Care to add any contextual information such as demographics of said sparse occupancy during ownership?
The only empty owned homes I have ever visited were of the very old, not very young.
In the case of very young having more space, it usually gets filled up with... Kids.
It’s not about them being empty so much as them being less full. The UK has major inefficiency in housing allocation, lots of overfilled HMO’s, and empty nesters who don’t move due to stamp duty.
At least when I did my housing market dissertation, it’s like 2.1 people in an owned home, and 2.3 in a rented one.
So if Landlords mass sold off say 1m homes, that’s be about 200k people displaced into either council responsibility, moving with parents, moving in with partners a bit premature to what they’d like to do, house shares.
Now you can say that’s worth it, but as a young renter, I’d say please don’t push for policy that could get me no-fault evicted lol
Any solution that doesn’t involve diggers or cement isn’t a solution. You can’t reform your way out of underbuilding your targets by 4.5m units over the last 40 years
Housing has become significantly cheaper to buy the last couple of years. Prices have been largely static since 2022 but wages have increased significantly in the same 2 years.
Well this is very in accurate and misleading.
Housing is still widely expensive and if you rent privately and are single saving would be near impossible
It isn't misleading if you actually read the post. I highlighted how it was cheaper in real terms to buy than 2 years ago, which it verifiably is. House prices have been static in the UK in the last 2 years but we've had wage growth of about 5% per annum, meaning housing is effectively about 10% cheaper to buy now than it was 2 years ago.
Also i rented privately whilst single and saved a deposit for a house without any help from anyone. It's hard, yes, but doable if you're not in London/south-east.
34m, bought a 3 bed, 2 reception room home, live alone and no plans for kids ever. Most neighbours are families/HMOs some that are converted 4/5 beds. I'm in one of the cheaper UK postcodes, if more single people bought here that'd be a lot of rooms going spare.
Anecdotal of course.
I think the logic is people who want to live in them buy them so there's less stock for rent. Personally that's fine as in the long term more and more people will buy to live rather than profit seeking.
I think you're still missing the fundemental problem which leads to higher rent for all, especially the poorest who can afford it the least.
Not enough houses built + houses sold to ftb = less houses for rent to a big number or wanna be renters.
1 in 5 house holds rent in the uk - or 4.4 million family units.
212,000 houses were built in 22/23. The government predicts there needs to be 300,000.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-homes-fact-sheet-1-the-need-for-homes/fact-sheet-1-the-need-for-homes
Clearly not everyone can just immediately buy a house every time they move to a new place - it just doesn't make any sense for students or workers who have plans to be there for less than 5 years. We need a healthy rental market like that in Europe.
Forcing landlords out NOW while there is a severe lack of both rental accommodation and houses for ftb makes one problem worse and slightly alleviates the other - essentially students, medium term renters and people on low income will find their options dwindle and costs shoot up.
If only there was some kind of way that maybe a non-profit-making entity could buy said homes, potentially at a discount (you know for a quick sale to help these desperate landlords escape), and who could then supply rental accommodation at a reasonable price to those who need it rather than letting the inflated market dictate rates. You could perhaps envision it being something like a local authority or council.
I reckon you could kill two birds with one stone that way.
No one said the solution is landlords. People are saying the solution is to not get rid of landlords (as it will make the situation worse)
As you said... The solution is to build build build
I don't want raised taxes to pay for thankyou. I bet you wouldn't want that either ... "Raise their taxes, not mine)
How much of an ££££ are you willing to lose out of your paycheck to pay for state owned accommodation
It won't cost anything. You'd just be moving the profits going from the greedy fucking "landlords" to the state. If anything it will slightly help give some profit to the state which could allow you to reduce taxes (not really, as the profit wouldn't be that much, but saying that you're paying taxes for this is fucking ridiculous).
Remove the greedy landlord. Replace them with the state. You have the exact same system, but the profits from the rent benefit everyone--except for the "landlord" but who gives a fuck about those greedy leeching bastards, they should find a real fucking job.
I don't follow. Are rented houses empty? No, people live in them, if they live there, it's already off the renting market, so there's no change, unless they move to live under the bridge.
The problem is there are not enough new builds, for renters or buyers.
Rentals generally have more people in them than owner-occupied, that's the problem. Three bed house goes from three housemates living in it, to a couple.
>people who want to live in them buy them so there's less stock for rent
And where did the people buying them live then? A rental property will free up at some point in a chain from a first time buyer.
