Totally shocked at the cost of rental properties

[Bumfluff29]

I had no idea the cost of rentals now are so high. We’ve been thinking of selling our house and moving into rented accommodation to break any chain if needed. I’ve looked at the cost of rents and can’t believe how much they are: much more than our mortgage payment. What’s shocked me most is the condition of some of these properties- they look like they haven’t been updated since the 70s in some cases. Has the rental market been like this for a while or is this a recent thing? Maybe I’m totally naive but before we (luckily) managed to get our mortgage we rented an enormous 3 bed house for 550 a month (2016) with all new appliances etc. A lot of the properties I’ve seen look like they desperately need new kitchens and bathrooms at the least, yet the rent is at least 900 a month.

I think that you are in the minority that keeps your property in good order though

@FarFromTheStart

Yeah, we've had a similar life trajectory, but that's because our careers are worth it, niche-skilled, and highly paid (and we've had relocation packages, which I would you assume you have also had). We moved from zone 1 to the inner edge of zone 2 to get the house we wanted, but that's not the same as expecting a teacher, for example, to undertake a two hour, multi-transport-mode, commute twice a day.

If teachers, nurses, GPs, the people who clean and drive public transport, police, firefighters, retail workers and childcare providers decide their measly pay doesn't justify the cost of their commute, it will be hard to blame them and we're all worse off for it.

Yes, the later moves were when on good pay, but the first couple weren’t. The first one for both of us involved turning up in a new country with a few clothes, a few hundred pounds of savings and an offer from a friend to sleep on their sofa for a few weeks while finding my feet.

I think to some extent there’s as much of a difference in mindset as there is a difference in opportunity or ability. Whenever things have been less than ideal I’d think “OK, this isn’t great, but it’s where I’m starting from; what do I need to do right now to get from here to where I want to be?”

As I wrote, this involved losing our entire support network, more than once; living apart, moving between rented homes, long commutes, and so on. We never got to the point of complaining; like many people we just made whatever change was needed, when it was needed.

To some level it’s a bit of a shame to now be settled, in a permanent job, for the foreseeable future.

@MidnightMeltdown corporate landlords are in no way willing to let profits slide. They normally use cheap labour, and the chances of someone in anything but the perfect circumstances- basically a working couple with good credit and no pets- getting through the initial sift are low.

I work for a property business. I can vouch for all the above. My boss has just had to raise rents, as the utilities bills in a shared house have about tripled. The repairs are generally what our handyman can do, not a professional. The maintenance staff will try their hand at anything, but they are not trained for the most part.
And I can tell you that she is a good landlord, with good properties. I've seen what the average and bad companies are like! But she's not splashing the cash on them, profit needs to remain high.

Whereas I'm a landlord of a single property, my tenant has had adverse credit, she has 2 dogs, and when the shower broke last week, it was fixed the next day. No rent increase.

What would actually help is not trying to bully out individual landlords, but instead make it mandatory to have a license/ training before you are allowed to become one.

What would actually help is not trying to bully out individual landlords, but instead make it mandatory to have a license/ training before you are allowed to become one.

In theory yes, but in practice the bad landlords would not bother and carry on regardless, whereas most responsible landlords will learn about laws and comply with them as a matter of course.

I get regular emails/updates from the DPS which holds my tenants' deposit and I check LandlordZone for anything that I am not sure about.

What would actually help is not trying to bully out individual landlords, but instead make it mandatory to have a license/ training before you are allowed to become one.

the government isn't likely to do this as there is a housing crisis

So many interesting and varied observations.
These are some of mine.. small
LLs for some reason get a lot of flack - mainly unjustified as the majority are decent. However they are an easy target for hate.
I am very involved in leasehold and leasehold issues. This is something that seems to have had little of the same adverse reaction, knowledgeand publicity. Many, many freeholders and their management companies (often 2 and the same thing!), abuse their position dreadfully and bring untold misery and financial hardship to their unfortunate leaseholders. Many milk their l/hs for every penny they have and cause years of pain and distress. Unlike tenants, they cannot hand their notice in and often cannot even sell because a grasping freeholder greatly devalues a property. It is un unregulated area of housing (unlike tenant/landlords which has hundreds of regulations). The FTT is yet another story...
The other sector who seem to escape the wrath of people are many social housing associations. They are also exempt from the punitive regulations which landlords have to adhere to. Many of their tenants live in filthy, dangerous and damp ridden squalor. Just one example - some families have children who are regularly hospitalised for breathing problems caused by living in homes black with mould - spores included. This seems to be ok apparently and is not uncommon. Sadly one child even died a few years ago due to the mould infested housing association property they were forced to live in.
These are by far the biggest culprits of poor, inadequate, dangerous housing and financial abuse. Not small landlords.

And bang on cue this just popped up in my feed..
Rochdale Boroughwide Housing..
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-63635721.amp

I hope everyone is clear at the ballot box about the need for more social housing and/or rent caps.

