AIBU to think the UK needs more private landlords and competition?

[Cinai2]

The country I was born in has a lot of properties rented out by private landlords, there are usually more properties looking for tenants than tenants looking for properties, unlike in the UK. Because there’s competition among landlords, rents are competitive and properties are being kept in excellent condition, no one wants to risk losing their tenant and needing to look for a new one, which often takes a long time. I still own a flat there from the time before I moved to the UK. It’s a 2 bed in a nice residential area in walking distance to the city centre (European capital city), I rent it out for the equivalent of £600/month. Obviously this doesn’t generate a profit I could live off, what I have left after tax is needed for maintenance, but that’s ok for me, it’s an asset that provides security rather than something I earn a living with.

Why are we not encouraging similar in the UK? Am I wrong in thinking that we don’t have enough private landlords and the shortage of available properties to rent means that prices go up and landlords can get away with not maintaining the property and not fulfilling their duties to their tenants? The general approach seems to be to reduce the number of private LLs further, but unless the council is ready to step in and provide affordable housing on a large scale for everyone who wants to rent for whatever reasons (and I don’t see this happening anytime soon), how will this help the situation?
If there was competition between LLs for tenants rather than the other way round, LLs would need to go down with rent and up their game - make sure that all tenants’ enquiries are dealt with quickly and efficiently and that the property is in immaculate condition because otherwise the tenant will move on to the next LL and an empty property is costly for a LL.

The country just needs more housing, of all types.

It is depressing that an increasing number of people end up being tenants of inexperienced part-time landlords (‘it’s my pension’), unable to buy properties to secure their own families long term future - pries driven to silly levels by a general shortage of available assets.

What's really needed is more social housing. There is a subset of the population, who actually genuinely would be best off in a private rental (think students, young people still working out where they want to settle) as they're looking for short to medium term lets, but the vast majority of people, especially families, want somewhere they can stay long term without the constant threat of the landlord deciding to sell up and kick them out.

How would you encourage more people to invest in properties to rent out? Make it more tax efficient, or reduce the tennants rights so it’s easier to make money, I can’t see how that would make it better for tenants. as has been said, it’s about supply and demand. In your home city there is more supply than demand for rentals, so the price goes down because of completion. In the UK that isn’t the case (well down south especially), so there is more demand than supply. You need to either increase supply or decrease demand, both of which are difficult things to do!

Granted I’m in London and it might be different in other parts of the UK, but there are loads of properties available for sale. Even if driving private LLs to sell reduces property prices by 10% (very optimistic calculation), prices will still be high and many people will still want/need to rent.

Make it tax efficient. You could also force current LLs not to keep properties empty by taxing empty properties. Positive and negative consequences.

What we need to do, especially in London is prevent foreign buyers buying up property to leave empty. Some very dodgy people have money invested in UK property that is used as a bank and just sitting empty, not being rented out.

Agree, that’s why we could tax empty properties to make these available for people looking to rent

We need more social housing. We don't need more relatively wealthy people buying up our housing stock to profiteer out of those too poor to buy.

Some of the people who own the properties are Russian Oligarchs, the Iranian regime, some dodgy money launderers etc. They won't pay the tax here, and if they do, it will be peanuts.

But my point is, LLs wouldn’t really profit if there was more competition. You’d need to lower the rent and invest more in maintenance, otherwise you’d lose your tenant because there are many other LLs waiting with a better offer.

We need more social housing. First because it provides long-term secure housing, but it also impacts the private market.

where I rent out (although hopefully it will be sold to the council very soon, although this is the third time they’ve done down this route) there was a large amount of HA properties built in the last 5 years. The movement that created on waiting lists meant that there was (for a short time) less people looking for rentals than rentals. Quite a number of really shit landlords sold up as tenants having a good choice meant they didn’t pick their over priced, neglected properties.

these threads really trigger my irritation. Why would the uk be a carbon copy of whatever country you’re talking about? Why haven’t you immediately thought “oh countries are complex there are probably billions of reasons why the uk doesn’t work like my country that I don’t understand ?!?

Hard disagree. It’s perfectly reasonable to observe that something works better in another country and ask why the UK can’t do the same. Sometimes there’s a good reason. But sometimes there isn’t and we have something to learn.

In this case the reason is almost certainly that the UK just has a higher population per available dwelling than the OP’s home country, especially in popular urban areas like London. Whether they are social rented/private rented/owner-occupied is less important than the sheer excess of people wanting homes in London over the number of London homes available.

But isn’t that obvious? More concentrated housing less housing supply, in a capitalist market that means higher purchase prices… I mean why would you ignore that staring you in the face and be like WHY CAN’T WE BE LIKE FRANCE/ PORTUGAL whatever? It seems so basic

We already have quite a lot.

I live in tower hamlets and 34% of all housing is social housing and it’s still not enough because everyone who was born in social housing thinks they’re also entitled to social housing too. The council currently has a £600 million bill to improve the housing it has! Hackney and Islington have even more at 40%!

If anything my council needs far more private housing with full whack council tax payers to pay for the housing it has instead of stalling any development by demanding higher and higher proportions of social housing.

We need more housing in general and growth in towns and cities outside the south east to distribute demand.

Do housing association tenants not pay full council tax? I feel a bit cheated. I'm in social housing, no rent discount and no council tax discount.

Agree. More social housing. Councils have lost a huge revenue stream.

Why though? Why not look at what works in other countries and see IF we could learn something rather than everyone trying to reinvent the wheel. The mantra here is ‘more social housing’ without any further thought being put into it how to achieve that and not much movement during the past years and various governments, looking into alternatives makes sense.

The problem is not enough housing.

Social / rented / owned - there is not enough and the younger generations will struggle.

They are already taxed. Recent changes to council tax mean that a lot of these properties attract 100% council tax uplift. I am yet to see any positive effect from that.
Furthermore, a foreign investor is likely not be too worried about paying double council tax on an empty property. That would be a drop in the ocean for someone who is able to afford to buy an investment property in London.

But you’re not offering any insight into how it would work here.

1. due to property shortages, house prices are irregularly high. Forget your solution of tax breaks for rental income - how do these landlords purchase the property in the first place?
2. people in the UK don’t want to rent as first option. They want to buy. But your solution involves more people buying second or third or fifth priorities to rent out, but also more people renting them? How does that logic work?

Btw the mantra isn’t more social housing- it’s more HOUSING. We haven’t build enough of any type of housing for 50 years

They pay full council tax.

I know. I'm paying it

Since 2000 our population has grown by 18%, and our housing and rental stock hasn't.

The population is unlikely to significantly reduce in the near future, and despite Labour's promises house building is reducing year on year, no amount of "incentives" will change this reality.