limitations on home ownership

[thehappyotter]

Apparently they are going to make it harder for land loards to evict . If you say you need the money you have to prove your in a true financial poor situation. This will obviously stop as many people using it as an income .
This is all well and good but will they build more social housing .
If this does go through i wouldnt want to be a landloard

It should be harder to evict. Right now, landlords evict because they can't be assed to do repairs.
A tenant that pays the rent and keeps the place in order is still in a precarious situation.
I think selling up or moving in, should be the only reason a landlord should be able to shift a tenant.

I also don't think more social housing is the answer. A lot of people wont be eligible for it anyway. We need private rentals for lots of reasons.

I disagree - what if a tenant isn’t paying rent or damaging the property?

In those circumstances you will be able to evict.

also don't think more social housing is the answer. A lot of people wont be eligible for it anyway. Social housing is the answer, it is the scarcity of social housing that drives up rents.

The numbers of eligible people on waiting lists is exceedingly high.

Housing benefit is paying private landlords' mortgages instead of funding state-owned housing.

I've been a landlord for over 17 years and will be selling up soon

The goalposts have been changed a LOT since I started
Most tenants are ok but we have had a few nightmares

There is a huge lack of social housing. Housing benefits are only going to landlords as councils don't have anywhere near enough properties. I would gladly see all my tenants rehoused if they could get a property (although some want to rent privately for personal reasons and that's up to them)

I think the eviction process should be quicker in those circumstances.
It is not right that eviction is dragged out for months, and in the mean time the property is being more damaged and/or rent is not being paid.

The trouble is, councils and housing associations wont house someone if they leave without the courts evicting them. People are always told to stay until they are pretty much physically removed.

Sorry, yes you are right.

We do need more social housing as many people are waiting for years. But we also need the private rental sector too.

What if a tenant doesn’t pay? By your logic, it sounds as though landlords should have to allow non-payers to stay…

I have said about that in a subsequent post.
I was on about no-fault evictions.

Rather than just thinking automatically about social housing, we also need a good commercial sector, and by that I don't mean small landlords with one or two properties, but well run property management companies with whole blocks of good quality apartments and/or developments of houses which they can get economies of scale from so charge fair rents with good professionally run servicing as required. This happened where I lived in the USA and it meant that the block has an onsite manager for dealing with any issues. Corporate long term owners won't be needing to sell meaning more guarantee for tenants. Many of us need to rent sometimes, often just for a year due to job relocation, divorce etc so won't have social housing as an option

This year I inherited a house in an area of
London which a huge waiting list for social housing (just over 15,000 and growing). It’s a 4 bed house with lots of space and I’ve been variously told that I should do the right thing and allow the council to rent it out or I should become the Landlord and rent it out to a family at below market rate since I don’t really need the money as I have managed fine without it until now (and that’s a good point)

The thing is, Landlords are despised on MN and in general. If I rented it out I would be an ‘accidental Landlord’ in the sense that I have never planned to be one but I’ve noticed when people say that on here they are insulted and told no-one becomes a LL by accident and they should just admit they are greedy, exploitative. taking advantage of poor tenants etc.

If I sell the house I am contributing to the housing bubble as obviously no-one on an average salary can buy it (currently valued at over £1 million) and again I’m greedy, exploitative etc.

People hate Landlords. People hate the fact that owners are selling up because being a LL is so stressful. Building more social housing is not as easy as it would seem due to building restrictions. Also, a lot of that housing is built outside London and many of the thousands of people on waiting lists here do not want to move away from London which I entirely understand. What is the solution then?

It’s a shame. There is already something like a million less rentals than there was 5 years ago, rents are going through the roof in many areas, due to the shortage, and of course, landlords are now selling up in their droves, making it harder and harder for tenants, and with no social housing to count on. It is a huge huge problem in the making.

Many landlords will have to sell for less than they would like, this means that would-be first time buyers have a better chance of getting a foot on the ladder.

I'm not a landlord but I think it people cannot get the use of their property back, for whatever reason, it undermines everyone's property rights. The tenant becomes the de facto owner. If I were a landlord I would be selling up.

Everyone's property rights?
Buy to let landlordism is responsible for the fact that only the very wealthy have property rights, no one else gets a look at.

Wishful thinking, over a million have sold up and no impact on pricing.

Id sell it. No stress about damage to the asset for you then, and it allows someone with enough money to buy it and therefore not have to take up a home someone else could buy. With the shortage of housing the more that are available to be owned the better the situation is for everyone.

So you wouldn’t become a landlord simply because people on MN despise them (and others?)

You are in a fantastic position here to do right by the community and rent it out to people who need somewhere to live, at an affordable price - because you acquired the property and don’t necessarily need to make money from it. Reframe your thinking - do not view yourself as an “accidental landlord” or whatever negative, unhelpful perspective you are giving this, and try to be a bit more positive, in that, you could give back here.

If you sold up, you’re just offering up the property to another wealthy person and it’s not actually really helping those who are in a proper housing crisis.

They won’t have to prove anything. They can just say that they want to move a family member in.

In the £1m example just do it based on what makes sense financially. The UK now has immigration second only to the USA on the whole planet and has made letting to tenants very unattractive so there are fewer and fewer properties to rent - that was the state's choice. My sons are hanging on in there with a house each (they live at home with me) they let out and there has never been such demand and never had people want to stay so long but as they move into higher tax brackets the economics compared with sticking it in an investment product will get worse and worse. The aim is they either move in or they sell and buy where they want to live (we kept their older brother's house when he moved as I wanted to help them like older siblings buy a first property and wanted to do that before I was too old to be working and able to afford to help them which is the only reason they became landlords whilst still students).

However no one in the family has ever let to a social housing type tenant as the young professionals, fairly high rent, credit checks done by agents etc kind of lettings are a very different market so I do not have experience of letting to people on low incomes/.on benefits.

Tough shit.

You can't expect a reward without taking on a risk. Too much of capitalism has been "de-risked" so that the powerful can never lose. I wish more tenants would refuse to pay rent and trash their greedy landlords' properties. Maybe it would deter them from buying them up in the first place.

Just give it away?

@Idkwtdwms - why would you want tenants to trash a property? That means it's not then ready for a new tenant to live in

Where do you want these tenants to live?

There is not enough social housing for those who need it

There are people who choose to rent and not buy because it suits their circumstances - should they not be allowed to?

Someone has to own the properties people want or need to rent - how do you propose to fix this without landlords existing?

I don't get the hate for all landlords, yes there are some shitty ones, but most are just running a business, providing a required service

@thehappyotter are you a landlord currently or is this all hypothetical for you? Just trying to gauge your interest here.

So you're happy to see less rental property available then? Because that's what will happen.