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.

I’m anti landlord but I appreciate there is some need for rental properties. The rents shouldn’t be so stupidly high though. They should be reasonable and proportionate.

A far better idea in my book is to ban second home owners. If you want to live in a nice part of the country, fine, move there. Don’t live in London AND Cornwall/Devon/Lake District.

So if I move to a new area and want to rent for a bit before buying to see what it's like, will there be a HA house available for me? Or if I move for work for a few months? Will I be able to choose the size, the layout (I need enough room to accommodate the grand piano, and it must not be open plan for the animals). Can I have 3 spare rooms like I have now, so everyone who wants to wfh can have their own space? If not, why not?

I think there should be more social housing for those who need it, or better still, enough building that supply matches demand and house prices are reasonable. I don't think this requires an end to private renting, though. If you build enough houses, house prices and rents will go down as a matter of course, and being a landlord will not be the money spinner/safe investment it has been at times.

So you’d sell from one profit making entity (private landlord) to another profit making entity (HA)….. maybe think that through.

Yes of course. There are privately rented mansions on the market right now. Eligibility criteria would need to be changed, of course. Like it is now, a larger house would equal more rent, so they'd need to look at affordability (they do this now also)

Sheltered housing?

nursing homes and care homes all have residents paying fees that include rent.

there are models of support for elderly people that involve buying a flat (McCarty and stone) but they have a very bad reputation

Well it's already happening. My house was bought off the open market by a housing association 30 years ago and my rent is £520 a month. The person opposite me who private rents pays double that.

There's already plenty of sheltered housing by housing associations. Nursing / care homes, and student housing companies come under the same umbrella

Yes, how will they afford them?

Nothing was stopping housing associations from buying the currently privately owned places for rent at the time they were for sale but for some reason they didn’t.

And the council even more so. I have often wondered why on earth the city councils don’t just buy as many houses as there is a need for. They could get very, very long term mortgages for them and the council rents would eventually pay those off. ( You could not have Right to Buy though.) Ot must be because they feel it would be unaffordable.

YABVVU - or rather, naive. You are describing the Swedish model, which I've experienced first hand, and which has led to 18-year waitlists for public housing in the more fashionable parts of Stockholm. Unless your parents signed you up as a child, no chance of public housing, so just forget about regional mobility unless you're wealthy enough to buy.

Should the state take a more active role in providing housing? Absolutely. Should renting be much more heavily regulated in favour of tenants? Absolutely. But the state as a landlord is unable to provide the flexibility needed in a modern economy.

They do buy them. Mine was bought off the open market. I suppose there's current limitations, with how many staff they have, they probably don't have the capacity to buy tonnes right now

Well you might as well argue that all supermarkets should be banned and food purchased form state owned outlets.

In essence this is de facto communism.

As it is the issue is that no one other than finance houses / large asset buyers are investing in property and properties are not being built due tn the various increases in taxes and legislation. You

Also if the State was the only supplier of housing it would most likely be poorly run, run down etc. Most of the fires took place in mainly state owned accommodation. Much state owned accomdarion has damp issues. Do you really think that the state makes a better landlord?

Some friends of ours are currently privately renting a luxury property for about £8k a month. They don’t want to buy. Should that be banned?

Houses aren't going to just disappear off the face of a planet. It will mean the same amount of rented housing stock there is currently, but more regulated and affordable...

Councils have limits on what they can borrow. So they can’t just borrow money and buy/build a house and pay back the loan with the rent.

firstly the rent wouldn’t normally cover the loan and secondly right to buy means that the person who rents it can buy it for less than the loan and then the council are screwed

I agree with you in principle but I imagine there are many reasons why it wouldn’t work. Wish it would though. Im so tired of private renting and have nothing left to save for a deposit (love it when people say “why don’t you buy?”). I have to move soon and viewed a house the other day where the kitchen was literally falling to bits, much smaller than current home and it was £500 more than current rent. The landlord had clearly never set foot in it either, tried to tell me the falling apart tall cupboard in the kitchen was an integrated fridge (it was not). I don’t know why that made me cross but it did.
When my grandparents got their council house that was just what everyone did, they weren’t homeless or low income, just got married and wanted a council house and got one. Raised their children and grandchildren (and greats!), planted roses in the garden and passed away there with neighbours they’d known for 60 years.

