Rogue landlords should have their properties compulsorily purchased and converted to social housing

[PermanentTemporary]

Guardian link about a complete scumbag rogue landlord.

Chris Betts MP I'm relieved to see is demanding confiscation of properties from these people if found criminally liable or unfit to be a landlord.

But I'd like to see those places made into a new social housing stock. Maybe on a cooperative model.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/15/i-was-afraid-of-him-renting-from-one-of-londons-worst-landlords

Yes this. Flag any you are aware of to local councillors

There's another thread on here from a landlord, who has evicted her well behaved tenants in order to rent out her property as an Air BnB to make more money,and admits she hasn't put the deposit in a deposit scheme a d is considering not returning it because she thinks (no proof) that her tenants might have smoked dope in the house. She doesn't think she's done anything wrong.

The rental situation in this country is dire. DS1 is 27 and lives in an HMO, no choice as there is literally nothing else available. He has no hope of ever buying.

I would like to see these scumbags get their houses confiscated - most of them make so much cash that fines are just another business cost to them. But I think they should pay a fine that will cover the cost of repairing the house in question as well because saddling councils with damp-riddled homes badly and unsafely subdivided by lots of plasterboard wouldn't be ideal and would just create a burden without funding to fix them up.

Unfortunately there are dodgy LLs who know that at the bottom of the market there are always people desperate enough to rent even the most disgusting place because it's all they can afford.

Yup I saw that thread smh

They can even afford to do that with their own.
Iirc councils are sitting on about 20k empty properties

@WrongSwanson This. Slumlords are a problem but what is probably more widespread are amateur landlords that think BTL is a passive investment, which is a byproduct of the mentality that house prices only go up and once you "get on the ladder" everything is smooth sailing.

You wouldn't live in your own home without maintaining it or having some sort of insurance so why would anyone think that they don't have to do the same in a rental property. Owning a business comes with even more risk than owning your own home. These are the people that are hiking up the rent every time there is an interest rate rise. They usually also subscribe to the view that renters are somehow less than, which is why they think they don't have to do any repairs or think they can deduct everything from the deposit.

I once rented a house with a very mature garden. It was stated in the contract that the landlord was responsible for maintaining and cutting back the large trees annually, although it clearly hadn't been done in a long time. The EA was fully aware of the state of the garden since they did regular inspections and ignored requests to sort it. By the time they got around to dealing with it the trees were so overgrown it took 3 days to do the work. I had to take time off to let the workmen in, live with the disruption and because there was no exterior access to the garden the workmen had to drag everything through the utility and garage, leaving me to clean up the mess. They damaged the cheap vinyl flooring in the utility room and despite reporting it, the landlord tried to deduct it from my deposit 😂I got an earful from the EA that the landlord wasn't happy that the work cost so much and I need to let them know before it gets so bad. Or maybe they could just fulfil the obligations in their contract? This was a pattern with these landlords. The EA would avoid passing on any requests for repairs (like crumbling tile around a fireplace which was covered up with a rug when I viewed) because the landlords were so put out at the idea that they would have to spend any money on the property.

I used to work with someone who used to laugh about how her dad's tenants were dealing with rat infestations. She was very young and naive and seemed to think nothing of telling these stories as though the tenants were unreasonable to expect him to sort the issue.

He built up a multi million pound investment portfolio by treating his tenants like crap

It's why I refuse to worship wealth, so much of it is built on exploitation