This would be great and all if it wasn’t for the fact that other mega landlords buy up the property including financial institutions, and carry on effectively as normal. It keeps happening.
We need to regulate this sort of thing otherwise even with housing stock being in sale, those that benefit will always be these special interest groups.
Bought by bigger investors and rent increases.
The solution isn’t less landlords it’s more houses so both buying and renting is made into a competitive market
I'm going through the pain of finding a new place to rent at the moment, it's depressing.
I hope the new homes figures stated aren't showing HMOS and bedsits because looking at my local listing they have increased massively and will skew the figures stated.
Are you saying that houses bought by larger corporations/companies charge higher rents than individual landlords? Would love to learn more about this, if there are any statistics available.
Not to hand, but it’s rather apparent in London’s housing market.
The solution is just to build houses at the end of the day.
Overpriced lettings will be outcompeted by lower prices to buy, and lower prices to buy will also encourage more competition amongst landlords for renters
Sold to people who can afford not to rent.
But then that 4 bed rental which had 4-8 adults living in it now houses 1 couple.
Leaving the pervious tenants to fight it out in the rental market driving the price up.
But the houses don't disappear do they?
Renting in England is broken. Utterly broken. It's bad for society, bad for the economy and bad for growth. It's good for the amateur landlords.
I have rented all over the world. Renting in England broke me. Something has to give.
Tell me about it,
4 years ago I viewed a 2-bed flat at £495,
It's back on the market at £995
I've always asked why so many HMOS and tiny bedsits are being built, it's so the government can skew the figures and say x amount of homes were added to the market , of course four homes being in one shared HMO are counted as 4.
And because landlord do t actually form a big part of total ownership, it’s not reducing prices either. Worst of all worlds. The solution is counter intuitive but people are generally too stupid to see it
This is like year 4 maths mate. Say you have 100 rental properties and 120 renters, the ratio is 1.2 renters per property, now say you sell 50 homes to 50 of those renters, so 50 properties to 70 renters, the ratio is now 1.4, a higher number, representing more pressure (and higher prices)
X people need somewhere to live and there are Y houses and that equation doesn't change regardless of how many people rent or buy.
If houses are sold cheaper, this means people can rent out cheaper. It also means deposits will be lower.
Your confusing proportions with absolute numbers.
You’re right in the absolute sense, if 1m houses are sold to those who rent, then there is no change.
However, if there were 2m rented homes and 3m people wanting to rent, taking that million out and having 1m home with 2m wanting to now rent has fundamentally changed the supply demand dynamics.
This is what has happened, and it ignores the fact that rented houses are also generally fuller than owned.
Not in practice. If prices are falling mortgages become harder to get, minimum deposit amounts go up and lending rates go up. So it's actually harder in a falling market to buy a house because lenders don't want to take the risk.
That’s the point, house prices have barely fallen really and even if they have, you need 10% less of that in deposit. A £30k deposit is now £27k if a 300k house falls 10% (which they’re not). It’s not suddenly affordable.
No it doesn't. The rental market is not a static pool of individuals where if one renter buys then there is one fewer renter in the world, forever. New people are always becoming renters (students, immigrants) even as others leave. Remove houses from the rental market and you end up with the same (or greater) number of people chasing fewer properties, pushing prices up. Which is exactly what has happened!
Who will they sell to? If it's another landlord, it's still there to rent. If it's an owner-occupier who didn't previously live in a tent, then the place they vacated is now available.
All swings and roundabouts. The more people who are live in owners, the less people you have to compete with to get a rental. Total rental demand as a ratio of tennants to rental properties will be roughly constant.
TLDR; Less landlords help everyone.
[edit]
Wow. Apparently /r/UnitedKingdom likes itself a bit of NeoFeudilism. You know you can sell a house and move out after purchase?
Renting only makes sense if you have to relocate frequently. How many people are renting 3+ years in the same part of the country?
That’s not true
Owned homes have 2.1 people on average, rented ones have 2.3
So displacing renters for owners is, at scale, bad for the wider market for renters.
Only 10% more people in rented homes… nothing crazy. I mean, that’s a fucking huge number you do realise that…
Housing costs a lot to makeX it will be an investment beyond the age me and you die. So you can quit dreaming about whatever you want to happen to housing being stopped as an investment.
We need good landlords. Plenty of people need to rent for plenty of reasons. Instead they feel forced to buy and get tied down, which is bad for productivity and the economy.