Have answered this already, but no because it would be bought by a HA along with every other rented properity if the home owner wants to sell, and pending affordability she'd be able to continue renting it, or someone else will.

Almost 20% of houses in the uk is under social housing so its clear their model works! In the 70's it was 30%

Great point.
Never going to work

What should we do about all the pension funds that own property? Confiscate them and let people who have invested in them take the hit? This may be right, but we need to just decide that it is what we want to do. Because people will not like seeing their pension funds plummet

So you want the government to buy all the private rented accommodation at market rate? How much will it cost?

@honeyrosesandwich
What would happen to us then?
My husband and I both privately rent and have done so for over a decade. We both work but don't earn enough to be able to afford a big enough mortgage (we can't move area due to family/older parents/work). We would need a very minimum of a 3-bed (which ours is) as we have children living with us (boy and girl, 6 and teenager). Private rents in the area we live in are incredibly scarce.
We receive no government supoort and do not qualify for Social Housing.
There is absolutely no way we would be able to afford to buy the property we are living in by any stretch of the imagination.
We love the house we live in, take a great pride in its upkeep, and would be in a total mess if we were "forced" to leave.
Our landlady lives very near us and is absolutely lovely.

It won’t

imagine I own two houses and rent one out.

your law is passed. I’m not allowed to rent it out anymore. I can sell it to a housing association or someone who wants to buy it to live in.

now one in five houses in the U.K. is rented out. Housing associations can’t afford to buy all of them (they have rules about how much money they are allowed to borrow) so most houses get sold to people who want to live in them.

now, if you are a young graduate wanting to move to a city, there’s far far fewer rentals than there used to be, because they’ve all been sold to people who live in them.

the rental market right now is insane - it’s hard to get even a room in a shared house and you’ve got to pass affordability checks to go see flats of houses for rent at all.

so the rich kids do ok. Mum or dad buys them a house to live in in London or wherever they want to live fir their job.

everyone else graduates and gets in the waiting list for social housing in the area they have a job. And waits and waits.

Setting aside the initial cost to purchase these houses from private landlords, how will the government/housing associations/local authorities afford to subsidise rents and carry out repairs to 20% of the countries housing stock, much of which is pre war and wouldn't meet social housing standards? This was one of the reasons for introducing the right to buy, in order to offload public housing stock that was needing major investment (and I think it was short sighted and decimated the social housing available going forward).
In reality, without small private landlords I suspect the Government would outsource rentals to pension companies and big businesses which would probably increase homelessness as low wage single people couldn't afford them and those with poor credit histories wouldn't be accepted at all. It's made student accommodation ridiculously expensive and hard to access in many places.
I think the solution is modern pre-fab housing, provided cheaply by Councils and adaptable to suit family sizes and needs. High environmental standards, cheap to buy and brought onto council owned land ready made. With a falling birth rate it would meet the current housing crisis and, if enough is,provided, over time private landlords won't afford to compete and so will leave the rental market.

When I initially left my ex husband, I rented myself a 2 bed “gap filler” house, in Teesside. Perfectly pleasant landlord, guy in his 70’s, absolutely no issues.

My partner already had his own rented 2 bed property, again - no real issues.

We now rent a 3 bed detached, in Cheshire, for £1.5k a month. Where we are there’s a premium for having off road parking and a garden, and that is a premium I’m happy and able to pay.

The landlord is a decent guy, they’re responsive and approachable, the house is lovely, and we’re very happy in it.

I would have precisely no desire to move our disabled child into a new, unfamiliar property, and like our house enough to pay what we pay for it.

I don’t feel exploited by choosing to stay on the rental market, by the amount we pay or what we get for that money.

So thank you for your concern, but I’m happy privately renting.

Oh yeah, social housing does work. My mum grew up in a council house.

but it’s really not a good idea to have no private rented sector at all.

people need to move around to change jobs, etc. having an economy that only has owner occupied or social housing really really makes movement very very hard.