break even' (make a loss after tax, repairs, insurance). It's not a sympathy hunt, just a different narrative to the story.

@ReadingSoManyThreads

The op wasn't branding all LLs as such. Just the ones they have dealt with - and do take into account that it sounds like the OP is in a pretty shit and despairing situation and so is allowed to rant as we all do when we are really pissed off.

There are good landlords and sadly many bad ones. I can't imagine that anyone read the ops post and decided all landlords are shit. Most people have rented at some point in their lives as have I. I had 3 shocking ones and 2 ok ones. That's just life.

Good for you for being one of the decent ones if that's the case.

OP is clearly talking about her own experiences so taking offence is not necessary. If you know you’re a good landlord then you don’t need to prove it to anyone.

But the fact is a lot of landlords are not good. I rented for years before I bought and have many tales, and a lot of my friends have similar stories. That doesn’t mean all landlords are terrible, of course you get good people out there - but a lot of them are shitty. Unwilling to part with any cash for maintenance, not protecting deposits, shooting the rent up above reasonable increases. One of my friends had a landlord try to take £100 off her deposit when she moved because he found a paperclip on the carpet. No exaggeration- but turns out he didn’t protect the deposit and so she took him to court, won loads of rent back, that was very satisfying…

making the housing shortage worse then, well done.

Living in a home costa more than it did a year ago, that fact doesn’t make your landlord a twat.

Of 13 different landlords over the time I was renting, over half were decent.

Then later I was a landlord myself, have seen it from both sides.

The country needs systemic change. Good housing standards for all. Twat tenants and twat landlords exist but ranting about either group doesn't fix the underlying issues.

It's division and distraction from the root causes of the issues. Building standards. Ineffective legal framework that fails to protect either group. Underfunded environmental health departments. Lack of council stock. Etc etc etc.

You have been rather derogatory about your landlord to say the least.

the landlord is a twat - maybe she/he is - but if he/she is sensing that is your opinion - you’re not going to get any help!

the carpet has been laid by “monkies”, have u told him/her this?

the back door is wrong - the faux surprise might mean - “it’s not going to be changed while you’re here”

he/she might be thinking about the mould, it wasn’t here when you moved in, and I’ve got photos to prove it!

You have been rather rude about your landlord, it probably shows in your attitude and actions towards him/her, and if they’ve owned the house for thirty years, they are successful landlords who know what they are doing.

i wish you all the best

Good response.
I've rented out a good property on the lower end of rent evaluation because I did not want to rip people off (used to discount 75% off the rent at Christmas every year). Then had a couple of tenants who trashed the place and stopped paying rent.
I try not to let that change my behaviour towards all prospective new tenants, I'm always quick at arranging repairs etc, but it has made me harder and no more Christmas discounts.

SAME. Agree with every word of this.

Renter for 15 years. Now own my home and one rental.

I cannot be offended by anyone hating LLs because I have my own experience of how fucking awful some are. Truly fucking awful.

As a LL I charge under market rate, less than my mortgage on said property, and actually operate on an annual loss (because I know I am still earning while the property sits there slowly going up in value). I take action to rectify any maintenance issues within 24 hours of tenants notifying me. I let them move in with their dog (I lived there with mine, why shouldn't they?). I have no intention of scouring the place for marks to withhold deposit when they leave. I'm not pretending to be some angel, I'm doing it for money, but I can try and do it without being a cunt.

Also, nowhere in the OP's post did she label ALL LLs that way. She just said she's sick of the money grabbing ones, which given her circumstances, seems fair.

This is the unintended consequence of the ever-tightening rental sector regulations. More and more halfway decent landlords are saying bollocks to the stress and selling up, there's now an accute shortage of private rental properties so the prices are insane, the availability through the floor, and you're left with largely with the absolute shitters both in terms of properties and landlords.

Look at Scotland if you want to see just how bad it gets.

Yes your landlord sounds crap in the sense that the house sounds like a total mess and needs lots of work doing to it. Given the state of the current market £50 increase isn’t that much. My fixed rate just ended and moved to variable and it’s gone up by £470 a month! Is it possible the increase is to do with interest rates? Is moving an option? Renting is a business transaction and if your not happy with what your getting it’s in your control to change it

But presumably (hopefully) you issued a proper rent increase notice with an appropriate period before the rent actually increased, as probably required by law where the property you're renting out is? Not just sent a text that you want more money in the next payment? ('next month' - does this mean 'next week'? What a cowboy).

I don't know about Wales, as all my tenancy experience is in Scotland (minimum notice period of 3 months for rent increases), but I should be astonished if in Wales there are no requirements for formality and notice period.

As it happens, I don't really have a problem with the concept of a landlord increasing rent. It's not 'fair' in the sense that if mortgage rates massively fell, they wouldn't reduce the rent and in the sense that no business can expect to always maintain a profit, but it is fairly inevitable. Landlords ignoring the legal restrictions and responsibilities placed upon them in the context of their business and trampling over tenant protections in the law, however, is unacceptable.

