To think we should ban private renting?

[honeyrosesandwich]

AIBU to think this is a great idea?

Imagine if private renting was banned. All rented houses were done under social housing / housing association. There are already over 4.5 million houses rented under social housing, so it's on a huge scale already.

It would mean rent would be affordable for everyone and effectively help the cost of living prices. I live in a housing association house and my 2 bed is £520 a month. My brother, who private rents, pays £1100 for a 2 bed in the same area.

Repairs for my house are done by the HA's own company. I just put in a request online for it.

People that want to stay in their privately rented home will be free to do so but they put a ban on any new tenancies. The owners will have the opportuntiy to sell the house to social housing or keep it for themselves, but not rent it out further. If sold, the tenant will be allowed to stay.

I've been thinking about this randomly today and haven't come up with any negatives so far. Is it bad to monopolise housing? Well, there are already certain housing associations which own hundreds of thousands of houses.

Lots of people own homes and don't live in them. Some are dilapidated but few.

@honeyrosesandwich be careful what you wish for.
THE PRS is shrinking and private landlords are currently selling up in droves. My dh along with his db and dbil are currently offloading a lot of their portfolio. No-one’s being evicted their being sold as tenants move out.

Let’s be realistic here. The council and HA do not have enough properties so Blackrock, Legal and General and Lloyds Bank are aggressively expanding into the private and social sector housing.

Here’s an example of what they’re offering:

https://www.lloydsliving.co.uk/developments/abbey-fields/

I wonder why there are no prices!

So basically you’re swapping your private landlord for a corporate landlord who will be acting as your social landlord. as that will be the reality. I wonder how empathic they’ll be when you’ve broken your arm and can so can only pay half rent for a few months and pay the remainder in £50 a month instalments over the next year.

Btw I have no intentions of selling my portfolio as I mine are for my children.

However I can be persuaded to sell them all if I can be guaranteed a 3 bed house in Hampstead for £600 a month as per @Zov’s suggestion, once they’ve bought it back from the landlord for the original 1970s price of £50k, of course.

Most of those post war houses were only built to last 50-60 years, though (even though there's still a lot of them around!)

And deal with/ evict the problem tenants that live in them. I rented privately until I bought precisely because I didn't want you live anywhere near social housing

It would make the industry huge. MASSIVE

So massive that it would be privatised in part or all. So then you'd be renting from private equity firms. Profit profit profit

Good luck with that. If you want a preview you could see what PEs have done with vet firms for a start (they own pretty much all of them now)

They buy very cheap ones. We recently sold our flat in zone 1 in London, HA’s are not buying or rent guaranteeing properties in that price range.

Councils:

a. Can’t afford to renumerate current owners
b. Can’t manage the tenants they have
c. Can’t manage the properties (rent, repairs etc) that they currently have.

This in droves.

As I said Op be careful what you wish for.

I have often thought this for those that NEED to rent. It would prevent the two tier rents and presumably create a better record of people that abuse housing.

But want if I just want to rent? Say I’m between houses and just need to plug the gap before I’ve found my next one. I would want quite a nice house tbh which I doubt the council would have on the books. I also don’t think I’d be top of the pile.

I don’t think banning private renting solves the actual problem. It just creates a different one.
There will always be people who need or want to rent, whether that’s students, people relocating for work, those saving for a deposit, people going through a divorce, or people who simply don’t want to buy. If private renting disappeared, where exactly would all those people live?

I also don’t really understand the argument that people shouldn’t own more than one property. If someone has worked hard, paid tax, has the money to invest and chooses to buy property, why shouldn’t they? People talk about the cost of living crisis, but investments are also how many people try to provide for themselves in retirement instead of relying entirely on the state. Property is one way of doing that.

On top of that, plenty of pension funds invest in property. Those investments are there to generate returns so people have an income when they retire. Property investment isn’t just about individual landlords.

