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.

Exactly everything is on the tenants side.
If you went into a shop and smashed it up.police would be called.
Trash someone's house, walk away, nothing happens.

You understand that houses don't vanish into thin air when a landlord sells them right?

Regardless of who owns them, there will still be the same number of houses per head of population.

There kind of is - housing associations. You have to wait for it though.

Been badly burnt twice as a landlord...never again if someone paid me to do it....

The tenant should be invested in their house as they do actually need somewhere to live. It's just a downward spiral either.

I'm still in touch with my best ever tenant. Totally looked after the house, so her rent never went up in 20 years...could trust her. If you have to factor in massive renovation costs, then rents just have to be higher. Even buying a house now costs many thousands, so people who complain about the cost of renting should factor in all the other costs but they don't think it through.

You don’t get it do you?

Fewer landlords, fewer houses to rent for those who cannot afford to buy. A lot of current rentals will be sold to first time buyers, loads of who are currently living with parents/house shares.

They’re not going to be purchased by new landlords because loads of landlords don’t want to do it anymore.

Where are the renters going to go?

I think there are going to have to be a lot more 0% deposit and "track record" mortgages (like this: www.skipton.co.uk/mortgages/first-time-buyers/track-record-mortgage), and a relaxation of affordability ratio criteria if you can demonstrate that you've paid rent significantly higher than the mortgage repayment for a certain number of years.

Or, there is going to have to be a right to buy introduced for sitting tenants - eg. if you've lived in a place for 10 years and your landlord sells up, you should have the right of first refusal on the sale and be able to get a 0% deposit mortgage to buy that property as long as the rental income you've been paying exceeds the mortgage repayment by, say, 50%.

I can imagine lots of issues with implementing both of the above, but something needs to change or we will end up with more and more tenants chasing fewer and fewer properties.

Yes, there will be less houses for tenants though.

Well probably not in the LL houses when they're sold.

There are lots of buyers about who aren't going to be residential landlords or owner occupiers.

Single Child Children's Home Companies and SERCO et al have got plenty of your taxpayer money to spend.

Let me know which banks please? I'm looking to sell mine, but no bank has viewed it thus far.

Me too, come on banks.

Taxed on turnover, rather than profit. Don't make a regular profit, so may end up paying tax on losses. No other business is taxed in this way.

This isn’t right - in the UK you’re taxed on rental income less expenses, in more or less the same way as a sole trader/business would pay tax. If you make a loss, there’s no tax and actually the loss is carried forward to offset against future profits.. You might want to double check the info you’ve been given?

So more first time buyers get on the housing ladder? I’m struggling to see the problem here.

Not where we live - we have 3 long term lets in a 5 mile area now, and 68 Air BnBs.

The point everyone is missing is that we are in a housing crisis that is getting worse all the time. Immigration means our population is booming. The number of houses per head of population is shrinking. We are playing a game of musical chairs. There are not enough houses to go around and people are going to end up homeless. Normal people in jobs aren’t going to find somewhere to live as there are just not enough houses being built.

There's no longer any incentive to be a landlord, so you can't blame them for selling up

My DS has bought a house and due to work/timing issues, it's ready before he's able to move in. He has chosen to keep it empty for 6 months rather than rent it out during this time - despite this being financially bad for him, he can't take the risk of it being trashed or people refusing to move out. Bad for my DS financially and bad for someone who would want to rent a property for a short period.

The system is totally fucked. There are some bad landlords, there are some bad tenants and those people fuck everything up for everybody.

It can take a couple of years at the moment to even put your property up for sale once you’ve given notice to tenants. That and about £10,000 legal and court fees if they refuse to move and want to wait for the bailiffs.

Landlords have had enough with their lack of legal protection overall

@Dollydaydream100

"This is what happens when immigration is allowed to go unchecked, LL's are forced out of the rental business and no one is building anywhere enough houses. No one has the money or the patience to jump through the legal hoops required."

What's this got to do with immigration, unless you want to argue that immigration has contributed to the housing shortage that's made BTL a lucrative business for the past few decades?

Immigrants contribute to our economy. Some of them become landlords. Some of them work in the building trade.

Really have no idea why you're blaming immigrants, except because it's a hobby horse of yours and you're looking for a place to vent about immigration.

We have two long term tenants. Both single and retired, neither of them would be in a position to buy the properties they rent at the moment.

I would like to sell in the next 2-3 years, but don’t want to see them homeless, it’s a difficult decision to make

Whatever their reasons it means there are not enough rentals available. Part of my job is to secure rental properties for clients and its very tough with up to 10 people chasing each one.
I agree that both Landlords and Tenants should have protection but sometimes trying to do this has unintended consequences - for example capping deposits meant that people with pets couldn't offer a pet deposit so they are now less likely to get a property. I have looked closely at the new legislation that is coming in as well and there are a few things in there that might make it harder to get a rental property as well
There will always be a need for rental properties, not everyone can or even wants to buy so fewer landlords will only ever be a bad thing

A friend owns multiple properties and has had the same tenants for many years in his houses.

He keeps the rents lower than market value as good tenants are worth looking after.

Lloyds Bank have it in their strategy.

OP - MN HATES landlords with a passion.

To add to your list of reasons, the CGT rules and increased tax on rental income don’t help either. Many LL are selling up. Leaving fewer and fewer private rentals. Supply and demand dictates that pushes the rent up and makes the lack of housing crisis worse. It’s a business, it should be tightly regulated to stop shitty landlords, definitely… but only on here is making a profit out of renting a house a despicable thing to do… even though any other business making money is apparently fine

Rather flip your thoughts and see it this way: the landlord is doing the council‘s job. It’s not easy money you’d make more by putting it in the bank these days without the hassle and the work.