To think rents are going up because of insane levels of demand and not billionaires buying all the houses?

[BlueJuniper94]

Don't get me wrong, I don't like the billionaires, and I don't like them owning all the houses. But the main reason rents are rising like this is because we simply have too many people looking for housing than we have (or are building) houses for.

It’s greedy buy to let landlords .and the boomers not downsizing

Ill thought out regulations are pushing good landlords into selling, leaving behind unscrupulous ones.

Take dogs... used to be tenants would pay an extra deposit. If there was no pet damage, they got it back. If the dog ruined a carpet, the tenant replaced or used the deposit. Now you can't, so landlords stopped accepting dogs. So they are making it so you can't refuse pets..

Or EPC ratings. Yes, efficiency should be the aim. But a lot of places and streets and streets of Victorian terraces which are good solid houses, great room sizes etc.. but they can't be easily brought up to standard. So they could be forced off the market.

And so less houses. More people wanting them.. rents increase.

There needs to be better regulation of dodgy landlords. And some are complete shits. But there also need to be sufficient housing.

Too many people and fewer homes available to let as small landlords give up among the raft of tax changes and obligations to meet EPC ratings.

Supply and demand as always. The supply of housing is not keeping up with the demand of immigration.

It’s the increase in house prices, and the obsession we have as individuals about expecting to sell for more than we bought for. That means buy to let is a good investment, and also means that rents have to go up to pay off the landlord’s mortgages.
There are flats restricted to older people sitting empty here, because developers can make more money on them than on houses, because of service charges, so they don’t build what’s needed. And some older people don’t move out, because the process is stressful and they want their assets to keep going up. I don’t think it’s really about billionaires.

If only it was that simple…

Greedy buy to let landlords? or a greedy government that has changed the basis of taxation for private landlords but NOT for the large corporate landlords meaning that private landlords can struggle to break even on a mortgaged property if they don’t raise the rent.

Boomers not downsizing - downsizing to where? If there are no suitable properties in the area to downsize into what do they do?

If you want rents to go down - build social housing. Successive governments have promised an increase in social housing but much of what seems to have been built where I am in London are relatively expensive flats which aren’t great once you have kids.

For every 2,000,000 extra people in a country, you need to build an entire city the size of Leeds: not just houses, but schools, hospitals, leisure facilities etc.

No government has even touched the sides of the increased demand. Much easier to blame landlords (who are filling the gap left by the state) and older people who choose not to pay taxes to move out of their family home and relocate to one of those non existent 1/2 bed new builds.

That didn’t take long. How can people being housed in multi occupancy hotels also be responsible for lack of homes?

It’s to do with all of the reasons laid out:

B2L boom of the nineties and noughties.
Changes in the laws (to protect tennants) has seen lots of LL wanting out.
Baby Boomers not downsizing / wanting to leave property to family.
Cost of rents means renters can’t save for a mortgage deposit, meaning stagnation at the bottom end of the market.

ETA: lack of social housing being built / the selling off of all the old stock

All adds up.

Add too many air bnbs and holiday homes to the equation

In the first quarter of this year we built less than 40,000 homes. It doesn't touch the sides of the population growth in that time.

That didn't take long did it?
Where do you want boomers (fucking insulting word that is) to downsize to? An older person who is used to having a garden and probably paid hundreds of thousands of pounds is not going to want to live in a flat and why should they?
I have downsized to a park home because I didn't have the mobility needed for the upkeep of my house. Did I want to leave my home of 28 years? no but it made sense for us but park home living is not for everyone especially if you don't have a support network nearby.

But where are the people coming from who move into these 3,4,5 bed family homes new builds on the endless new estates appearing in the S E?

The wrong kind of housing is being built. They need real affordable housing for youngsters starting out, not shared ownership schemes for properties costing over £300k or affordable rents starting at £1k a month. One or two bed properties in towns close to work so they don’t need a car to run immediately too.

They need places affordable for single people on one wage, one bed flats or bungalows. I’m sure more elderly people would downsize if there were more two bed bungalows with a little outdoor space.

Instead they build four or five bed
houses that are expensive for the size of the house and land that are far too expensive for people starting out. Usually with no facilities so everyone needs a car.

I know a few people who sold their one property they let out in the last year. They are accidental landlords when they got married; they didn't sell off the other house immediately. I don't think all landlords are professionals.

