Lots of Landlords are selling up!!

[PassingStranger]

Where is everyone going to live who can't afford to buy?

Alot of landlords are selling. Can't be bothered with all the hassle now.
People aren't paying rent and also trashing houses when they do and costing the owners lots of money to put things right.
On TikTok people are being told to trash houses. [Society gone downhill]

I know there are good tenants, but there are alot of bad ones. Family member works for estate agent and says there are more bad tenants than landlords.

You can trash a house and walk away. Nobody ever gets done for criminal damage on private rents.
There is no register of bad tenants legally allowed either. It's all left to the landlord to sort out at their expense.

Where is all the housing going to come from?
The government donthave enough.
People who are trashing houses and not paying rent are actually spoiling it for everyone..
Alot of lls are selling up now.

There’s no consequences for landlords that rip people off and charge them £1,500 a month for a mould ridden studio flat with single glazing and no central heating either.

Yes that makes sense.

I was thinking how owning and running university halls became a bit of an investment thing but perhaps the student market is suited to that in a different way.

That was meant to be a response to the posters saying it's too much hassle/no profit for a big chain/company. Which makes sense.

The consequence would be that nobody rented it, no?

Why, thank you for your kind comment 😉

There are a number of issues intertwined in OP's post. One is landlords withdrawing from the market, another is adequate housing provision. I chose to respond to the former and yet you attack my comment for not addressing the latter; it was not designed to do so.

Most landlords view providing homes as their own private income and investment opportunity. They are not in in for the common good. They are in it for the personal financial returns.

Many have provably profiteered from their tenants, simply because they could. Rent increases of 20% between one tenancy agreement and the next are not unusual, without any improvement being made to the home, or any benefit to the tenant.

In my opinion the state should provide rented housing to people who cannot purchase it for themselves. Rents should be collectivised and used as income to maintain existing homes and build new ones. Rather like... ooh, council housing, in fact.

One person's need for a secure home should not be another person's private investment vehicle.

Whilst I have personal experience of very good landlords I am also aware of many greedy, grasping bastard landlords who should not be allowed to be responsible for providing a hole to a mouse let alone a home fit for humans.

Other Europeans have regulated rental sectors that work just fine, but

1. They don't have numerous private amateur landlords trying to cover mortgage payments as their assets grows who are reliant on 100 perc occupancy and payment and often have emotional attachments to 'their' properties,
2. Landlords are institutional investors who see regulatory requirements as part of doing business and work out their yield after factoring this in. They look for good returns but not for rent to be buying assets as private landlords do.
3. Regulation and responsibility is accepted on both sides and failure to meet those triggers processes that are effective and have consequences on both sides.
4. Rent controls are part if the business model and ut is built into their yields.
5. Bad tenants don't get housing, and they know it. But also their rent is controlled so they are not gourged.

All those saying rent doesn't cover my mortgage anymore are exactly the problem. They think that their asset should be paid for by someone else when in fact it should be a reasonable yield on the money invested. With extra responsibility for the business of providing housing.
The housing stock won't be reduced, but hopefully the amateur landlords will disappear.

If you want to know just how dysfunctional this market is, here’s a true story for you.

A friend of mine has his flat out on rent to a single mother & young child (council tenant, no sign of the father).

The mother contacts my mate and says, I don’t want to be in this flat any more, please serve me with a Section 21, as I cannot do anything that would intentionally make me homeless. My mate replies no-can-do, to which the woman says, ok, I will stop paying rent. My friend relents and grudgingly serves a S.21.

Some weeks later, the council approaches my mate and says, if you rescind your S.21, we will pay you an ex gratia lump sum….

This is how screwed this market is.

There are of course things that can be done re mould etc. Almost all mould issues are due to condensation though and the way the tenants live.

one of the reasons (not the only reason of course) rents are so high is because it’s not attractive as a business. We need more housing to be built but renting needs to be a viable business or people won’t do it (and as I said I have been both a tenant and landlord).

Houses are going to shit because LLs don’t want to fix issues and tenants are already paying extortionate prices and can’t afford to keep up with repairs and wear and tear themselves. LLs exploit people in less privileged positions and I feel no sympathy.

There are potentially huge fines involved for that actually depending on the circs. If a tenant gets the council/environmental health involved they will carry out checks to decide whether it's dangerous or not.

It's basic supply and demand. If a flat with single glazing and "no heating" as you put it (I'm guessing you mean GCH?) is £1500 where you live then it must be a very expensive area and people are willing to pay it for the privilege of living there? Or they could just buy a house if they're earning so much?

