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?

Not to mention the expense and time to landlords if tenants do not move after serving a s21.

It’s Thousands £££ requiring solicitors, barristers and bailiffs and the Landlords have to attend court just to get their property back.

Well, it is probably going ahead. The shop below was cleared out this week (was a charity shop).
My DP has still not got his deposit back, months on. New landlord/owner just outright ignoring him.

These links sum it up:

https://www.huckmag.com/article/there-is-no-such-thing-as-a-good-landlord

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/buy-to-let-landlords-renters-homes-2-2-million-homeowners-onward-neil-o-brien-conseratives-a8414736.html

You expect someone to run a business at a loss. Renters aren’t paying for someone else’s investment they are buying a service which is housing. Thats like saying your hairdresser should only charge you 90% of the cost of your haircut as you are already paying for their investment in their stock and capital assets.

plus renting out property doesn’t just cost a mortgage. It involves various certificates, insurance, repairs, maintenance, tax.

That person on x doesn’t understand how rental properties work.

Air B&Bs and second homes are more contributory to the housing crisis. Maybe not everywhere but definitely in some pockets of the country. Just take somewhere like St Ives for example. Holiday cottages galore & locals being pushed out through extortionate house prices. A place where it's more profitable to rent on a short term basis rather than long term.

This

I too have had long term tenants. I also do credit checks etc, but still had a very lucky escape recently. Under government rules, it could have cost me my house. I'm not prepared to risk it again.

Where have you been all these years - BTL mortgages have been around since about 1996 - nearly 30 years [criky emoticon] Has this only just occurred to you?

I wonder if a points based system around rent controls would help like in the Netherlands. Incidentally they also have the highest percentage of social housing and rent can only increase in line with inflation.

I think the biggest problem are the portfolio landlords with literally hundreds of properties in areas which attract premium rents. You see them on Homes Under the Hammer all the time - you can see Martin Roberts' disdain for them!

And where are people who don’t want to buy supposed to live?

It is also part of an investment problem, If I could invest my savings in somewhere safe and get 5 or 6 % as the professionals do and if inflation was 2% and I didn't get ripped off on fees I would not bother with BTL.
As it is The Funds charge exorbitant fees. Banks pay measly interest on deposit accounts and use our money to finance lavish life styles for senior managers and directors.

I completely agree, OP. I think people should be restricted to owning a maximum of two houses each (including the one they live in). I think rental properties should be government run and nationalised.

The rental market needs proper regulation and capped rents. It should not be possible for landlords to make £££ from the housing benefit element of their tenants' Universal Credit, essentially opportunistically and fleecing the public purse -it's parasitic.

The "but where would people live if there weren't landlords" argument is moot: the properties would still be there, it is just a matter of access and distribution ‐management would need to be reassigned.

I 100% agree with the poster who, on a different thread, suggested that residential property ownership should be tied to occupancy: you can only own a property in which you yourself reside.
The hoarding of residential property for the purposes of profiteering from an inflated and unregulated rental market is gross and, in my eyes, represents a fundamental character flaw.

And whoever said that it is becoming 'impossible' to be a landlord ‐I think that's probably subjective. I've a few school mum acquaintances who have lettings portfolios of 3-9 residential properties who are all laughing all the way to the bank. They maintain the properties well, and pride themselves on being 'good' landlords for letting to tenants (young families) on UC, but make no bones about this meaning rents are secure and can be pushed fairly high.

Housing is a basic right and therefore should not be something individuals can turn a profit from, exploiting the need of others. Better turn property over to housing associations or local authorities for better regulation and responsible rent-capping.

No. Building insufficient numbers of new homes relative to the growth in the population over several decades is the cause of the high cost of housing.

No, you’re correct. It all went downhill in 1996 with buy-to-let becoming mainstream and houses being seen as assets rather than homes. It is unethical.

I wouldn't stress about it too much - it's pretty much impossible to evict a tenant these days even if they decide not to pay rent. My DM is an accidental landlord and her tenant has more rights than DM over the property and it's proving impossible to evict her.

What really needs to happen is to increase new home building massively by the government to effect an over supply which would in turn lower house prices
however this will never happen as it would probably crash the economy as people rely on the equity in their houses

I would stop right to buy and stop all the nimbyism by people who agree we need more housing, but just not here !

I don't think it's possible to build housing at a fast enough pace that it would cause an equity crash.

If we increased house building enough, the prices would go down, but it would be slowly enough that annual inflation would make up the difference, meaning that few people would be left in negative equity.

Increasing the supply is vital.

Sure, people will still need to rent, but would it not be better to centre the needs of tenants and put in place strictures and universal regulation on affordability and maintenance? These conditions could be easily managed by housing associations and local authorities. This is the case in much of Europe where renting is a much more manageable option. At some point, a transfer of previous privately owned rental properties need to be transferred into ownership by housing associations and public ownership through local authorities.

What about those who would never qualify for state controlled housing or who want some choice or flexibility ?

That doesn't make any sense; if we had huge amounts of council housing, the requirements for qualifying for council housing would be massively reduced or even removed altogether; back in the 60s and 70s when 1/3 of the UK's housing stock was council housing, it was considered a "normal" way to be housed and you did not have to be poor, low-income, disabled, a carer or anything like that.

The requirements have become so stringent in modern times because the supply of social housing is now so limited, meaning it has to be rationed!

In Singapore, for example, about 85% of the popular lives in government housing. I don't think there is any particular requirement, you just apply for government housing if you want to, and you are given it.

I don't think societies HAVE to be centered on social housing (Japan, where I live, is the opposite - we have very little social housing, but housing is affordable because the private sector is so lightly regulated and builds so much). But it's perfectly feasible for the population of a society to have mostly government housing if its voters are happy with this.

@caringcarer There are for a HMO for more than 6 people.

For a HMO for up to 6 people, the space standards do not apply. This change can be made without planning permission. With stipulations, a flat can even be converted to a HMO without planning permission.

Does saying ' we have a portfolio' make it somehow better than admitting 'we hoovered up potential own homes for people'?
It's not an art project ffs

Wow, there really are an awful lot of laissez-faire enablers on Mumsnet who do not understand or care just how broken our housing system in England is (I say England, because the Scottish, Welsh and Irish have all made conscious improvements to their system that have purposely not been made in England).

Buy to let mortgages were destructive. Established people with better credit records - but who didn't have the money to actually buy the properties - out-competed the mainly younger and less established who would have been first-time buyers. The losers then had to pay what would have been their own mortgage payments to the landlords to rent the same houses under more precarious conditions than if they'd been able to buy them. That has been a significant part of the swing away from younger families being able to buy their own homes. The inflation of the market has permanently enriched the BTL landlords and houses have become serious investment commodities for foreign 'investors' and corporate landlords. All of that is wrong in my view and it should have been regulated but wasn't. While there are various demographics who suit renting, anyone believing that young families generally prefer to pay high rents on a home they could lose at a point they have no control over instead of investing in their own home are deluded. It has destabilised society.

I live in an area absolutely crammed with new blocks of flats. Many of them empty and owned by foreign nationals. This should not be allowed IMO. I suspect much of it is money laundering. Then there are all the empty office blocks and brownfield sites that could be turned into housing with a bit of effort and imagination. Nobody really wants to live in a rabbit hutch on the 29th floor where there are no amenities or public services.