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.

No, this isn't correct. UC is capped at the local market figure and is often less than landlords are charging, creating a shortfall between the two. It increases with the market, it doesn't drive it.
Also, while UC is a newish benefit, the payment of rent via benefits is at least 4 decades old. Before there was a cap on how much rent benefit would cover, landlords were able to exploit the system scandalously, charging what they liked and fleecing the tax payer.
This has somewhat improved.

What about my friend who was put in emergency housing which was a room and the owner charged the council something like 659 per week per rooms. She owned 24 house and rented out something like 110 rooms per week to the council

social housng sometimes costs the earth

What does this mean?

There was a long and sincere experiment throughout the 20th century by those who thought “better for the human race” meant the govt providing and organising all major aspects of life, like housing.

It was a human catastrophe in pretty much every country it was tried.

You are so right. Outside a communist country there’s no way the state could run something that massive and chunks would be outsourced.

Rents increase because of the deep pockets of DWP.

If UC didn’t cover rents, or even part of it, then rents wouldn’t rise so much.

In terms of pensions, just LGPS the government pension scheme owns c.£1.1bn (5,500) residential properties and plans to significantly expand this.

Anyone who works for the government with a pension within LGPS effectively has part of their “nest egg” in buy to let property.

LGPS is focusing on resi property partly to try to improve the supply and quality of rental property.

The other thing you would do if you banned private rental is incentive landlords to convert to commercial use, where it could still be let, taking their property out of the housing market altogether.

NorthXNorthWest

We don't have enough of the right houses in the right locations for the right people.

Lexibletheflexible

We do, many of them are owned and empty

So I asked if that is true, explain Bristol's housing shortage.

I love the idea of all renting being social housing - I remember pre-Thatcher when there was so much more certainty & affordability. However the differences that would be vital include a massive investment in maintenance, safety & security; this would obviously include removing toxic damp, cladding etc etc.
The capital cost of purchase is incalculable, obviously.
Sadly it’ll never happen.

edited for typo - social horsing may be nice but it isn’t what we’re discussing!

Council housing standards are higher than a typical house - there are minimum bedroom sizes, minimum of a C EPC rating, external noise insulation, minimum kitchen and bathroom sizes.

To buy houses on the open market (and new builds) is incredibly difficult because most don’t meet the minimum bedroom sizes for the smallest bedroom. You have to pay the price of a three bed but we have to classify it as a two bed so it isn’t financially viable. Lots of older houses do not meet minimum EPC levels and getting them to that level would be incredibly expensive. The taxpayer is already paying for existing older housing stock to be brought to a C by 2030 at a huge cost for things like external wall insulation, solar panels etc… The cost will never be recouped.

Pension providers/funds buy entire blocks of flats off plan to rent out as do overseas investors. I know of two blocks in Manchester bought by a Chinese consortium. It's not the nest egg people with one home that live locally, but the untouchable owners on another continent.

Being honest and we rent nice houses, I have had 2 houses that involved these big conglomerates and they were 20 times better than several of the private landlords I’ve had - one who was an ex ‘Tory mayor’ who decided to just let himself in my house when I was a day late paying once as I had forgotten to take a device with me and was away from home that I used to have to key into when doing online transactions and had informed him as such too- I found repairs easier too- thing is there are good and bad landlords, same as tenants, but there are an awful lot of landlords who really shouldn’t be , like the one we had with 4 houses and couldn’t afford to maintain any of them

I have always private rented. I would not have a home if not for private renting. I have moved around a lot so HA would not work for my situation. Better to make rents more affordable or easier to buy a house without needing a massive deposit (which is what I don't have). That said, I still wouldn't stay always in one place even if I did own a house, I have connections in another part of the UK and in India and I basically divide my time. Would probably rent it out! Plus I don't meet any criteria for social housing I don't think. So I would be homeless.

As another example, I have a friend who is a homeowner and they went travelling for a year and rented out their house in the meantime. People have different lifestyles and you have to account for that.

