Small landlords selling off isn't a great news after all

[Goingindrain]

My landlord is a small landlord, just owns his house and the one where we live. He is a nice man and charges us below the market rate rent.
He is fed up of all the anti landlord rules and has decided to sell. It seems he had an offer from FTB and then a big corporation put in an offer 10k over and he's selling it off to them via the agents.
I am worried about the rent going up and it's not a great news for tenants.

Yes Ive just done another very very quick search, within 10 miles of here, the cheapest 2 bed is 850pcm.

The LHA for a 2 bed is 650.

Those figures for rental costs have not come down since I last looked.

You've clearly never rented a property recently then.

In some places, even viewings are insanely difficult to get, with EAs only having a limited number of viewing slots at a specific time. No other options available. Once they're gone, they're gone. They know that they'll get several of the viewees wanting to rent it, so don't need to waste their time with more viewings. Once you've viewed, the EA puts forward "suitable" people for the LL to chose.

My son was a professional tenant, good income, provable earnings (contract of employment, payslips, etc), but struggled to even get viewings. When he finally got a viewing, he was so desperate, he offered a years' rent upfront and 10% over asking price! It was the only way to get one!

A couple of years later, perfect reference from landlord, etc., same story again, took six months to get an "offer" accepted on a rental.

I've no doubt that some places are different to others, but this wasn't a big popular city and he was only looking at small 1 bed flats, no pets, etc. Trouble was it was a bit of a "historic" small city and a huge number of smaller properties were lost to holiday rentals and Air BNBs!

It's absolutely insane out there in some places. The old fashioned ideas of the only people struggling being unemployed, pet owners, or self employed are long gone - it's far worse now, with demand so high that even people with immaculate credit histories, references and work/payslips struggle to be accepted too!

Yes this, someone can post as many articles as they like but this is what the experience is for renters.

My client group are obviously harder to rent to than your son but people like him, working, higher earning families are also finding it hard to rent

Landlords generally don"t want benefits, kids, pets, because that can lead to non-payment, damage, noise, neighbour complaints etc. they want single or couple working people who are out all day and don"t bother anyone whether deliberately or accidentally, that is good business sense, that is a majority of the private rental sector I think? I am saying that within that mainstream sector it is getting harder to find tenants, you are introducing a client group who have always had friction with landlords as an argument against their being more property for rent and falling rents, I don"t really buy that argument, I prefer to listen to property agent/landlord media outlets who have a vested interest in getting their information right.

I own a 2 bed apartment which I bought to live in and did until I met my husband and moved for work. I’d love to sell but can’t as the service charge is £400 a month, was £50 when I bought it in 2007 and the ground rent is now approaching the limit for mortgages. Plus council tax is £200 a month so despite having it on the market it will not sell. The government could sort out a lot of the issues with rentals and buying if they reformed leasehold quickly. Everyone wants to build up but unscrupulous management companies make it unaffordable for many in cities.

Rents are certainly not coming down at the lower end of the south east rental sector. Rents are pretty much all above LHA and the flow of tenants being evicted is increasing. Where the tenants have children the council are obliged to find them temporary accommodation but this is invariably the grottiest imaginable. And it's getting worse.

@StripesandSpaniels Have you tried reducing the price?
It will sell when priced appropriately.

Not always, demand is down in many areas.

there’s 4 places to rent in Rye on rightmove today, and 1000+ whole places to rent on airbnb

Many of which will revert back to private rental when cost of living, rates, unemployment etc. make people cut back on weekend jaunts?

If she reduces it 50% it will sell, lack of demand or not.
Everything has a selling point, alleged accidental landlords take note.

Quite, you dont become a landlord by accident, you make a choice, even if it is a 'least worst option' choice.

Thats interesting to compare, I did the same here, and there are 99 rentals and 566 airbnbs available.

You know a lot of airbnbs were never and will never be private rentals?

A lot can be though, they are not all in someone"s back bedroom.

I'm not evil either and I made a choice to be a landlord when I moved for a job, and selling my house at that point would have meant making a considerable loss. But that didn't make me an "accidental" landlord.

Why is the service charge so high?

I would probably do the same in your situation, ie made a choice which appeared to be in my financial best interests. It would be something of a stretch to call the outcome an accident... unless you flipped a coin instead of weighing it up & choosing the most lucrative option.

Good to see Airbnb being discussed. Councils need to have more restrictions on how many are allowed in each area. Hotels create jobs but Airbnb just take ordinary places out of the long term rental market so the owners can squeeze maximum profits from them.

It’s managed by a company called FirstPort and is now unfortunately average for our area. They’ve been in front of MPs twice and to be fair our MP has been amazing. ^^

Some do, ie whole houses/flats but also remember that the income will, in many cases be spent in the UK's shops & hospitality.

It will be UK trades converting these properties into Airbnb, with many users employing local cleaners for change overs.

But of course they also bring a load of problems too, as you say, need far more restrictions when whole properties become Airbnb.

They dont have to be a back bedroom, the vast majority of airbnbs we have stayed in wouldnt mee the requirements to be a stand alone rental, even cottages we've rented. Most of the places we stay are annexes of some sort, or flats above something else in the property

A lot of service charges are around this level, I scour rightmove a lot, for no good reason and the service charges are several thousand a year. Particularly retirement flats too

Theres a block near us, most people hate it but its 'iconic', the flats themselves are dirt cheap, around 100k, 140k for a 2 bed, but the service charges are 8k a year.

Just on the airbnb thing again, the flats Im talking about in the 'iconic' block, are mostly (theres a lot of them) airbnbs, becuase you cant get a mortgage on them due to the leases and the cost, theres also 18 floors so I think only the first few floors are mortgable.

People thinking that properties like this are going to enter the rental market are deluded. You couldnt rent that out and afford the cost of the service charges and you cant get rid of these places.

Rental supply has gone up by about 15% recently so it doesn"t really matter if these flats sit empty.