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?

We rent out a few properties, same tenants for 15 years, rent is way under what we could get, we cover the mortgage, this is our pension as we are self employed, we definitely not funding a lavish life style
we have had tenants from hell in the past, live like pigs and don’t bloody pay, it takes months to get them out, at our expensive, and still had to cover the bloody mortgage

I disagree to a point.

We in theory have enough houses.

The problem is we don't use houses efficiently. So we have old people living alone in big houses and families living in overcrowded situations and we have less intergenerational living than we've had in previous eras.

We have many houses which are now second houses or holiday homes which mean they are no longer homes in full time occupancy.

This is a shift from the past.

Population of the UK in 2011 63.26m

Population of the UK in 2021 67.05m

That's just the ones who filled out the census form. Who knows how many weren't counted.

Anyone want to estimate what it will be in 2031, what their housing needs will be, where the houses will be needed, and suggest how long we can go on and on and on building?

yabu
professional landlords are a good thing.

YABU

Rachel Reeves wants to use local government pension funds to invest in developing and owning property as rentals for families to live in. That’s why she is trying to combine them into large pension funds. The plan is to keep artificially inflating the price of homes so government pensions not only become self funded, but are a net gain to the exchequer.

Why aren't councils buying up properties? Surely this must be cheaper than putting up 1000's of people in hotels. I wish there was a system whereby if the tenant receives a sec 21, the council then buy the property, tenant continues to pay rent to the council, and has security of tenure. I'm not very knowledgeable on the subject, I just think this is a good idea.

Don’t be daft. People need to rent for a multitude of reasons. We have three rental properties and in two of them are people who don’t want to commit to the area long term and the other one are people who are here working temporarily from South America and need a property for a year. Where else do you expect them to live given that none of the tenants would qualify for social housing and don’t want to buy??
We have lived in all of the houses we own over the years and just haven’t sold them when we have been ready to move on. We realise we are lucky to have had that option.
Every time they have been rented out within days (hours at times) of being advertised because people are desperate for rentals. None of our tenants would want to buy our properties - we’ve offered!

My mother was in a care home, lived alone in a house she owned, and was there for two years - so far matches your calculation. But I had to sell her house to pay the care home fees - her small amount of cash would have run out very quickly. I’ve got friends going through this atm - one has a mother with much more capital, but there’s no point in the house and contents sitting there unoccupied, vulnerable to being broken into etc and insurance being v difficult.

You say this as if the lack of social housing is die to the amount of private rental properties that exist when this isn’t the case. Many, MANY boroughs sell their land to foreign investors. Yes, there are also a lot of people who took advantage of right to buy so that reduced the amount of social housing available but the government doesn’t give a fuck anyway

Not everyone can/wants to buy. We need good quality, fairly priced rental properties. In the absence of sufficient council owned properties, these necessarily have to be privately owned.

I do think the private renting sector should be better regulated, though, potentially with capped rents per size/location.

(deleted - double post)

Agree with being given the option of a long term rental contract. It's barely worth unpacking on a 6 month contract... but labour seem to have abandoned rental reforms.

Yes, I agree inefficiency is a contributing factor to the shortage of houses. The AirBnB holiday lets is a major issue contributing to not enough long term rentals.

The older people stuck in large homes is caused by too few bungalows/smaller homes for them to move into and by adult children being forced to return to the family home meaning they can’t downsize.

My main point is that the demand for homes to buy is lower than the homes for sale, while the demand for homes to rent is higher than the homes to let.

So the housing crisis isn’t caused by landlords letting homes (as OP suggests) as most of the homelessness is caused by families unable to find an affordable rental property.

There aren’t enough rentals and house prices are unaffordable.

Or they could not out the h9me to part cover care costs.
i think the issue is that the lA can’t recover care costs until the house is sold as it ends up as a charge so people don’t sell immediately.

Another idea is to encourage rental of all probate houses pending/ during the administration of the estate. However the Gov need to alter some rules for that.

I think the main thing that puts pressure is second home owners who the additional house is empty much of the year. People who buy and rent out are providing a rental that many people want.

The other problem is in the past that averagely well families could reasonably expect to staircase to a four bed detached.

Now house prices mean this is impossible so there is a ceiling to where they can get to on the housing market.

This puts additional pressure on the middle and bottom of the market and this in turn makes less attractive to downsize, because the demand in the middle creates a distortion in prices with effectively people paying more per sq ft at the bottom of the market compared to the top.

In theory this lends itself to larger properties potentially being worth more if they can be split into two smaller properties. This is definitely what has happened in London. I'd argue it's likely to spread to other parts of the country where this hasn't previously been the case - provided councils will allow planning permission for this. Many won't due to considerations about traffic and parking.

This is an extremely serious problem.

We have thousands of illegal immigrants housed in hotels and their figures are growing daily. Where are they going to be housed and what priority will they be given?

the issue stems form Thatcher selling council houses at a knock down price, this won votes and continued to win votes for 17 years.

If the council stock was still in the hand of local authority, and the building of more council homes had continued as it did without being sold, then people would have reasonable rents for reasonable homes and private renters wouldn't be paying way over the odds to live in a house

take a look at the prices of private rental in Vienna where there is a mass of stock of social housing at decent fair rental prices

I couldn't agree more. This is reality in a lot of inner city areas. Wealth redistribution on an industrial scale. Sucking money and resources out of struggling areas for the benefit of people living in a nice detached house in a moneyed suburban area.

I lived in one of these struggling areas for ten years and I saw landlord after landlord renting substandard properties to desperate people. The resulting antisocial behaviour is off the scale, destroying fragile communities.

If you lived in Birmingham and took any interest at all in what is happening in the private rented sector you would see this happening all over. People being shipped into the city from all over the country because of the relative availability of property.

I could go on about this at length but I just wanted to add my voice. Most of MN had no idea of the reality of what landlordism does to communities.

oh and just to add labour didn't stop right to buy as they knew it was a vote winner

@ByArtfulOliveDuck I can assure you that private landlords in scotland have to jump through hoops held up higher than the ones the councils themselves have to jump through!! we also have more difficulty evicting tenants. I am the cheapest landlord in my area and people actually come to me because they know the flats are in good nick, much better than council flats, and any repairs needing done are carried out within 48 hours!! never get that happening in a council flat!! takes them a month to answer any email!

Hahaha. Turned into Airbnbs or HMOs round here. Or at best bought by someones parents who then 'rent' it out to offspring, until they finally decide to gift it to them.

I know so many single people who have bought 4 bedroom houses. Family houses.

And in my area there is zero 1 bedroom council housing. The smallest properties are tower blocks where people coming out of prison are housed. They are all 2 bedrooms, so in theory all under occupied.