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?

They are not stopping you though, you just don't have the funds, that is nobody's fault but yours

I just provided the link.
Who is stopping you from obtaining a property?

That link doesn’t show that it’s a right. It shows you can if you want.

As I’ve said. Landlords who hoard properties and push prices up.

They are. They reduce supply, thus pushing prices up.

I was being sarcastic, they are quite clearly going to sky rocket.

But they won’t. Landlords will soon find that people won’t pay their prices and prices will either go down, or they’ll have to sell. Either one is a good result.

Wouldn’t that be a right ? being able to do something if you want?

UK seems to accept unjustifiable price rises, look at fuel prices? global oil and gas prices have been very low for months - yet prices we pay keep increasing.

LLs are no different.... they know there are property shortages, so hike prices to the highest level they possibly can.

Wait till LLs new income tax rates come in! will go straight onto rents plus a bit more too.

Was gobsmacked when the Govt introduced this.

Though inflation has just fallen substantially this morning..... will rents follow??

No. A right is something like a human right.

People have no choice, well, they do, they can become homeless or move back with their parents........

In our village, rents used to be around 400 to 600, just 5 or 6 years ago, now they have more than doubled... and people snap up properties.

Remember too, LLs selling has a cost, the tenant will be kicked out, they wont be the ones buying, it'll be another LL or a relatively well off FTB...

..... being evicted is extremely stressful and will almost always mean the tenant ends up paying more for another property.

If I’m buying a car from you will you sell it to me for less than it’s worth because you have finished paying for it.

Any increase should be written into a contract to begin with and the measure of inflation clearly specified. The law should be such that if it is not, then either there is a limit.

Yes agreed, they’ll sell and remaining market will charge a higher premium to compensate for additional tax and risk. Then someone will be on mumsnet in 6 months saying there’s no rental properties available and when they come up they are too expensive and go in a couple of hours . It’s all incredibly predictable.

I do find it funny that people expose themselves as believing that people shouldn’t own their own property

Professional landlords let property to create an income stream. As prices rise, that income stream needs to rise as well. Otherwise who’d be a landlord?

And where I live, rents have gone so high that properties sit empty for months.

Inflation is the rate of change, because it’s dropped to 3.2% it just means prices are going up 3.2% rather than 3.5%.Completely agree about the additional Tax for landlords, gone up 2% and legislation has a cost. Together you’ve got a baked in average rent increase of 8-10% just to break even.

Global oil prices have been rock bottom, but we tax energy at around 75%.

Does anybody believe that?

Yes the right to own property is covered by ECHR

tell farmers that.

@Londonisthebestcityintheworld Blackrock et al are parasites. They've recently bought up a tonne of social housing stock in Denmark - of all places - a country historically known for it's excellent social housing provision.

Private equity is the scourge of the earth in so many senses when it comes to hoovering up public infrastructure and utilities.

I'd encourage everyone to watch the UN Special Rapporteur film called 'PUSH' and then decide whether privately-owned housing, designed for pure profit, is still a 'good' or even an 'adequately required' thing. Housing should never be driven for profit - shelter being one of the fundamental needs of any human being.

Private landlords are propping up a failed social housing system here in the UK, with many local authorities actively seeking landlords to add to their social housing offering. It stinks, not least because there are also private companies making an absolute KILLING from temporary accommodation housing 172,000 childen - often in substandard conditions.

Offering shit housing to poor people is a real money spinner.

Hi @RentRealityCheck
I haven't read the whole thread but here to say that rentals are a commercial enterprise.

The morality model doesn't naturally fit because being outraged at landlords making money makes zero sense. Making profit is most landlord's objectives. Rental income must covers expenses (mortgaged or not).

In a nutshell, a mortgage is just one of a landlor's expenses.

It should be fairly obvious that if the people with the most money in society are allowed to own multiple houses that drives up the price of the remaining houses, making them unaffordable to an ever increasing section of society.

To a large extent the effect of this is being masked by the mortgage market which still just about allows people to afford to buy, as long as they don’t mind being in debt to a mortgage lender for most of their life (with the effect that they end up paying far, far more for the house once you add on the interest payments over the life of that mortgage).

We are now looking at ever longer mortgages, and the possibility of mortgages stretching beyond a single lifetime and being passed on to the next generation, all to keep this ever decreasing number of people just about able to afford the dream of owning their own home.

Eventually a large swathe of our society will only ever be renters, as the housing stock will be owned by a very small number of very wealthy people.

You can either say “ok, I just need to make sure me and my kids are amongst the super wealthy” , or you can accept that the current system is broken, it is damaging to our society and we need to think of ways of fixing it.

I know how inflation figures work.......

Why does 2% extra on tax lead to a 8 to 10% on rents? the renters rights bill doesn't, as yet, mean more rent increases?

Mortgage rates have also fallen substantially too, will LLs who hiked rents, drop rents......

For LLs without a mortgage, its money for nothing, with little to no risk, a 4 to 8% return is easy to make, the asset will increase in value, CGT is still below earned income rates.

With no mortgage - Costs are a 5 yearly Eicr (£250) a gas safe cert (£150) building insurance, possibly a 10% letting fee, thats it - repairs etc are an investment in your property and major ones are tax deductible.

Oil prices? there are no new taxes on fuel but what has happened is the trebling of forecourt profit margins....

There are good and bad landlords.

If a tenant is ao vehemently against their landlord what is stopping them moving to another rental or purchasing a property (low deposit required and long term mortgages available).

Staying put and complaining is not going to improve their lot.