If boomers did downsize, how many people can afford to climb up the next rung. A lot of boomers have 4 bed houses that are now really expensive.

Buy to let landlords are largely gone.

the tax system has been changed over the last ten years to make it much less profitable and it’s much harder to get a buy to let mortgage.

many landlords have sold up in the last decade and that’s increasing over the last five years.

boomers don’t want to leave their community (and in fact elderly people who move and lose their friends and social life tend to decline into ill health quicker). The “bedroom tax” encourages anyone on benefits to downsize,

add in that bungalows are very expensive compared to houses and that stamp duty and costs of moving run at 10k absolute minimum and there’s no point downsizing.

I’m not a boomer, but I currently live in a 5 bedroom house. If I downsized to a 2 bedroom one in my town the price difference is 100k of which 20k would be stamp duty etc plus I have the hassle of moving. Just not worth it.

i will downsize at some point but I’ll probably have to move much further north to realise more of the value of my house.

This is exactly it where I live. The city’s renting ecosystem relied on landlords renting at a reasonable rate to students September - June and then making a big buck over summer. But with new regulations they can’t turf the students out, meaning they simply don’t rent to students but instead airbnb all year round, and the city is busier for it. And any private rental accommodation left is at a premium as there isn’t enough.

I think some posters believe that older people living in larger homes should just donate their property to them. And heaven forbid they should want to leave it to their own children!

Brave New World in which the state nationalises housing and allocates free of charge to ME ME ME.

There's multiple reasons rent has gone up so much and it started with Maggie thatchers right to buy and the failure to include a legal mandate to build new council houses with the money that came from the selling off of council houses.
Add to that the massive population increase from both legal and illegal immigrants without any real investment in house building.
So called affordable homes are not really affordable especially when we've had wage stagnation and quantative easing (basically devaluing the £ by printing more money and the rampant inflation that it always causes)
The fact that for over a decade it was almost impossible to get a mortgage without a huge deposit due to the controls put on banks by the previous 2 government because of the sub prime fiasco in America which caused the banking crisis, many who would be home owners now having to rent.
Then you have all the extra costs that landlords have to pay and the liss of the tax breaks they had all being passed onto renters.
And yes 2nd/holiday home owners and those of us who want to downsize our council properties but can't as there's no suitable 1 or 2 bed properties available.

So its really not just 1 thing its a combination of decades of poor decisions and lack of planning and the problem is now getting exponentially worse that's lead us yo the cliff edge that we're going to fall off when the next housing crash happens (which Labour are guaranteeing by forcing up inflation and income tax/national insurance rises). Basically we're all fucked

If people downsize, they are going to buy smaller, first-time buyers type property, which will make it even harder for young people to get on the property market.

p.s. Calling people Boomers is very rude

You do know that the government are moving people out of the hotels into rented accommodation?

Obviously that in itself has not cause the current shortage but population growth in recent years will be a huge factor.

We have grown since 2010 with population of 62 million to almost 70 million today. We have not created 8 million (several large cities worth) of homes in that time. The builders federation reports 1.7 million since 2015. The maths of supply and demand is fairly obvious. We also have the impact of the government taxing landlords and making it harder and harder for them to operate.

The village near me is now 50% owned by a Lord and Lady , as are the two pubs.

The houses mostly sit empty and the locals do not have enough local residents anymore to do civic activities.

Guess it's the same in many pretty villages

That didn't take long.

You do realise an enormous number of immigrants are legal immigrants, who live in homes and not hotel rooms?

Well commerical wise it is the millionaires, my area is owned by Rowan Atkison and people cant afford to rent the shop spaces as he is charging through the roof for them despite being in terrible condition!

but normal housing wise, yanbu. Mostly down to everyone trying to own an air BnB which would of been used to house families beforehand. Needs to be a blanket ban on air BnBs to be honest.

Rents are rising because of all the regulatory certifications going up eg gas safety , electrical , things the government are introducing , harsher taxes , all the EPC stuff , council licensing, no doubt rents will go up again if landlords are hammered with NI on rental income in the budget . A lot of landlords are getting out the market .

The landlords I know only have 1 house they rent and frankly the costs of doing so have gone up hugely and they're selling up. Trades now are double what they were before Brexit, tenants demand new carpets every move then always trash the place. The gov just wants huge companies with offshore £ buying cheap property with no intention to do any more than the legal minimum for tenants, with no time pressure. If you can get through to them to complain, good luck!
Careful what you wish for.