Frustrated at the family homes becoming house shares!

[MadamPia]

This is more of a rant but if anyone has found solutions I’d love to hear it.

We have to move out of our private rented place because the landlord wants it back. Now we need to find somewhere and eve thing is double the price (my whole salary would go towards rent!). I’m expecting in 6 months. I have approached the council (but I’m normally number 700 or something when it comes to bidding).

Whilst I’m looking for properties I’ve noticed that there are plenty of 2 and 3 bed homes - many are new builds - I tend to pass by them - but they are all converted into shared flats!

I know - people can do what they like - and I don’t want to hear from people who want me to “move further out” (we are considering it but I need to have my support network - and there are about 3 other cities I would consider).

Are there any organisations or movements tackling this? Or platforms that prioritise family homes?

I'm a LL and I prefer to let my houses to families with children. Both sides of my large 3 btl properties are HMO's with an identical house but let as 5 separate rooms, 3 bedrooms and the lounge and dining rooms let as rooms too. The HMO model makes financial sense as each room can be let for £350 X 5 as opposed to the £650 I charge for a large 3 bedroom house. The thing is families tend to stay longer for years usually and I don't want to keep having new tenants every 6 months which often happens in HMO's.

Your local council will have policies about how many HMO licences it grants. The thing is, as @caringcarer says, HMOs are good financial decisions where there is a market for them, and if you are a big enough organisation to cope with the constant changes of tenant. Also, we need HMOs for students and young professionals or no one will ever move out of the family home. The residential housing market in this country is complex, and there is simply not enough housing to go round.

As the previous poster said, HMOs bring in a lot more money than you can get by letting to a family. And you probably have less vacancy as well as you are letting individual rooms.
I think here in Scotland the rules about fire doors and alarms are bit stricter for HMO and you have to have a special licence. Not sure how it's like in England. So unless councils are willing to restrict HMO licences or introduce some stricter rules about what can be used as an HMO, I think a lot of landlords will opt for HMO.

That wasn’t very helpful to you. Sorry. There are many local community groups that oppose more HMO licences being granted, but I don’t know of anywhere that proactively offers family housing at a reasonable price. They might exist though, so don’t lose hope.

There's a housing crisis and a cost of living crisis. Single people need to live somewhere too. People would be complaining if 2/3 bed houses were all occupied by one person.

It’s about spreading the risk for me. I’ve got a two bedroom property with one bathroom upstairs and one bathroom downstairs. I rent the two rooms at separately. One room covers the whole Mortgage so even if the other one doesn’t pay I’m still not in financial trouble.

and if one moves out, and there’s a void again, my mortgage is covered.

I don’t need a HMO license because it’s only two rooms.

It's also the issue of finding nice families for city/town centre properties vs the availability of young professional and students. In our experience families want to move further out to have a garden etc

Whilst I’m looking for properties I’ve noticed that there are plenty of 2 and 3 bed homes - many are new builds - I tend to pass by them -

Why pass on a new build? They may not always look as attractive but they're generally more nervy efficient, and if that's all that's available...

*energy not nervy

as opposed to the £650 I charge for a large 3 bedroom house

Where are you? I rent out a medium sized 3 bed for £1350pcm. Nowhere near London or any other big city. It's the going rate round here.

Single people need somewhere affordable to live too. What do you suggest for them? Everyone I know who lives in a house share would rather have their own place but can't afford it.

The absolute bottom line for all the country's housing problems is there there just isn't enough of it. If you ask me there are two main reasons for this, high land prices and NIMBYISM.

My local council is allowing g the building of huge blocks of student accommodation to stop houses being HMO's. As there is very little affordable housing in my area. As it's all student let's. I must admit that the blocks have lovely land sprouts them and have tired up what was waste ground.

OP if you want a council place you're going to have to become homeless to boost your priority. This means not leaving when the landlord wants you to and waiting until is gone to court and you're evicted by bailiffs. You'll then be found temporary accommodation of some kind and you'll no longer be number 700 in the bidding list, you'll be a lot closer to the top. Bear in mind that some temporary accommodation is shite and in some areas you could be waiting years for a permanent place. Social housing providers (ie "the council") are the only ones prioritising reasonably priced homes for families. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

@MadamPia see if you can apply directly to a housing association. That’s what I did and I pay £436 a month for a 2 bed house with a garden.

What is wrong with new builds @MadamPia ?

There is a shortage of all types of property. We have a housing crisis and a government working on behalf of landlords and property developers to keep it that way

In my 20s I rented in shared houses. Nowadays young professionals are expected to spend ££££ on city centre flat lettings.

I think everyone is entitled to live in a house, either shared or as a family, if they want. Houses have not always been "family homes" the shared room concept has been around forever.

This is exactly what it is. It’s not the fault of people who live in house shares, nor that of landlords doing their best to maximise profits (whatever I might think of that personally)

It’s in the government’s best interests to have us all blaming each other for an issue that is totally on them and their poor planning/lack of interest in caring for society.

See also: asylum seekers.

I think the OP means she travels past them, not that she doesn't want one.

In our town every time a large
Plot becomes available it is snapped up to build yet another "later living" complex despite there being many already with a lot of empty apartments in.

That and the fact that only a small small percentage of affordable homes that are compulsory in other developments.

Congratulations on your pregnancy, but it isn't a moral trump card and does not oblige anyone to house you.

Round here the same happens - usually on sites that would be wholly unattractive for family housing, like former industrial units alongside a busy road and next door to a nightclub - and then everyone gripes about bloody students and why isn't anyone building homes for local people. Sigh.

Well, there certainly isn’t enough of the right sort of housing, that’s for sure. The, literally, thousands of new builds that have gone up around the rural edges of, what used to be, a mid sized seaside town where I live, do not have truly ‘affordable’ options for local people, particularly young people. The definition they are allowed to get away with of ‘affordable’ is laughable. And I can understand the NIMBYISM (although I’m interested in why you think it stops anything from being built in the long run, it doesn’t, local people’s objections are ignored no matter how reasonable they may be) when it is largely based on, as it invariably is here, the utter lack of infrastructure to go with it. For the thousands of new builds that have been completed around just this one town (the wider area in the ‘local plan’ is even worse in terms of lack of infrastructure) there has not been one single new school, doctors surgery, increase in hospital facilities, shopping facilities, leisure facilities, planning for bus routes (indeed local villages have had their routes cut because the bus company cannot afford to run the services any longer) and only one of the new huge estates has any widening of existing small country roads to increase capacity.
The NIMBYS might have a point.

@Persipan my only concern with it, is the provision of parking. It's already at a premium round here due to the hospital and the university. So add in hundreds of students with cars and we are stuffed. Fortunately my house had off road parking. But all the roads around me are double parked.

Single and young people need somewhere to live too. Especially since alot of parents are now forcing their adult children at the age of 18 out of the home. It’s frightening the attitude now to adult children still living at home as seen on here, so where are they supposed to live?