The biggest issue is that we simply haven’t built enough homes for years. We need more housing full stop, including more genuinely affordable and social housing. But social housing should be there for those who genuinely need it, not something everyone is automatically entitled to. There are also parts of the country where there is very little council housing available, and the fact people can remain in a council house for life, regardless of whether their circumstances change, or in some cases buy it at a discount, raises questions about whether the system is always helping those in the greatest need.

Bad landlords should absolutely be dealt with, and tenants deserve decent standards and protections. But banning private renting without replacing the housing stock first would just reduce supply even further and make an already difficult situation worse.

LL’s are drowning in regulations, that’s why many are selling up.
Tenants on the other hand can trash your home and not pay rent, it takes almost a year to evict them and they then get given free storage for their furniture whilst the LL gets a huge bill.

But profiting from people's need for food, clothing and transport is ok? Or are we nationalising supermarkets, the High St and car manufacturers as well?

My DD works in TV and film production and one of her jobs is sourcing and checking short (ish) term lets for cast and crew filming in our area. Sometimes these can be quite elaborate/expensive properties for well known actors.

Would this be banned under your plan too OP? Because those productions bring a massive amount of money to our local economy that goes way beyond the rent payments.

I agree we need more social housing but banning the private rental sector isn't the solution. Now the universal income on the other hand ... But that's another thread entirely.

I find this comment fascinating- what sort of things mean that the properties don’t meet the decent homes standard?

What other government spending have you asked your "genuine question" about?

and that’s what social housing is for - why push everyone into social housing to fix one issue?

the problem is though the council don’t own enough housing, that’s why private landlords are used. I worked with one borough yesterday who don’t own any! They all got sold to a company who take care of them all and rent them out! It’s shocking but the money isn’t there. Personally I think the government should build high rise flats that are big 3/4 bedrooms like in Dubai to house people, with a GP at the base. But again where would the money come from?! Where I live most of the social housing have been sold to the residents. Most of the people I know have sold theirs now. That should never be allowed as it’s taken homes away from those in need.

How is the state supposed to afford to buy all the homes that are required by renters? Also, why do you think the state is inherently better?

It's a nice idea in theory but in reality there are too many 'what ifs'

When DH and I first moved in together he was in the army. I didn't want to live on base so we always private rented. Members of the armed forces can move every 3 years or so, so private rent suited us perfectly. In your scenario would we be entitled to a social house if a house on base were an option? Many bases are out in the sticks so lots of wives who lived on base struggled with work if they couldn't drive. I wanted to chose where we lived and I wanted minimal disruption to my work.

What about people who want to test a new area before they commit? We did this after my DH left the army. How easy would it be to transfer to a new area? I can see people being stuck in the place they were born and having opportunities limited if they can't afford to buy.

I worked a temporary contract in Manchester a decade ago. I couldn't a council house there obviously. I wasn't going ro get a mortgage either. So I rented a bedsit. That job was very valuable for my career. Without landlords what would I have done? I think it added worth to society because it allowed me to pursue an opportunity I otherwise wouldn't have been able to take advantage of.

Insulation. Double glazing. Wiring. Heating. Loft access to attic conversions. Diy electrics and plumbing. The list is endless.

All these cheaper rents and home improvements are then backed up by the tax payer!!

Banning it goes a bit far. However increasing the amount of social housing so that it is available for almost all the people that need to rent would fix the problem. Private rents would then need to compete by offering something different as families would always have the option of reasonably priced social housing. Thats basically how it worked until the 80s

I think you are arguing about something I didn't say?

Anyway, to answer your question, the answer would be that it's different because it is not just the owner's investment, but also the renter's home. Don't like that, invest in something else. Loads of investments come with conditions.

Housing Associations or the government don’t have enough money to buy all the homes from people who have second homes.
Sometimes people become landlords because they move and can’t sell their home. They need the rent so they can rent/but another home.
If no one had a second home there would be no holiday rental properties. In another thread, I have explained why hotels don’t work as a holiday for everyone.
I only have one home and being a landlord is my idea of hell but truthfully not everyone deserves a home. People don’t pay their rent, they abuse neighbours and don’t treat a property properly.