To think rent increases “because of inflation” are immoral when many landlords own outright?

[RentRealityCheck]

I keep seeing rent hikes justified with “inflation”, even where the landlord has no mortgage and their costs haven’t meaningfully increased. At that point it feels like pure profit-taking, passed directly onto tenants who already have no leverage and with huge knock-on effects for stability, mental health, family life and society more broadly.

AIBU to think this isn’t just market forces but greed and that pretending otherwise ignores the damage being done?

Meanwhile, in the real world....

Yes they do - if a plumber's expenses go up, they directly charge more for their services.

My child's piano lessons went up because their rent and insurance went up.

That's exactly how it works.

Why shd the LL absorb the costs?? I'm not a LL and I really cannot understand the points you make OP. Owning property is expensive whether you live in said property or you rent it out.

Maintainance means sometimes having other people come in to fix and sort things, all those costs have gone up. As has insurance and management fees where applicable. For the maths to work/books to balance it makes sense that some of those costs are covered by reasonable rent increases.

Rents should be fixed by local authorities, and if it means your little 'nest egg' is no longer making a tidy profit, then sell. A flood of properties coming on to the sale market should bring prices down to an affordable level for professional 30 somethings, so they no longer need to rent

Wishful thinking I'm afraid, @mugglewump; the "professional 30 somethings" may or may not then be able to afford a home, but it leaves an awful lot of people who'll never get a mortgage no matter how modest, not to mention all those who really don't want to buy

With many private LLs gone, the corporates grapsing for even more and councils STILL selling off properties, where are those people going to live?

Missed bolding on header

I’m not a landlord but I have been a renter. My landlords were asdholes but that’s beside the point. I don’t understand the hate for landlords. Many people can’t afford to buy their own home and if all landlords sold up tomorrow causing house prices to crash enabling people to buy at rock bottom prices many people still couldn’t afford to maintain the houses they’d bought.

people seem to think they should be able to live for free because the greedy landlord is hogging all the housing stock.

Maybe it’s their only source of income.

Exactly. When I was a professional 30 something, I moved to London to chance my arm at getting into finance. I neither wanted to buy or to apply for social housing. There are thousands of young people who wish to live across the country for all sorts of reasons, some times they (immorally) even rent out their own place to pursue career opportunities for example as a junior Dr where you don’t get much say in where the NHS put you.

Do you really believe people renting are able to save? I find crazy the rent prices nowadays and when you add the bills that's a whole salary or more gone. Feeling really deflated for the young people today as unless you have a great paying job or mummy and daddy bank is neraly impossible to get on the property ladder, more if you have a family and need to pay nursery fees. It's all messed up.

That is all true, but do you really think it’s to do with Landlords? They’re essentially being pushed into being tax collectors and picking up social housing inadequate provision. They’re not going to continue doing it if they’re rational, it’s like trying to mine coal in the 1980s.

They definitely do. Prices of food, hospitality services, care provision etc etc all directly increase to allow for increases in minimum wage every year.

Any business exists to make profit so the business owner isn't ever going to absorb all costs. Landlords aren't really any different in that regard. The cost of providing the service increases so the cost of receiving the service also increases.

They came onto the market and were bought up by BlackRock and serial investors not first time buyers etc. Some people don't want to buy. Every housing market in every country needs rental stock.

Private landlords have sold up. The politics of envy have won and the average person has been shut out of building wealth or a retirement out of property.

A friend working for a housing association has friends who are estate agents. The landlords selling up lettable homes, they are being sold to overseas investors. They'll be staying in the rental market so house prices won't fall.

It's interesting that the buyers are a wide mix of UAE, Dutch, German. The Chinese preference is to buy off plan preferably a block of flats rather than individual homes.

They're building 1200 flats in Leeds, three tower blocks I think, be interesting to see who buys those.

But for commercial landlords providing houses is a business, not a public service. Why on earth would you expect someone to take the risk of buying and maintaining a property, letting someone else (who might trash it) live in it etc without the reward of profit.

If your argument is there should be an increase in social housing I agree with you, but it’s totally unreasonable to expect private landlords to operate as not for profits. Will you be remortgaging your home to provide rentals for others with no profit? Didn’t think so.

Exactly this. The idea that rent controls would trigger a sell off isn’t wrong but the idea that property prices would plummet and first time buyers would all be able to buy is fantasy land type stuff.

They will just be hoovered up by corporates, often owned by non-UK investors.

Hating private landlords is a national pastime and government loves it because it takes the focus off them and the job they have conveniently outsourced.

It will end up being UK. ‘based’ asset management firms or private equity subsequently underwriting REITs with property management firms running it, with investors from where ever. It’ll go the same way as commercial property, where once it’s baked into people’s pension it gets a bit outside of Government. I personally think the days of renting off a person were better. I

Being a landlord does employee people; just paid for a whole team of people to replace windows, heating engineers, cleaners, window cleaners, builders etc

Governments are lobbied by the big boys. BlackRock and others have meetings in Downing street. They're not anti it at all.

When does it stop?
The old days people bought buy to let's to let the tenant pay off their mortgage, it was a retirement plan. Normal maintenance of a property was landlords responsibility and an accepted one, it wasn't the tenants responsibility to pay £10k to have windows painted..

Now landlords want to make bigger profits all the time. Granted, that's business for you but it will become impossible for ordinary folk to rent, forcing sales.

In the old days you could write these sorts of expenses off and you paid tax at your marginal rate on your net profit. You could also write off mortgage interest (like every other country!). Neither advantage exist anymore. Interest is not an allowance deduction and you pay tax on gross rent at your marginal rate. These rules only apply to private landlords and not companies (who can deduct interest and pay corporation tax rates after expenses). Private landlords have totally different rental rules and so, are under a different type of financial pressure (compared to companies with rentals). So yes, bye bye private landlords. It's all going to be run by companies soon and they definitely don't give a crap about how anyone feels about rent increases. They've got a bottom line to protect.

Yes and it has ruined many communities, the part of West London I grew up in has had its soul sucked out by the Homes under the Hammer brigade or foreign investment portfolios, where I live now is the same. Poor them, why should they have their profits trimmed when they're just trying to make an honest living exploiting the misery of others in an ever-worsening housing crisis!

When does it stop?

Technically inflation stops when there’s three months of negative GDP growth and we enter recession. Above inflation rental inflation will stop
when tax, legislation and population inflation stop. There’s a lot of ways of framing this I guess but landlords costs + housing need growth will equal rent price growth. Like a lot of things that left wing populist parties fight their battles on, it’s actually incredibly simple how it works.

Or, + housing need growth aka exploiting people's housing crisis misery = handsome profit from sitting on your arse all day, multiple that by however many properties you owe!

Own not 'owe'.

Makes sense I guess, we don’t want people getting paid to sit around on their arses all day now do we (cough 46 billion, cough cough 32 billion) 🙄. We’re now in a quite disproportionate experiment of increased legislation and taxation for residential landlords, let’s see how well renters are doing this time next year. I’m sure it’ll be Xmas carols and mince pies.

I own a flat that I rent out. I charge the lowest level in the flats rental price range. Take off insurance, service charge and tax, I receive less than if the value of the property was in a savings account. Then take off repairs and I earn very little at all. If I need to replace a bathroom or kitchen I’ll have no profit at all and be in deficit.

I keep contemplating selling as it’s not worth it and I’m loosing out on income but the only reason I don’t is I am scared my tenant and her children won’t have anywhere to go due to the lack of housing.
Being a landlord is not worth it.