To think that Landlords have a bad name.

[Arewe29]

NC for this.

Is it just me or are all landlords frowned upon a MN.

We own and rent out 3 properties all our properties are rented out to young families, just under market rate, we allow them to decorate their homes how they like, and if there is any issues or problems they just call us and we sort it out ASAP.

I know that there is some terrible landlords out there, that should be dealt with but there are thousands of other that are decent that follow all the laws and their tenants are very happy.

@Arewe29 I am with you! I detect a smidgen of jealousy here!!!! there are many good landlords out there and to be honest the housing they offer their tenants is mostly always better than the housing offered by the councils and the larger social landlords. repairs are nearly always completed on the same day if not within 24-48 hours! you dont get that kind of service from social landlords and councils! In scotland where I live, landlords have more rules thrown at them than I follow in my own home! we have been following the same rules for many years now and I know for a fact that one of the major social landlords in my area have only just started this year following that rule!! we are all registered up her and god forbid you dont follow the rules or are late carrying out one test by a day!!

It's been on for 5 years now. More LL's sell up every one of those 5 years. The government don't want LL to all sell because then they'd have a huge housing crisis. In my btl houses there are 16 DC living in them. If I sold them all where would those 16 DC go to live? They'd be dumped in temporary accommodation maybe far away from their schools.

I do make some profit. I don't make a profit on 2 of my houses because they are on expensive trackers but I do make a profit on them overall from my portfolio. I also expect capital appreciation over time. I rent now to help my DC and DGC in the future. I do however rent out some of my 3 bedroom houses for less than I see a few 2 bedroom houses up for rent for. I have good tenants so I want to keep them and treat them well. I agree they can paint it how they want provided it is white when it comes back. I've agreed to people having cats because I like cats and have 2 myself.

I have 2 rental properties. The first tenant has been there for 19 years. The rent is well below market rate because he’s happy there and he’s a great tenant so why rock the boat. Obviously I don’t know his earnings but I know what he does for a living and I’d imagine he could easily get a mortgage. But for his own reasons he’s happy where he is.

Second rental property the tenant was very well off, came into an inheritance of several hundred thousands a few years ago. But again for his own reasons didn’t want the hassle of owning. He sadly passed away couple of years ago and the house is now being rented by someone who has been there since we put it back on the market.

Not everyone wants to buy is my point after all that waffle!

@CurlsandCurves it is true, some people prefer to rent, even with the means to buy, but I think this is a small percentage vastly outweighed by those sad that they are not in the situation to do so.

I don't agree with landlords, there's very few good landlords and even then the power dynamic is wrong you can't make it a home and due to a lack of legislation you can be turfed out at any point.

I'm glad some of you charge under market but it's few and far between and if you did sell you'd probably gain a bit of money whereas the tenant gains nothing.

Additionally it's also meaning most people now can't afford to buy a home and increasingly landlords are taking family homes and turning them into HMO's

Of course my answer isn't that they should start paying extortionate rent. I agree that rent in many places is too expensive, and you make a good point about banks needing to take income into account and not asking for huge deposits.

However you're ignoring the part about people in their first job in a new area not actually wanting to buy a house. I certainly didn't. I didn't know the area, or if I'd want to live there long term. And more importantly I didn't earn enough to be able to pay for a mortgage, bills, and repairs and maintenence on a house. I also didn't feel ready for the responsibility of home ownership.

My solution was to move into a rented house share. In your world of nobody is allowed to be a landlord, I wouldn't have been able to take the job and would likely have had to move back in with family, in a area of the country where jobs were scarce, and where I would have been sleeping in a sofa bed in the lounge. What would your solution for me have been?

The whole rental sector needs overhauled with a particular focus on regulation and fit and proper tests of potential landlords.

Far, far to many of them debt finance their properties to unaffordable levels, have zero business sense and seem to think they should be completely insulated from any form of risk with regards to their 'investment'.

They also often seem to think they're entitled to both regular profit and an increase in asset value on their 'investments' despite only ever putting in the bare minimum in terms of O&M (if even that). The amount of landlords you read about that are apparently complete unaware (or just ignore) their legal responsibilities is appalling.

I think most people would be OK with landlords if they were properly regulated and controlled.

Not everyone is in a position to buy a property. The people that can’t buy, need to rent whether they want to or not.

The laws are in place, but as I explained up thread there is very limited enforcement. That isn't the fault of landlords. You can legislate all you like; the good landlords respond to new requirements, bad landlords don't and get away with it, because of the lack of enforcement.

Enforcing the laws we have would be a start.

@TinyYellow
How far do you want to take the argument about making profit out of necessity? I’m assuming it doesn’t apply to food, clothing or transportation?

This is just nonsense ! Sainsbury's, that well known charity and giver of free food makes no profit! The privatised railways ? Yeah, they are certainly not making any profit. H and M? Another charity. What utter I'll informed emotive crap is written on here.

Wtf?

As I said earlier, mumsnet really does bring out the 🤪

@Thebestwaytoscareatory I agree with many of your points, although financing properties is a tricky one, because interest rates vary so much over time -I have friends whose mortgage payment on their home has increased by £600/month. We could be in the same boat if we were due to refinance now. If a landlord has to refinance now, they’ll be hit with higher interest rates like everyone else.

Wow, I didn't realize there are some strong sentiments about landlords/landladies here.

I am an older, international post graduate student here and some of the remarks being made make absolutely no sense to me at all.

