To not believe people who claim to think housing is an uncontroversial investment

[PowerfulFishRiver]

Inspired by the wind up thread about the not-quite-millionare, but also a recent conversation with a family member who claimed to be shocked at my strong feelings when they said they wanted to buy a BTL.

I get that people sometimes have to do things that they're not comfortable with because life is tough and often having principles is expensive and sometimes we just can't be the people we want to be. I sometimes do cocaine, fly long-haul, and eat meat, even though I feel deep down like these are all morally wrong. But I would never try to pretend they're morally neutral, especially the drugs.

If someone said they knew treating a home as an investment was wrong, but they literally couldn't see any other way to make enough money to not be in poverty in retirement, or something, I feel like I would have a bit of sympathy.

But I just don't believe people when they claim to believe "it's just a business" or "just an investment". Surely everyone realises there is a finite amount of land on this planet (and especially on this island!), and if someone buys more land/property than they need, they're depriving someone else of it, and therefore making it harder for someone else to have a stable home, which is one of the basic things a human needs to have any sort of wellbeing in their life?

I just can't see how anyone can genuinely think buying up an existing asset and depriving someone else of it is anything like investing in stocks and shares or turning inputs into outputs like an actual productive business does.

And what is going to make them fall so? Forcing LL’s to sell won’t do that, that’s massively naive and student politics at best.

@ShanghaiDiva What's wrong with those assumptions?

I didnt want to buy at 21. I rented and moved around a lot. In lots of European countries people rent for life. Our issues are poor landlords, constantly rising rents and poorly maintained properties.

@Helpmeplease2025 there are 4.6mn rented properties in this country. If they all went on the market at the same time it would definitely crash.

There are 2 main problems I see with this logic:

1. Even if you said a property was 100k, a 5% deposit is still 10k. How many people do you think have £10k just sat in the bank ready to go?

2. Even if everybody did have 10k ready to go,
   not everybody would be approved for a mortgage- age, adverse credit, missed payments, insecure employment, self employment with not enough years books

And even then, home ownership comes with its own costs. If you can only just afford this imaginary 100k house and 2 weeks in the boiler breaks, or the oven, or you get a leak, that’s yours to sort and pay for as a homeowner. Not long after we moved into our first home we ended up having to spend another £4-5k on various repairs, not everybody has that cash and it’s possibly the one main appeal of renting- those things don’t come out of your pocket.

Don’t get me wrong I wouldn’t like to rent, and I also would never choose to be a landlord, but it’s not as simple as you make it out to be. If all the landlord’s packed in tomorrow all that would happen is a huge rise in homelessness.

I don’t think any of my friends wanted to live in our own aged 21. We wanted to live with other young people and have a fun sociable flat. We just didn’t want to be financially tied to each other for more than 24 months.

Totally

I'm currently renting out of choice. It's a lovely house and a reasonable rent. My (private) landlord owns a lot of property in the local area and I think it's great they're providing decent houses on long-term lets. It's a home for me and my family even though we don't own it.

I'm very old, but I'm bemused by the idea that someone who takes cocaine could possibly see themselves as morally superior to a landlord.

I'm pretty sure that buying and using illegal drugs which fund terrorism, rape, abuse and other delights is worse than renting out a house to someone who needs it.

And I'm not a fan of BTL.

OP, not everyone needs to buy a house, Not everyone wants the hassle of maintenance. Not everyone is at a point in their life when they want to buy.

I spent three years in London as a student, and halls of residence rooms were only available for 18 months. For the rest, and then the three years afterwards while I saved a deposit, I rented a bedsit. I wanted to rent a bedsit.

My landlord was a man who owned two tatty Georgian houses in West Norwood, divided into bed sits. I didn't like him much but his properties were cheap, basic and available. They served a practical purpose.

Him owning three houses was not contentious at all. Private landlords are not criminals.

And to add to this: if we had a huge crash, banks would suddenly want much more than a 10% deposit to protect themselves so suddenly that £10k would become £30-40k

They are assumptions, not based on any facts. These are my assumptions:
people moving in the early part of their career may not want to buy as it makes relocating with a job more challenging and more expensive. Ime most young people share due to other costs (council tax, utilities etc) and don’t tend to live on their own at 21.

We need more social housing. I think it's pretty disgusting how some landlords have been allowed to buy up loads of BTL properties.

There were loads of times in my life I did not want to live in my home forever. Rentals are a very important and significant part of a housing market.

I personally would have much stronger feelings towards cocaine use than btl. We all have our own red lines.

Around 2% of land in this country is built on. So that’s the finite amount of land argument down the toilet.

Next.

There was a time where a significant number of people were told by financial advisors and wealth management companies to buy property as an investment vehicle rather than use saving schemes offered by banks and building societies as property gave better returns.

There are also quite a lot of very wealthy foreigners (particularly in China and Russia) who are using UK property (particularly in London and other cities) to bank their wealth and keep their money out of their home countries for fear of their assets been seized by their governments. They don't care they are empty, they are willing to pay whatever tax they need to to keep the property as they feel their money is safer here than in their home country.

'Landlord' is not automatically a dirty word. Not everyone wants to buy. Society needs (affordable, decent) rental housing to be available. I think you're projecting your own issues onto this thread.

My DD has just graduated. She’s looking for a job.

she wants to rent to start with because she’s not sure she’ll like wherever the job ends up being and she expects to change jobs every 3-5 years anyway.

she’d rather live with friends as you can share the cooking and cleaning, and also her brother rented a studio in London (couldn’t afford a one bed) and got very lonely and moved into a massive house share which he much much prefers. There’s 12 of them so he only cooks twice a month!

Yes, but there needs to be a balance/equilibrium where people who want to buy can afford to ALONGSIDE a rental market where people can rent if they want to. At the moment, landlords are sucking up all the lower end properties meaning people who want to buy are being priced out.

YABU. When I first started work I lived in private rentals for about 5 years. No problems with landlords, paid my rent, saved for a deposit. Win win.

Equally my choice of holiday in the uk is self catering accommodation. Totally agree that there should be controls in some areas on how many houses can be second homes (peaks/ cornwall etc), no problem with that, but my family and most families I know rely on good quality privately owned holiday accommodation.

And what’s the alternative- badly run housing schemes and butlins type communist chalet holidays?

If you’re a decent landlord in either case I don’t see an issue at all. Plus where would you prefer people invest money, do you know what banks and hedge funds invest in with people’s savings/ pensions (it would make your hair curl in most cases).

Because I wanted somewhere small, instant, cheap and disposable.

One room plus a bathroom. It certainly wasn't worth buying. I wanted to be able to move every 12 months for work. I wanted somewhere I didn't have to worry about.

Not everyone is like you or thinks like you, OP.

The flaw in your "landlordism is always morally objectionable" argument is that many, many people need or want to rent. I own my own home now, but in my 20s I needed to be mobile and would not have wanted to.

I think a BTL managed well that gives people a nice home with a reasonable expectation of privacy, at a decent price and with a landlord who repairs things promptly fills a market gap. It’s not an evil thing. Of course slum landlords can get wrecked.

I think doing coke is far more evil considering the production chain. I’ve been to Colombia and let me tell you 38,000 people were killed by Escobar and he’s only been replaced by more numerous drug lords.

That’s not an issue with renting per se, that’s an issue with short term over long term rents.

I live in a city where >10% of properties cost £100k or less and there is still plenty of competition for rentals. Some people are transient, don't aspire to home ownership because their parents didnt, don't want the unexpected costs of maintenance or whatever.