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.

@ThisOldThangWhat flat in London would be £400,000 in a desirable area commanding that rent? Very difficult to find. That’s barely 1 bed flat money in pleasant areas. Zone 1 would get that rent but zone 3 would struggle.

@Shinytrophy all insurance including loss of rent if tenant doesn't pay rent on a btl property can be written off against your tax bill so it is not passed on to the tenant. Just shows how much you don't know.

Selling not an option due to CGT. Converting is certainly something to consider.

We sold and paid CGT. No worries re getting in rent. No maintenance and no tenant worries. Making more money via other investments and gave most of capital away to DCs. Hassle free existence is worth it. If you have CGT to pay, so what? It’s unearned money.

And for 30 years these houses have been a brilliant investment as they were ideal as HMOs and I tended to get really good tenants - all young professionals. But the abolition of Section 21 makes shared houses too risky, so yes, I'm now exploring my options.

It is unearned money, but then I wouldn't be able to buy anything of a similar value, and I can't leave the market entirely at this point.

Yes section 21 is a huge issue. Your property won’t be yours.

I’m not in the UK.
Please remember not everyone on MN is UK based and regulations do differ between countries.

We have similar problems regarding landlords selling up here.

Britain’s landlord crackdown has driven the number of long-term empty homes to a record high as buy-to-let investors quit, new analysis shows.

One in 94 homes in England last year had been vacant for at least six months, up from one in 95 a year earlier and the highest proportion on record since at least 2013, excluding the pandemic, according to analysis of council tax data by Property Investments UK.

Analysts blamed the Government’s buy-to-let crackdown which is pushing landlords to sell up.

Nationally, 272,257 homes were lying empty long-term. Based on the average household size, this meant homes for 650,000 people – nearly enough to accommodate the strain on housing supply driven by net migration of 728,000 in the year to June 2024.

The London Borough of Kingston-upon-Thames was England’s empty homes capital. Here, one in 36 properties was long-term vacant last year, nearly triple the national average.

DT

It kind of blows a large hole in some of the comments on this thread…..

Its inadequate, the most a LL can keep (subject to approval) is 5 weeks rent. Won't even sctratch the surface in many cases, in fact quite a few Tenants seem to think that they can not pay the last months rent as the security Deposit "covers it"

That's not how the market works. There will be landlords that don't get insurance and can therefore charge lower rents. The landlord with insurance needs to match that lower rent, so it just results in lower profits for the landlord with insurance.

LL aren't "selling up" if the houses are empty. A lot of the problem is due to people dying or going into care and their homes not being sold and there is also the problem of people just having two houses.

Why would this be so?

The LL still can repossess, if they wish to sell, move back in or a family member wishes to move in.

Or has that changed?

As you wish.

Or, Owners are not willing to let out their property premised on the forthcoming RRB, and are either waiting/trying to sell, or will ultimately occupy themselves.

What is clear however, is that these properties are not currently being inhabited.

Yes, some will be probate etc.

It's a huge issue for house shares as I've already said, as it will be impossible to get rid of people that the others in the house find intolerable to live with. It will make having house shares (except where it's a group of friends on one contract) too risky.

I think you've misunderstood my point.

Private landlords are being deliberately forced out of the sector by the government. That's because the government came to the conclusion that the pension funds are the only people capable of the massive building programme needed to solve the housing crisis. The pension funds initially refused to invest because they 'couldn't compete with small scale private landlords' - i.e. the pension funds needed rents to rise for their sums to add up.

The pension funds are going to want a return of at least 7% to cover their costs and return 5% to their shareholders/policy holders. They might even want more like 10%.

Once private landlords are no longer competing with cheaper rent, they'll be able to charge what they want.

So, my example isn't based upon the market now, it's based upon the market that the government is deliberately creating.

The new bill says the LL can evict for anti social reasons, damage or rent arrears.

There does need to be change, i know of one woman, who complained about the state of the carpets, she'd been in the hose for 15 years, no pets, the LL refused, shortly after she was given a sect 21, she is stuck, no few suitable properties and those have many viewings and higher rent.

The previous commentator is right as Landlords re not allowed to deduct finance expenses. So your mortgage costs may be higher than your rent (hence a loss) but you are still taxed on the rental income.

The only way letting as an individual works is if you only have one property and don't work (so you can use your personal allowance to cover the tax or you are expecting massive profit from the increase in value of the property (not really the case anymore in most parts of the UK).

Yes but antisocial behaviour will certainly have a pretty high bar. It will almost certainly require proof in the form of Police involvement. Being generally rude and unpleasant, dirty and noisy aren't going to be classed as antisocial behaviour but will still mean no one else wants to live with them. And what that means is the rest of the tenants will just move out. Even if you could bring a court case on those grounds, which is unlikely, it would require the other tenants to attend court. But by then they will have moved out and good luck trying to persuade people to take time off work to attend court to help a by now ex landlord.

I'm not defending the eviction, but it appears that the woman was paying less than market rates if she can't find anything suitable at the same price. The request for new carpets possibly made it uneconomical to continue with the existing agreement.

Did the woman have the option of staying in the property at current market rates?

I think people are panicking about the new laws a bit too much . It’s very similar in Scotland already and didn’t cause massive issues .

@ThisOldThangPension funds are already huge investors in commercial property. If residential property made sense, they would have invested long before now. They were not keen for a number of reasons. Surely we need pension funds to make money? It’s vital. Building costs are immense. Even getting to start building costs £millions. Of course they need a return. I don’t think small landlords are universally the way to go for the best housing and some are not great.

Section 21 changes mean small landlords will really struggle to get a property back if they want to live in it or sell it. The tenant might not have done anything wrong but the LL might need the money. Therefore investing in rental property is a no go area if you want some control over your own investments. Therefore let the ones with deep pockets do it. Better than the state putting money in beyond what it must to support new developments. Which isn’t much.

Labour is anti-private ownership. The party seems envious of citizens success and aspirations. Stomping out “people getting ahead”

35% of people in the UK rent a property and of those people 84% rent from private landlords. I think 1900 90% of people in the UK rented from a private landlord. Anyway most landlords have 1 or two properties currently. The state is making it not really worth while. When my sons were students with zero income the rent after costs of letting agents, repairs etc was tax free. Now they will face 40% tax the difference between the money put in a high interest account v letting out is not worth the hassle particularly as property prices usually seem to fall for our family (we sold 2 flats we let out in the 1980s at 50% losses in terms of the capital in the 90s property crash). One child sold last home (a flat) at a loss last year etc etc. Anyway we shall see what my son decides when his tenants' tenancy ends (they are buying their own house near by).

There is a potential solution to the RRB, for many of us.

Serve your current tenants with a Section 21 now (i.e., use it or lose it), and simply AirB&B your property going forward.

If Labour are intent on bringing in periodic tenancies with two months notice required from tenants, then reform is what they shall get.

We ran the numbers on ours this morning - and with three months void - it still makes more sense.