More social housing- where to build. everyone puts up a fuss about private apartments and the NIMBYs are out in full force if even a tiny development is proposed. I think they might spontaneously combust if more social housing is built in their local field.

Rent caps- Good for existing tenants, not so great for people who need to move.

I lived around London and this isn't the going rate unless you're choosing a particularly affluent inner London area. I live in an affluent suburb and even here, it's not that high. It's around £1500 for a 2 bed flat. Sorry but you deffo chose to live in a more luxurious place😅

Yes you;re right about the developments

Why arent rent caps good for people if they need to move, it would more than likely be on new tenancies anyway, thats how most laws come into practice

Are you up to date with latest prices? My flat is worth 400k-- 425k, which i am sure you would agree is on the cheaper end of London flats. The rent when I bought three years ago was 1400. A flat in the same development goes for £1700. This is zone 3 north london.

Rent caps generally mean that landlord cannot increase rent by more than X % over X number of years. So people who are already renting would benefit from this, even more so if they don't leave and landlord is not allowed to give them notice.

Landlords agreeing new tenancies know that they can't increase the rent year on year. They would therefore increase the rent to a level that they know they would be happy with in 5 years time even if they did not increase the rent. This would make new tenancies unaffordable. Existing tenants would also refuse to leave as they would lose the benefit of hanging onto a protected tenancy. its why a lot of new yorkers (where there is rent control) have children in 1 bed flats (those were the flats that they had as young professionals and it is too expensive to leave). They would therefore convert the utility to a baby room. This would mean that there is an even more acute shortage of rentals with people hanging on to their rentals rather than moving onto more suitable rentals.

Absolutely sure about the disaster that rent caps would be to people needing to rent a home, yes.

There are rent controls in New York and Jared Kusher (Trump's Son in law) would intimidate tenants by having extremely loud building works in his buildings. It made life intolerable and it was to force them to leave so they could have new tenants that they could charge more.

We used to have rent controls, it wasnt a disaster then.

the rental houses were not well maintained. Still though, there are so many private tenants struggling to make ends meet that it may not be such a bad idea. I guess prospective tenants could just stay with their family for longer and save up, and the existing tenants would not have to pay so much. It may not be the worst of ideas. Not perfect solution but I don't see any other alternative.

@sudoscream
I lived around London and this isn't the going rate unless you're choosing a particularly affluent inner London area. I live in an affluent suburb and even here, it's not that high. It's around £1500 for a 2 bed flat. Sorry but you deffo chose to live in a more luxurious place😅

Zone 2 south London, in no way 'luxurious' it's near an underground and overground station hence the gradual increase. Perhaps I should move to your 'affluent suburb' and see what I can get for my money 🙄

We used to have steam trains too, that doesn’t mean bringing them back would be a good idea either.

Rent caps would reduce the supply of rental properties, exacerbating the problems that we currently have with lack of them.

We’d then have the new issue of how do you allocate the reduced and now more affordable properties between the large number of people who’d like each one. It’d be a disaster for anyone that didn’t match the demographic choice of the landlord.

I’ve lived in NYC, which famously has rent controlled properties and which famously has a massively corrupt and nepotistic business that’s built up around them because of the demand issue.

And, of course, as anyone could have predicted. Many of the lucky ones allocated the cheap flat then just move out and sub-let it for the open market rent, leaving people paying as much as they ever did, but with fewer rights, and with middle-men creaming off a portion of what they pay each month.

It also made it impossible for people to move. There are years or decades-long waiting lists for each controlled property, so if your job moves there’s no way for you to move with it.

If you get married, or have children, you are not going to get a bigger rent-controlled apartment, you either cram everyone into the little one you have, or more like,y illegally sub-let and move out.

Um ok? You sound bitter about living there. You could just move further away if life is so hard. My affluent suburb is SW and even houses aren't £1900 unless you choose an expensive area, like anywhere in zone 2 hun xx

Yep. There is a reason why when you google 1 bed apartment living with children, almost all the suggestions and articles come from new yorkers. This isn't the case in London, I see children sharing rooms in 2 bed flats, but the three children in a 1 bed flat scenario is generally a problem in social housing or more rarely in owner occupied housing where the owner can't afford to upsize.

@sudoscream
Um ok? You sound bitter about living there. You could just move further away if life is so hard. My affluent suburb is SW and even houses aren't £1900 unless you choose an expensive area, like anywhere in zone 2 hun xx

I'm merely responding to your comments about rental costs in an area you confirmed you don't live in - your inaccuracies have already been pointed out by another poster. No one is 'bitter' about where they live, this is a thread about said costs and I posted what I pay.

Last time I rented I looked at places that looked okay in a town we liked, but the condition/reality of the properties was awful - so clearly those landlords were ghastly.

Actual affordability compared to purchasing was no different to now though. This was 12 years ago.

In the end we opted to go a little more rural (village) and to a more expensive property (rent was twice the mortgage on our previous house) while we spent 3 years finding somewhere we wanted to buy. That landlord was really good.