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.

This is us. 2 BTL. 1 with a very long term tenant in. Partner owns that one. He was loathe to up the rent but eventually did so as hugely under the market. Both houses are still about £250 pcm under the market but we would rather people stay long term and aren't squeezed.
We're thinking of selling purely as we want the money out of them, however if they go to another LL we know they'll hike the prices ridiculously.

Many small landlords are people who wanted to keep their foothold on the property ladder when moving in with a partner, or can't afford to buy where they work so buy a property out of area to get started (the fastest growing buy to let segment was millennials buying their first property). Some of these would price commercially, many just wanted a good tennant and an easy life and so would keep rent increases to a minimum to retain a good tennant- you'll never have this with a commercial enterprise.

My concern with this legislation is not only is it not good for tennants, but it isn't good for people who want to retain a little security when trialling moving in with a partner and want to keep their options open; or people who can't afford the property they need.

I am selling a previously rented house at the moment, it’s just too much hassle being a LL and it seems likely to get worse.
I was a pretty good LL, no big rent rises and did work as needed. This mental reform act thing is the final straw really

You know that the majority of cash spent by "Private Equity" is pension funds? People often seem to want their pension funds to have strong returns but the companies which those funds are invested in to not make returns for shareholders. It all very odd really.

I do wonder what people take issue with specifically?

I like the idea of periodic tenancies as I know so many people who moved into a 12 month lease but then discovered the landlord had hidden a pretty significant issue (like a rodent infestation) and then they were stuck for 12 months or had to pay a ton to get out.

Wouldn’t it have been better to incentivise landlords to sell to their tenants?

Same here - also in Scotland and I’ll sell when my tenant gives notice.

It's a nightmare here in Wales already with the result that no small landlord with any sense will stay in the market. Thus there is a glut of properties ( many very affordable) for sale but nothing to rent for 50 miles.

This is what the landlords have to comply with...my own home can never meet these standards so is technically unfit for human habitation but I really can't do anything about the height of the risers on my stairs nor the pitch. It's a 250 year old cottage and pretty typical of the area

https://www.gov.wales/fitness-homes-human-habitation-guidance-landlords-html

Spot on, well said.

I'm a small-time landlord, and will never sell my properties. Not letting the big corporations have them, really wish other LLs like me would stop selling!!

The new rules and regulations are not bad enough to warrant so many LLs selling!

Lloyds are going to make a fucking killing out of the tax payer when generation rent retire.

We used to own 4 BTLs. Last one is advertised now and will go when current tenancy ends.
Since 2000 when we started, everything is more complicated and it has not benefitted any of our tenants.
Obviously most of the population is pleased they voted Labour to make all this happen.
You can't blame this on Brexit 2016.

That really would have been the ideal for everyone. There’s almost enough houses, it’s just shifting ownership.

not sure how you’d do it though. special mortgages with proof of payment to prove incomes? No stamp duty and no capital gains tax for the landlord? Something like that?

Unless you are in the USA, the bit about credit scores in nonsense. No one sees them apart from you and the company that provides them. They’re basically useless and just a marketing tool the credit referencing agencies. Lenders and those credit checking you do not seem them.

This is sad. The best landlords I had were the small ones.. the ones that were accidental landlords and had just the one property.

By best friend is about to become a landlord... just the one house. She has tenants already (house not ready yet, she is still living in it!) and would like them to stay for 2-3 years. It is a lovely family home with a huge garden. She is having to use an agency as she wont be local at all. She has little left on her mortgage, so it is not like she is relying on the tenants to pay for it.

Oh my heart just bleeds at some of those tales from poor hard up landlords

I don't really recognise the picture given here of decent small landlords tbh. DH and I have recently been lucky enough to buy a house outright (well we are knocking on a bit now, and it was partly due to inheritance).

But due to moving round the country we've rented on and off, alternating with being home owners, over the last 20 to 30 years, and I have to say my experience of small private landlords was mostly appalling. Penny pinching, reluctant to do repairs unless forced to. The multiple occasions when we've been without a working boiler because the landlord won't pull their finger out. And they seldom get it serviced, just the annual gas safety check and that's only because they're forced to do that by law. Whereas as owners we have always had the boiler serviced annually. So why wouldn't a landlord?

And yet the tenants are paying very good money for this all to be taken care of. In theory. But the sense of powerlessness as a humble tenant is so frustrating! It's so nice now to know that if anything breaks down we can get in our choice of tradesman as soon as we like, and we never have to rent again.

It's soul-destroying really. Then the frequent interference and intrusion from the agents. Then they try to rip you off with the deposit when you leave, often for faults that were present at the start of the tenancy.

Admittedly we did have one decent landlord many years ago in a rural area, more of an accidental landlord. But in general I am not a fan of the small private landlord, no. Perhaps it is foolish to imagine that corporate landlords would be any better, but you would imagine their procedures would be more standardised and they'd pay more attention to the law. In any case I don't really see how they could be much worse than the buy to let crowd.

It's like it was with food...
Plenty of small companies making nice stuff, then they all ended up sold to big corps and now we have crapton of shite and expensive frankenfood owned by handful of companies who can do and charge wtf they want.

I found smaller landlords better than big corps when needing repairs etc. But that's just my acendotal experience.

I’m afraid I’m doing the same thing for the exact same reasons.

Yes.
So many pp's saying they could never be a LL but are actually benefiting from large property companies via their pension pot.

Private renters are being kicked out because landlords are being given huge financial incentives to put asylum seekers into the properties😡

Just be careful of believing things like this.

We were the same and sold 5 rentals. We had wonderful tenants and felt we were fair. Our tenants stayed for ages and had pets etc. I’ve always said this isn’t good news. Everyone hates landlords but not everyone is in a position, nor wants to buy.

It's actually true. A couple of my clients are landlords and they've been approached with silly offers for long term tenants - far more than they could hope to achieve on the open market.

Changes to landlords rules, regulations, taxation, mortgages, insurance has been getting harder over the past few years.

We bought houses for our 3 children, they paid rent which paid the mortgage. When they had enough saved enough they bought us out at preferential rates. We raised deposits, one at a time, by borrowing against our house. It's worked well and all are on the housing ladder now.

However on each time the conditions costs etc got harder. We noticed that if we HAD wanted to make a profit/rent commercially then we'd have had to charge a lot more and would have made little profit, if any.

It was the previous government that started the legislation changes though, presumably to line the pockets of their mates.