To think landlords who own multiple properties are part of the housing crisis?

[ByArtfulOliveDuck]

Is it unreasonable to say that having a portfolio of rental homes is unethical in a housing shortage?

Dry my choking tears, you have to…. pay tax.

The tax is passed on to the tenants.

Wake up.

So with the tax passed on to tenants, is it profitable or not?

If it isn't profitable they should sell up.

Absolutely it is. Completely agree with you.

@ChatChapeau yes, landlords are selling up. That's why demand is so high and you hear stories of 20+ applicants per property.

Yes, they’ll sell to offshore investors who don’t pay tax when they extract their dividends or interest or however they structure it. Do you want an overseas landlord?

I have studied and worked in tax for more than three decades now and what the gov (and the last lot) have done to the housing market with their nonsensical housing rules is abhorrent.

tax property income, interest and dividend payments derived from uk assets paid to offshore UBOs (ultimate beneficial owners) at source through withholding taxes, like the US does

Rents have reached very high levels in London which has made our operation viable again. I know that it's still marginal for others, and I do agree, if more money can be made on other assets then it's in everyone's interests to switch.

They can't refuse, but they can just price them out. I read on here that the high rents now are to make sure people on benefits can't afford them. And there is so much competition for private rental now, that I doubt someone on benefits is going to be the best tenant on offer to the landlord.
LHA rate where I live is about £620pm for a one bed property. Average private rent for a one bed property... £725-£925.
Long gone are the days you viewed a property and it was first come first served. Now it is like applying for a job.

That’s because it’s full of champagne socialists who probably own multiple buy to let investment properties.

If they were socialists they wouldn’t own multiple properties……that’s the opposite of socialism.

Well of course, but hence the moniker "champagne socialist". Its do as I say, not Do As I Do!

They come under the same umbrella of "landlords who own multiple properties".

It makes no difference to me whether the landlord is in the UK or not (I've had both).

Which is fine if your overseas landlord abides by the rules. It's councils and HMRC who they are a headache for not the tenant.

Friend works for an EA they handle a lot of rentals. One phone call she dreads is from an overseas investor. He buys property up at online auctions sight unseen. Then instructs them to let it. Sometimes the properties are truly awful. So he says to get it cleaned up, painted and let.

These properties have hidden issues. He won't spend a bean. Sometimes the council condemn it, that leaves it empty. Landlord still doesn't spend because overall he's making money.

I'm a landlord of a 3 bed semi in the north West. If you're paying 1200 for your landlord insurance you need to shop around. I pay about 250.
I don't pay a letting agent because it's just too expensive so i have a trusty plumber, a decent electrician and a handyman for anything we can't do ourselves.

Can't remember what we pay for boiler service and GSC but it's not 30 a month it's nothing like it.

I don't have insurance for the White goods as i don't provide them. They provide their own.
When the mortgage rate went up it made better financial sense to keep my tenants than to put the rent up. If they moved out there would be costs on both sides, them for moving etc and me for financial checks etc as well as decorating to return it to a blank canvas. They're decent tenants, they pay on time and look after the place. I'm av decent landlord, i get things fixed quicker there than i do in my own house. So we compromised and only had a very slight increase. Our rent is at the lower end of the going rate for the area.
Maybe if you shopped around for what you're paying out you wouldn't need to charge so much rent.

But we need land lords who maintain properties in a decent state.

Very true, we also need tenants who don't use the system to steal their accommodation, having no intention of paying. It should be easier to get bad tenants out, miss a couple of months and automatic eviction.

Well no, assuming they are letting them out to tenants, they are still available for people to live in. We haven't built enough houses for years, doesn't matter who owns them (unless second/holiday homes).

Yep high rents and frankly ridiculous demands like having a guarantor who earns 60-80k. It’s very clearly designed to exclude lower income people.

But in any market place with a shortage of supply access to the product in short supply is going to rationed by price. Landlords can't control that any more than tenants.

High rents and the other pricing signals are sending a message to the market, and that message is not to penalise landlords who own multiple flats!

Clearly.
The answer is to minimise the private rental market by providing real choice and opportunity via the social housing sector. Then we can see an end to this kind of gross discrimination.

Thatcher made a mistake not replacing the right to buy houses as in the past private landlords couldn't charge too much as people would rent from the council. Now hardly any council etc so private landlords can put prices up. Osbourne thought that reducing housing benefit payments to median of local housing would cause private rents to drop but it hasn't as too much demand

It wasn't a "mistake" by Thatcher, it was a deliberate attempt to get rid of social housing.

The Tory party is the landlord party, has been for two hundred years.