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 why do governments of both colours only want renting to be done by corporations? All their fiddling and increased taxes is forcing it that way.

Tories wanted to squeeze private landlords out in favour of first time buyers.

Labour want to squeeze private landlords out to stop BTL investors bettering themselves as they need to keep people poor for votes

But both just result in properties moving to corporations.

We are also selling our flat in London at the end of the year. I’m so sick to death of being vilified by labour with all their holier than thou bullshit when they are just a bunch of hypocrites.

We are also good landlords. We have had the same tenants for 10 years and I feel awful about selling but I am sick to death of being taxed within an inch of my life and also the completely lunatic regulations coming in. So we’ll sell up and invest the money.

All the big corporations who will buy up rental properties will treat their tenants like customers and not in a good way. They will know every trick in the book to squeeze more money out of tenants and screw them over but people don’t want to hear it. More fool them

People love to rant about bad landlords, which I’m sure there are many. But nobody ever talks about bad tenants.

We had a woman refuse to leave, didn’t pay rent for 5 months, moved in her criminal pedophile son and we had to pay them to leave because court and baylifters could have taken years. My health has not recovered from the stress years later.

I see so many people on here vilify landlords, but frankly you have no clue what the reality is.

I think this is a case of people getting what they wish for. The socialists, that is, and any other like-minded fool who hates landlords.

If you bought a flat to rent out you wouldn't just need to find the shortfall between your own rent and the amount the flat rented for because you would have to pay tax on the rental income (assuming you have used your personal allowance with employment).

If you need a mortgage the interest on this is not fully tax deductible if you are a higher rate tax payer or the rent you receives makes you a higher rate tax payer. Mortgage equity paid with rent is always taxable.

You would also have expenses of annual gas checks, insurance, voids and maintenance of course.

It costs over twice as much to rent a house on my road as it costs me to pay for my mortgage. That is ridiculous. People have become so greedy they exploit those needing to rent. I think it's a good thing. And no one becomes an 'accidental landlord' what a load of crap. If you inherit a property it's easier to sell than rent out in most cases. I have no sympathy for these people who have watched too many episodes of homes under the hammer.

If your landlord lives abroad you should be paying the tax direct to HMRC unless HMRC have told you otherwise.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/paying-tax-on-rent-to-landlords-abroad

There are significantly more costs associated with being a landlord including:
-interest rates on BTL are higher
-tax
-backed up fund for replacing boiler/ windows/ structural stuff
-ongoing repairs
-periods of vacancy
-management fees

all small landlords I know do not make a profit. It’s only when they sell, which now the housing market is flooded with flats they’re not able to do so

Why not build the social housing before you start taking rental houses that are desperately needed out of the rental sector?

Jesus I genuinely had no idea about Lloyd’s becoming the UK’s biggest landlord. Madness. Surely this stops the general sale of houses (moving location/upsizing/downsizing/inheritance) as the company won’t need to sell. Are we going to become a nation of enforced renters?

Of course people are accidental landlords, don't be so silly. Examples:

-2 people move in together, but both have a flat so they move into one of the flats and rent the other out. Because perhaps it's a trial, they don't know how it's going to go and the person leaving their flat wants some financial security

-you buy a house and your job gets moved and they give you accommodation. You don't know how long it's going to be, so you rent your house out whilst living in the other accommodation

-you decide to work abroad for 18 months so you rent your house out.

-you rent out a house you are struggling to sell as part of someone dead's estate

These are all accidental landlord scenarios. It means it wasn't what someone set out to do. It doesn't mean they tripped over and their dick squiggled a signature on a rental contract that happened to be laying on the street.

And no I've never been a landlord. But you are being silly.

But what now happens - I've read exactly this on MN - someone's adult child had a flat in London but decided to go digital nomadding for a year. He decided against renting the flat out for a year because of the potential downsides. So housing stock is depleted because people are too scared to be landlords. This person literally would prefer to forego thousands and thousands in income because the potential downsides of being an accidental or little landlord are far too large.

So there's fuck all to rent and renters lose.