And how would the government find the money to pay for all these houses, well not the government, tax payers? That's a huge amount of money that would be needed. It would be fairer to put social houses rent up a bit and use additional money to buy more housing stock to rent out. And stop Right to Buy.
Also social housing renters should understand that it's not their house / flat and as their needs change they should move out. For example if their income improves or they have less children at home and allow the bedrooms to be filled with those who need the space. It seems really unfair that some people get the cheap rents and some don't.

Our council threw in the towel years ago handing their entire housing stock over to a private company to run. This company has done very well. They have the clout to buy land and build whatever they want. The council are rent collectors now.

@JahanaraBegum I agree easier to buy is really important. Some countries have experimented with a 100 year mortgage, where several generations pay the mortgage off and it is much more affordable.

Google says this would cost £1.2 Trillion. So your tax bill would go up significantly.
Or perhaps you don’t pay taxes, OP, and you are on benefits? Don't worry, I’ll keep paying.

The government currently pay lots of money to private landlords in rent assistance. Landlords up their rent to whatever the maximum threshold is. so they just have the government paying their mortgage anyway. This will just cut out the grubby bludger of a middle man.

Don’t be ridiculous. I private rented for 20 years. I would not have wanted a blood council house. I had lovely landlords who looked after us very well and would not have wanted to deal with the council every time something happened. Social housing is great for people who need it. I didn’t need it. I much preferred private rentals.

So would all private rental housing be bought or would the government confiscate them?

Is the government also going to compulsorily purchase or confiscate all empty housing / second houses / houses owned by those ordinarily resident abroad?

Do you not think that rental controls might be an easier sell and a faster fix?

In principal it is not the worst idea ever (as long as the rents were set at a level that the state could cover the repairs and make a very small profit to spend on other services).

However the challenge is...

There are (according to google) 4.71m private renters in the UK and average house prices are 270k (rounded and also according to google).

To buy the houses would cost the state £1.2 Trillion....
Where do you think we are getting the money to do that?

There will never be enough social housing to meet demand, closing the gap and having more available for those who need/want it is no bad aspiration. Moreover it would be cheaper for the taxpayer given UC housing element costs.

This is my son and his partner who met at university. After paying through the nose they found a lovely two bed flat outside Leeds which was hundreds cheaper a month than halls. They commute by train for £6 a day. Now son has finished his masters they plan to stay another couple of years, save money, do some travelling. Then move to Cheshire and probably work in Manchester. They're hoping to have enough money saved for a deposit in the next few years. Until then private rental suits them.

I can’t see how that would work. But it’s been really corrosive as capital has become trapped in rising property values rather than flowing into businesses, innovation, or wages.

I would support measures to dampen speculative demand for housing. Things like:

Higher taxes on vacant properties.
• Restrict land banking.
• Remove tax advantages that favour property speculation over productive investment.
• Tighten lending rules when credit growth is driving house-price inflation rather than new construction.
Build more council homes and the taxpayer gets to benefit from the more modest profit made.

And also, for those investing in BTL as a pension, make pensions and savings reforms to make incentives to invest in the productive economy more attractive.

Also make a “residents first” policy where people with a genuine connection to the country are favoured over overseas investors and speculative buyers. Denmark has this and it helps.

Homes under the hammer is very illuminating. The number of young people buying run down property to flip or rent out is surprisingly high.

I agree in principle, I think people should own only the property they live in. People "investing" in property to rent out as private landlords take away some of the most affordable houses, preventing a lot of first time buyers from being able to get on the property ladder, and ultimately meaning more people are stuck renting longer term and filling their (landlords') greedy pockets.

But, in practice banning it entirely would be complicated. And there is cause for rental properties that isn't social housing, not everyone wants to buy. I think in reality, private renting should be much more heavily regulated than it is, and it shouldn't be as easy as 'rich person has a bundle of spare cash, rich person buys lots of houses and rents them out to get richer' which it quite often seems to be.