There is always a risk to investing in rental property. I became an accidental landlord when I couldn't sell my flat when I married, so I rented it in 1990. It cost me £200 per month for three years because the rent was lower than the mortgage. There were a series of tenants, and only one set was bad news. Eventually sold it in 1999, happily at a profit.

Now we rent out a small commercial building, on a 10 year repairing lease, but even there things can go wrong. One tenant went bankrupt during COVID and while we were sorry for his bad luck, it was not before he had wrecked the office space to create showrooms for a kitchen-fitting business. In a year, we lost over £50k in unpaid rent and rectifying damage.

You're spot on about the equity gain, if you can stay in the game long enough.

If I'd rented out my house instead of living in it for 30-odd years, I'd still have the £400k equity gain, and most of the time the rent would have covered the mortgage, even when it was 8% or 9%.

Not to mention the amount of landlords who buy up family houses in affordable areas and then split them into student rooms and charge each of 4 tenants £180 a week when the house would’ve previously been about £600 to rent as a whole. Has happened lots in my city.

Everyone that bought 20 odd years ago has made a massive percentage profit regardless

Happy for you to go down the semantics route but we all know that the tenants pay their rent which the landlord uses to pay their mortgage. And then when interest rates go up they also pass that on. Hence leaving the equity.

The mortgage is the money invested though or at least part of it. And there are few countries left with rent controls. When Scotland tried to introduce them, rents went up even more than in England.

The condition that a rented property has to be in is highly regulated with both criminal and civil sanctions that are serious. You can be imprisoned and be subject to serious financial penalties as a landlord.
You don't service your gas appliances and someone gets carbon monoxide poisoning and see what happens to you.
Of course the legislation has to be enforced, that's another matter, but it's there and can and is enforced.

How does higher rents due to more competition for fewer rental propeties help with the rent trap?

Let alone those who can't find anywhere at all to rent and don't have family to take them in.

The only one I can see will benefit must already have a deposit save and hope prices dip so they can grab the ex rentals - or who have family who will gift or lend in similar situation.

"Choosing to rent "- if you can't yet buy - what else do you actaully do - a lucky few many have family to take them in rest but what happens to thsoe who don't?

Tbh I think the whole sector needs an overhaul.

Vulnerable and low income tenants should be housed by the council or social housing providers rather than private landlords. The latter doesn't make sense - the risks involved on both sides are huge (non-payment/damage to property by the tenants/exploitation or non-upkeep of property by the landlords). And the return to landlords often isn't enough to incentivise them to invest property in their properties and making them properly comfortable and habitable.

Private landlords should focus on providing high-quality housing for people on average or above-average, regular incomes who don't need council or social housing, and who can vote with their feet if things aren't working out.

That’s not what happens with council housing. What happens is it is poorly maintained and supports relatively large numbers of council employees who are paid handsomely. It often becomes so run down and undesirable that it ends up getting knocked down. In theory it sounds good but it doesn’t work out like that

Just a note on "other europeans". There are also often rules and responsibilities for tenants about which most here would probably moan to hell.
My sibling has to ensure bimonthly cleaning of drains for example. In places it's still common to have daily airing in contracts.

I think it's a shrewd move - rent to the good tenant for £800 rather then the nightmare tenant for £900. I know which I'd prefer

There is no such thing as an "accidental landlord".

Everyone who does it does it by choice. Normally because they are not willing to sell at a loss.

Actually, local councils can no longer afford to prosecute the most egregious landlords, because it is a lengthy and expensive civil process, and the landlords know it.

There is no longer any teeth to the legislation so they carry on regardless, doing the bare minimum in response to statutory notices and charging extortionate sums for hazardous properties.

I am afraid you are very naive about the availability, affordability and quality of rented homes. You would find a stint working for your local council's homelessness prevention team a huge eye opener.

I have always rented and I have never trashed a house. I resent the implication that just because I don't own, I don't take care of my home.

Across the channel rents are very controlled. In 2025 landlords are only allowed to increase their rent by 1.82%. Also the energy diagnostics mean that anything rated an F or G cannot be rented.

The latter is quite the problem, especially in cities where many of the buildings date back to the 1900's or before. The structure of old apartments makes it incredibly difficult to get the higher ratings, and therefore it's led to a lot of people selling up.

Tenants are pretty protected; they cannot be kicked out over the winter months, and even if they break the terms of their lease, it usually takes a year of legal proceedings before it can be enforced.

Cash cow! 🤣🤣🤣🤣