While I absolutely agree there needs to be more social housing, it cant be the only solution.
There will still be the need for short term rentals (not air bnb) for people needing to rent temporarily

Well I've got 12 btl houses. I think I'm a good LL. I maintain the houses very well and get any repairs or replacement items quickly due to having a gas Safe fitter, an electrician and a general maintenance man who I used for all my btl houses and my own home too so because I give them quite a few jobs they come toy properties promptly. I don'tind the RRB too much but I am dreading the ECP C because 4 of my houses are Victorian terraced houses and are all high D's. They are not mouldy or damp and have bathroom and kitchen extractor fans to assist ventilation. They will need internal cladding to get to a C they already have good boilers, double glazing, radiators with individual adjustable valves, 300mm loft lagging and LCD lights. I've been quoted £13.5k per house but it would only save the tenant about £130 per annum so it's not economically viable. I feel bad because I've had the same tenants in one case for 8 years and all over 4 years and they house 8 adults, 11 DC including 1 SEN DC and 3 cats but I'll have to sell these 4 houses before EPC comes into force. The problem is they are in a city that has about 20 percent of it's houses as Victorian terraced houses so I know many of these will be sold and it will result in the houses left to rent having rents go through the roof. The government should have built new social houses to rent before bringing in EPC C. I'll keep the remaining btl houses as all ECP B or C. The thing that annoys me the most is my own home is EPC D and I'm quite happy with it.

If you think the current Labour government are socialist you misunderstand the term completely.
If you do please explain how they are remotely socialist.

What a load of primary school project policy making.

They want to squeeze landlords and build social housing - no prizes for guessing what would happen first! And the people that will suffer as landlords sell up are would be tenants.

Build the beautiful/affordable social housing and private landlords won't need squeezing, they will be a non issue as tenants give their notice and move into their beautiful new homes.

Only slight issue is housebuilding isn't even keeping pace with new arrivals but don't let facts get in the way of your (The Greens) idealist fantasy.

My rental is owned by an offshore property company.

The rent for my house is £1150

I don’t use an agent so no agency costs but from that £1150 I have to pay:

Mortgage £700
Insurance £30
Tax £290

That leaves me £130 to cover all maintenance including the annual gas safety, replacing white goods and wear and tear. There’s nothing in it for me now which is why I’m out. I’m not spending the rent on a Bentley. I can barely pay my own bills!

And no one becomes an 'accidental landlord' what a load of crap. If you inherit a property it's easier to sell than rent out in most cases.

I've already explained in an earlier post how I became an accidental landlord. There's nothing I wanted less, but for legal reasons I was unable to sell the house for 18 months.

And obviously people inheriting rental properties and then selling them off (which appears to be what you're suggesting they should do instead) means evicting tenants and taking another rental property out if the system. I don't think you've thought this through @whoosit

Unless you are living in temporary accommodation or having to wait for bailiffs to evict you because you can't find a rental.

So maybe someone can then buy your house and pay 7 or £800 month on a mortgage and foot all the other bills themselves.

If you build social housing it pushes shit landlords out of the market.

We had three rounds of social housing built locally over the last few years. It hasn't affected me as a landlord at all - my properties are well maintained and aren't remotely extortionate. Several other landlords I know sold up because their poorly maintained, overpriced crap places weren't wanted because the movement of a load of people into the new social housing gave tenants more choice. People went from having 10/15 applicants for each flat to far fewer, and rents generally haven't gone up anywhere near as much as in other places.

One of my tenants (I have two flats in the same building) got a social housing place after waiting for 9 years. I was half expecting to sell up, but the council introduced me to another tenant that could do with the adaptions my flat has. Apparently in April the council will be offering to buy the flat again, but we've been through this four times before and it never ends up going through (even though I accept the price offered every time - no haggling as it's fair).

There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people who will never be able to get a deposit together to buy their own home, or to qualify for a mortgage. So where are they supposed to live? Freeing up a BTL to enable someone to buy, means that someone else can't have a roof over their head.

With not enough social housing available, there need to be some people prepared to be landlords.

People who inherit a tenanted property are literally one of very few circumstances, if not the only circumstances, where people become truly accidental landlords.

Most of the occasions when it's used - moving in with a partner, moving abroad for a while etc - is not becoming an accidental landlord. It's choosing to be a landlord, even if just for a temporary period. Not remotely accidental.

I’m also a landlord to a single property. I’ve never raised the rent, it’s probably less than 2/3 of market rates. Repairs are immediate, it’s good condition and it’s licensed with all the checks in place.
It’s my old flat, fell into renting it out when I moved out and I’ve rented since to a family who I’m on good terms with.
I l ways planned to sell it only when they moved out, but I feel sick about the idea of forcing out a family from their home potentially in the face of the changes. Genuinely sick.

You can't try to justify it to yourself all you want but I know it is easier to pay £800 a month than over £1000 a month on basic housing costs.