Social consequences of house price boom

[Upwind]

comment at the guardian.co.uk [click]

One of my pet subjects but I have not seen this in the mainstream media before:

"If food or energy prices were rising at 8% per year, let alone at 20% there would be outrage. There would certainly be alarm that such price rises were not sustainable and that increasing numbers of people were unable to afford a basic commodity.
Academics at the university of Aberdeen are currently running a project on this, and other, changes in society and believe that "when the implications of these developments are taken together, they hold the potential to produce profound and, as yet, largely unanticipated social consequences for this age cohort, as well as for UK society as a whole".
Astronomical prices mean that couples who cannot afford to buy, or move to larger properties, or lose half a joint income, are having children later in life when their fertility rates are lower. You do not have to own a home before you have children but many people desire at least some stability before they do so. "

Well just to make things worse

Although old Ken did introduce a requirement for a proportion of any new build housing to be provided for social housing use, it is rather toothless in practice.

The fine that the builders receive if they do not provide the social housing units is derisory and certainly no incentive to actually produce the social housing.

Neither do the people paying £500k for a 2 bed exec flat want to live next to 'social housing types'

So what happens is that the builders submit a plan with a high proportion of social housing, then it gets approved and planning permission ensues. The social housing is then subsumed into the normal development and the builders get landed with a fine. They then enter into negotiations with the council to mitigate the fine - usually offering a playground, sports field, doctors surgery or the like - and the fine is waived.

So for all that it sounds a great initiative - in practice it doesn;t walk - in fact it doesn;t even crawl!

'essbee: but actually, if you gave tennants stability then fewer would feel the need to buy. I know I wouldn't bother buying if I had decent rental terms. I don't see it as throwing money away, but as giving money to a landlord rather than barclays.'

very true.

the 6 month tenancies lead to a lack of stability and a HUGE increase in homelessness.

indeed, i can think of three people on this board off the top of my head who've been made homeless in such a fashion.

Sopabox hits the nail on the head. "planning gain" doesn't work, can't work, and should be scrapped.
It makes as much sense as a law making Tescos provide low quality meat for poor people, or Marks and Spencer have 2nd hand clothes racks in their stores.

You want poor people to have better homes ?
No you don't.
By you I don't mean "tu" I mean "vous". People aren't prepared to pay for this through honest taxes. Voters have decided that developers are "bad people", and so should pay for what others want. Also most people aren't developers, so it's fine for nearly everyone, except of course those living in slums or the streets.

Poor housing is not a complex problem, like trying to fix efficiency in the NHS or counter-terrorism.
You give poor people money.
You let developers build houses, paying appropriate taxes.

But that costs, and thus is about as likely as voting for the banning of soccer as an inhumane blood sport.
What people "want" is a cost free trick to help the homeless, and it ain't there.

Xenia: I'm not advocating a return to sitting tenancies, I'm advocating more stability than we currently have.

An employer can't just sack you for no reason with 2 months notice, so why can a landlord evict you like that?

weeeellll... having been a landlord once and briefly, I found I was at the mercy of my marginally insane tenants & it is inordinately hard to actually get them out even if the notice period is up. I basically had to wait until they were ready; they then trashed the place as 'revenge'. I know a lot of landlords who go through the same thing although obviously my sympathy is also with tenants who are rudely turfed out especially if they have families.

whwywhywhy - actually you could have got a court order in about two weeks. tennants have bugger all rights these days. why were you evicting them in the first place? does that explain their reluctance to leave?

for various reasons (i.e. they kept saying they were about to leave, & I was heavily pg etc etc) we did not go the court route- were just about to when they vanished leaving devastation behind. Their tenancy was up, it was a 1 year, we had a new tenant, and they just didn't leave. It was bizarre as they had agreed to go. It was a weird situation- I only had the place as had not been able to sell it when moved in with dh so had to rent it. So it wasn't an 'eviction' but gave me some sympathy for landlords who try to be reasonable people when a minority of tenants are not.

You can't be evicted without a court order. Landlords have a massive problem with it. Tenant doesn't pay rent. Landlord has to wait 1 - 2 or 3 months, go to court, spend thousands and only when the oucrt order is made get an eviction order. It's really unfair on the landlord.

Also in law you can agree longer tenancies. If you can negotiate with a landlord in a free market you can agree any period 5 years, 10 or whatever.

In fact bringing back things like the Rent Acts which also made it impossible to increase rents ( some people still paying a pittance for huge London places and can't be evicted) might help because the buy to let market would falter and prices would drop. There would be fewer rental properties but people might then be able to buy.

xenia nobody spends thousands on eviction. very simple process, cheap court fees, legal advice rarely needed.

but if you're an honest tennant and you care about your credit rating you can be evicted for no reason with 2 months notice.

rent defaulters can be evicted by court order in about two weeks as I say (not that I have been evicted that way, but I have been the other way)

but no landlord offers tenancies over 1 year because they want the flexibility to evict tenants if they call envioronmental health or because they fancy 6 months in the carribean. the law is biased I say.