I can see the issue from both sides. It is not necessarily the landlords'/landladies' fault they bought a house/flat, and you were outbid but they likely were able to offer a bit more because they already had assets. As an aspiring homeowner, it likely took you a long time to save up the limited funds you have/had for a deposit only to be outbid.

The real blame is your government. Its policies allow easy ownership of properties and there is not nearly enough housing supply.

Some landlords can get a bad rap for being slumlords, but as a daughter of small-time landlords, I have been in the unfortunate situation(s) where I have had to clean up after nightmare tenants who had left piles and piles of trash to leaving period pads stuffed into the bathroom walls and some equally bad, if not worse stories I could go on and on about sharing. Despite a deposit, no deposit will suffice for having to clean up after nightmare tenants like the ones I have had to.

So to the tenants who scream, b*tch and moan about landlords, it's not exactly a life of glamour being on the small time landlord end.

In my parents' situation, they worked really hard so they could be a little more comfortable in their latter years. As immigrants, they weren't educated. They had foresight to invest, as education was not a luxury they had. They could not nor would not want to continue toiling and washing toilets (not that they did but some are in that situation), into their 60s. The point is -- on paper, landlords can look and seem like millionaires but their assets are illiquid. As for tenants, which is the situation I am currently in, it does not feel equitable either.

Fellow tenants, just FYI, I had applied to five properties before I secured one and had to pay several months up front. From a landlords' pov, it makes sense, as I have no credit history in your country, and at the same time, several other competing tenants were locking in 36 month contracts. It would not have made sense for me to "buy" a property either as I am only here for postgrad (hopefully longer). So as a tenant, I could have pointed fingers and blamed other tenants for outbidding me and locking longer contracts but if you look at it from a more objective standpoint, it is truly your country's housing supply and your current government.

Landlords have had a bad name since the dawn of time. The evil landlord evicting the heroine is a staple of Victorian melodrama.

I’m not sure the core argument is renting v owning tbh. If private renting more affordable and more secure I doubt they’d be such bitterness.

As a never-rented homeowner I cannot imagine living with the fear that the owner of my home could send me a letter tomorrow asking me to vacate in 8 weeks.

How do you even find a home in 8 weeks? It took us x4 months to sell and buy our new home, the disruption (nursery, dr, hosp app) lasted a few months we only moved a 10 miles and it was OUR choice.

I cannot imagine going through that due to someone else dictating it. Esp when it might be at a bad time, new baby, sickness, new job (how do you view?), kids who may be stressed.

A friend of mine pays £1.5k for an ex council flat that her neighbour pays £800 for. Both work.

Guess who gets housing benefit.

There are so many stories of tenants being made homeless because the LL wants to move back, lost their job, died, needs it for their adult children, want to drastically increase the rent or tenant asked for improvements etc.

The market is broken.

I agree there needs to be more enforcement but I think the fact there are so many landlords who need active enforcement to meet even the most basic of standards tells you all you need to know about the overall character of the sector.

Also the laws we have don't do anything to regulate who can become a landlord though. Literally anyone that meets the BtL mortgage requirements can go for it, which is why there's so many bad/unsuitable people in the sector imo.

Just look at how many were howling in despair when mortgage rates rose by 3-5%, claiming this left them with no choice but to raise rent by 20%, 30%, 40% or more to cover the 'increased costs'. All because they'd failed to consider the risk of intrest rate rises when taking out their loan.

If I'd made a decision that exposed our business to that level of risk I'd probably looking for work before the end of the day.

https://inews.co.uk/news/told-being-evicted-from-home-diagnosed-cancer-same-day-2650633

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-67385825.amp

and I get that recent tax changes or changes in LL circumstances will be behind much of this, but really many tenants and tax payers are paying the price for decisions made by other ppl.

Part of the reason why my council may go bankrupt is due to the huge temporary housing/housing benefit bill.

We are back to Cathy Come Home, it’s just not healthy for our society.

Some people can’t buy because they can’t get a mortgage due to bad credit.

Others are just starting their careers so don’t have a deposit saved up to buy.

How do you expect them to house themselves?

Where do you suggest contract workers who move around for work live?
Where would students live?
People who have recently moved to the country? Where would they live?
People going through divorce or separation who haven't yet sorted their finances?
People having extensive work on their own house?
Not everyone who rents wants to buy

Not everyone wants to buy! We’ve been renting the same house for over 8 years and have no interest in buying in the location we moved to for DH’s work. Owning a home is a ball-ache and homes need constant maintenance and expenditure or they degrade rapidly - we are not practical and don’t enjoy any of that stuff, nor do we have any family who are practical so it’s a nightmare trying to get any work done on places we have owned in the past. We are happy to pay for any leaks and issues to be someone else’s problem and we can just phone the letting agent if anything goes wrong.

Sadly our landlords are moving back soon so we need to find a new rental which is very difficult where we are…but we still wouldn’t want to buy a property.

Lots of people lease their cars. I lease mine. That means I pay to use it but I'll never own it. That's the same as renting a property.

@Thebestwaytoscareatory, I know about 30 LL's the highest any of them increased their rents was 17 percent. Most raised by 11 percent to match inflation. LL's mortgages if their fix run out would have needed to pay possibly 40 percent more.

In most cases there are alternatives to having a car.

most ppl need a home.

Some have no room to move sideways or down a level.

I’ve just sold and bought a new car, I declined leasing, I actually prefer to own it like I did my last.

If I couldn’t afford the car I’d get the bus/take cabs.