Having worked in the private rental sector for over a decade up until the late 2010s, I saw many, MANY more instances of poor behaviour and a reluctance to keep properties properly maintained on the part of landlords than any amount of similarly poor behaviour from the tenants' side - always, most notably - at the lower end of the rental market (the corporate and high-net-worth landlords I dealt with were never so determined their tenants live in squalor or dangerous conditions). I have an inexhaustible supply of tales of rogue landlords (and letting agents) that pales into insignificance those of equally 'bad' tenants. It's also interesting how many of those cases that ended up going to arbitration and court proceedings were found in the tenants' favour.

Some of the conditions were truly abysmal and I still see landlords treating several friends who rent in the same way, too: thinking exclusively of their own costs and caring nothing whatsoever for the health or wellbeing of the tenants paying over rent each month for appallingly-maintained properties.

The private rental market in the UK is fucked - and private tenants along with it. One particular friend moved into a flat in the spring and, by the time the colder months arrived in the winter, realised that the flat was utterly uninsulated and the electric storage heaters simply pumped away with no hope of ever keeping the property warm. Her landlord told her just to keep the heating on 24/7 - in a cost-of-living crisis as a single mother to a six-year-old son who had to wear four or five layers of clothes indoors throughout that winter. The local Council were useless and incompetent and did nothing to help. Another friend discovered the energy performance certificate on her rental property had been faked by the landlord and the property didn't pass to the required level and was illegal to let to a tenant. Once again, the local authority did nothing.

Another friend - another single parent - was passed over for property after property by letting agents who, upon being tricked into thinking that I (posing as a working single professional on a high salary) interested in the same property which had, allegedly, already been let that day, was offered an immediate viewing. This is despite my friend having a flawless credit record, no missed rental payments and a regular - although low - income that was topped up by benefits. This friend has had to move three times in as many years and is now living day to day in a property that the landlord put up for sale within two months of her moving in.

The shambolic and criminal behaviours exhibited in plain sight by so many landlords absolutely DO give a large portion of private rental market landlords in the UK a bad name and, until much stronger and robust legislation is enacted and routinely ENFORCED, so it shall ever be. Unfortunately, too many landlords are left to carry on screwing tenants over without being called to account or suffering any action that would make them think twice before attempting it again.

It's much more expensive for landlords now. Higher mortgages, higher taxes, onerous regulations. What do you expect?

@nationallampoons I wasn't making it about me, I was making a point about sweeping statements. There are good LL's and shitty LL's, not all are "money grabbing bastards". Same as there are good tenants and shitty tenants. I was giving some examples from my own experience, that is not making it about me.

@forcedfun I wasn't seeking a badge of honour, I was making a point that not all LL's are shitty, and not all LL's fail to do the bare minimum.

@butterfield9 clearly yes, I'm so sick of such vile comments directed towards LL who actually risk a lot financially to provide housing to those who require it. As I've said before, it's unfair to make such sweeping statements and it would be no different to a LL saying "all tenants are cunts", would you deem that acceptable? Then I have the double whammy of being a female LL and getting treated shittily by male contractors, male tenants and even some mortgage lenders who won't give a female a BTL mortgage when I was on maternity leave but would have given it if I put my husband's name on it, despite it not being his property. Yes, I'm venting because yes, I'm sick of it. So to finish off, I just want to say that I have some wonderful tenants, and I'd never brand all tenants shitty, cause they're not.

This makes me so angry, I was a fucking awesome landlord for the short time I did it- but the tenant (an ex friend) showed their true colours and became an absolute nightmare. I had to sell out because of how expensive mortgages got, admin not being a strong point of mine, feeling incredibly tainted by the experience with the ‘friend’ and actually feeling like an injection of cash was fairly important for this year!

I can’t understand how some landlords give such litte care and effort to care for the property and tenants. Being a landlord is a privilege and you have a real chance to care for the people who live in your property and make a real difference to their life.

How about adding the rise in the long term capital value of the house into your little narrative? Your tenants are literally buying the house for you.

No, they are not “literally” buying the house.

I personally do not act like I'm providing a charitable service. Actually, it is out of the goodness of my heart that I let long term good tenants have rent (well) below market rates. I actually could really do with achieving market rent but I choose to keep long term good tenants happy instead, as that entices them to stay longer, which yes, is of benefit to me in some respects, but it doesn't help to pay my mortgages off any quicker. Personally, financially, I could really do with higher rents, so it is a sacrifice I make in achieving my long term goals. I don't spend any profits, every penny is ploughed into maintenance, upkeep, insurances and paying down the capital, in the hope that I will have an income for retirement (I have no other pension).

I got my knickers in a twist because of the sweeping generalisation. It wasn't about "some LL's", it was "LL's", as if we're all the same, that's what touched my nerve, especially, given I'm close to having to sell a property due to the tenant that I mentioned not paying rent for many months and now being unable to remortgage it, it's crippling me financially. Yes, that is the risk I take, so I'm not complaining about it per say.

I'm not sure if that answers your curiosities, happy to answer more questions.

I was a renter for several years before buying, and I never had such strong anti-LL views. At the end of the day, I needed a roof over my head, they provided that service. I never held any feelings of resentment towards any of them for that, I just struggle with that mentality that many people have against LL's.

Maybe I just take it all too personally!