Senora do you have absolutely no right of reply when landlord starts proceeding to evict, even if you are within the rental term and have been paying?
(asking out of ignorance not cynicism)

no: the standard contract (after the first 6 months or whatever the set period is) is 2 months notice on either side - no reasons, nothing. It's outrageous imo. But then we don't really care that much about people who can't afford to buy their homes in the UK do we?

Xenia- believe it or not its not fair on the tenant either. not happened to us (yet- in fact we nearly had to do it to our teneant when we had one, she ripped out the kitchen- then fortunately bought the house from us) but council / HA whatever won't even consider housing you without that piecee of apper from the Court, my friend was in that situation. She did ntohing wrong, her tenancy was just up and landlord wanted to sell. fair enough I guess, his house. She couldnt afford another rent / deposit (had 2 week old baby and DH had pissed off to Thailand with a prostitute to live) and she couldnt get rehoused without the paper, but tha paper destroyed her credit rating. But she could ahrdly live in a box with 2 under 3 could she?

Its all very sad.

Our contract each time is a fixed term 12 month one. Easier, for us and them.

Renting is indeed a nightmare & especially for the vulnerable. For this reason I can't agree with the ideas in thread below re. abolishing council housing. Where is the safety net if all housing is about private profit?

peachy: usually after the first 12 months you'll find that you can be given 2 months notice to quit at any time. That's what my big objection to the system is.

If you don't have that clause then you can't move until the contract is up, which is also unfair.

I do agree it's rather inconvenient if you are a landlord and you have dodgy tenants. But it'#s a damn sight more inconvenient if you are a tanant with a dodgy landlord. there are a lot of them about, and yet, funnily enough, the agents don't let you do a background check on landlords.

I don't disagree with private profit all together though. as I say, just a few small changes in the law would do.

Ah we have the one where we can't move. Its a pain I agree, but preferable to the alternative- finding somewhere willing to take 2 ASd kids in 2 months would be no joke.

ctually our last landlord nicked our deposit. BAstard. Made up all sorts of rubbish- eg he took pics of the garden 3 weeks alter (in June fgs) and then claimed it cost him £250 to get the lawn cut as we had neglected it so badly [hmm[. And apaprently one chipped skirting board (surely general wear and tead after 3 years) cost £390 to repaint.

Okaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

There's a new law on deposits now that will protect you. Held in a special scheme from 6 April this year. It is not easy to evict people by court order but it can certainly be done and once you have the order etc you can send in bailiffs to get them out. The shorthold regime has worked well and is responsible for a huge increase and much better standard of rented accommodation in the UK. Many tenants want at least a year's certainty so they would insist on signing a new one year agreement at the end of the first or else move. A lot of tenants are young people and having a year's term is fine and fits in with the flexibility they need. Families etc is a different matter. Small landlords usually want the flexiblity of selling for example if they want to buy themselves a bigger house and cash in, if they divorce etc so they won't agree longer terms.

Presumably those of you in rented accommodation would rather it were provided by the council not a private landlord and you had a longer term of tenure.

I'm really, really happy with my house / landloed at the moment. I'd like the secirity of cou cil, but the house we have isn't really one they would be offering, iyswim. I have had dodgy ones- Its protection people need, not choice limitation.

Our income is sufficient to pay a decent rent and get somewhere nice (give we're now on Wales prices of course! Somerset would be a joke) but we can't pay rent AND save for a deposit. never mind, its not actually something that bothers us tbh. We're rather happy atm.

But xenia you're not answering my point. Most tenants are on a 2 month notice rolling contract under which the landlord can evict them at any time. That "a lot of tenants are young people" is entirely beside the point. I know small landlords usually want "flexibility" but I think it is unfair that they should have that flexibility at the expense of someone's home.

I didn't say we should return to the old system, but I do think there should be a legal requirement for landlords to have a good reason (such as bancrupcy) if they choose not to renew a shorthold contract.

But what would be the good reason? They might have made £10k on the property and need the cash to buy a car or they are moving to a bigger house themselves so selling up for that which is why we sold our 2 buy to lets years ago. Or they might have gambling debts to pay or think the market is about to crash. How do you decide the good reasons? You could say tenancies have to be a certain period fixed of no less than a year which I think was the original shorthold period 1 year and no less and if you did it for a few months you risked giving the tenant security of tenure for life as by default you failed to create a shorthold and you could never get them out - huge minefield for landlords. Also now yields are so low you wonder why anyone bothers to let at all. They'd be better with the money on deposit.

"I need a calculator here. Yes the teacher wage is up 4 x over that period. The lawyer is 5.5 so lawyers did a bit better but not hugely so at that level of qualification."

Do you really think we're going to see that level of wage inflation again? Sterling will end up like some banana republic currency where they print the notes big to fit all the zeros on.