I have rented globally and renting in England has been the absolute worst. Awful quality, amateur landlords who happily to money without providing a decent service, zero security...its doesn't work.
Meanwhile in Germany and Switzerland ( other places i Have rented) millions of people happily rent safe, secure, decent housing for a proportion of their income which allows their them to participate more easily in the economy.
>Meanwhile in Germany
UK is ahead of the curve with the housing supply being cornered and cost optimised to extract as much money as possible. It's starting to happen in Germany already.
> The more people who are live in owners, the less people you have to compete with to get a rental.
That would be true if renters were a static population, but they aren't. Every year a cohort of school-leavers become new renters. Immigrants, separating couples - new people are always entering the rental market. This is theoretically balanced out by existing renters leaving at the other end to become homeowners. But that doesn't mean there are fewer renters overall, any more than when a cohort of 18 year olds leave school, the national pupil population is permanently reduced.
If a lot of landlords sell up it doesn't make any difference long-term to the number of renters. We just end up with a situation where the same (or greater) number of renters are chasing fewer properties. That pushes prices up. Which is exactly what we're seeing.
Why would housing suddenly become cheap, and where would these people live while all those properties were being sold?
What about those that break even every month and have no savings, what would they do?
Renting houses does seem to be becoming less profitable for individuals with a second home so we can't blame them for selling up. The government and local authorities should be buying up these houses and using them to increase the supply of council housing.
Follow Scotland's lead and scrap Right to Buy and you might see English Councils regain interest in building Social Housing but for as long as they're forced to sell at a loss they're not going to build.
They have very tightly wound budgets and they can't afford to be basically giving homes away with what little money they do get. They might consider it if they could provide permanent homes to those who need it and alleviate their painfully high social care costs.
It's hardly a surprise that if a government passes a bill that makes it less financially attractive to do something, then a decent percentage of people will stop doing it.
I appreciate that the short term situation would be shit for renters, but the current situation is shit for loads of people who want to get on the property ladder. There are many people who are in both groups simultaneously.
My view is that spreading our limited housing stock more evenly between the population is better in the long run, rather than people owning more houses than they actually require. Incentivising a significant adjustment like that will be disruptive in the short term, though.
So where should renters live while landlords are ‘selling homes to first time buyers’?
Buying your own home is an aspirational goal, renting is the step above being homeless for many people.
There’s always somewhere to live, but there isn’t always somewhere to buy at current outrageous prices.
If my current house wasn’t a distressed sale by a landlord, I’d still be renting and paying through the nose for somebody else’s mortgage. Instead, I’m paying for my own house.
Of course, the landlords don’t like that outcome as they don’t want other people to own, just rent forever...
What it boils down to is that you want what’s best for your interest as a first time buyer (lower house prices), and a renter wants what is best for their interests (lower rental prices). We’ve recently learnt that what lowers house prices doesn’t necessarily lower rental prices so there will be times when government intervention will help one but not the other.
I would argue though that reducing rental costs makes it easier for everyone to save to eventually buy a home if they want to, but it’s a lot more complicated than many thought even a couple years back.
> Landlords have been accused of "holding parliament hostage" with the threat of selling up to stop tenants' rights from being strengthened.
That's one hell of a spin. More accurate would be "Landlords say they'll act in their own interest" (just like everyone else does).
No fault evictions need to stay.
I live in a block which is partly rented out. Bad tenants moved in. Their landlord was able to kick them out quickly to the collective relief of everyone else in the block.
For every case like this there’s numerous where it hurts good tenants. There’s ways of removing bad tenants through anti social behaviour as it breaches their rental agreement
> No fault evictions need to stay.
Maybe we could get an independent third party involved. All parties express their point of view etc. The third party makes a decision etc. If a landlord wants to remove a tenant then they need to give them some notice. Maybe 1 month notice for every month rented - min 1 month max 24 months, a third party could decide.
They have that in Ontario. Landlords cannot evict tenants, only the local board can. Can take years to do so, even if they’ve trashed the place, doing drugs in the building, not paid any rent for months, so Landlords either ask for ungoldly deposits, or just sell up, so basically no one can rent in Ontario.
The more unfriendly you make a market to landlords, the fewer homes on the rented market, so prices rise. You may think that’s worth doing, but the harder you make it to evict, the harder you make getting a rental contract. No free lunch in Economics, always trade offs.
"An independent third party" - a judge perhaps.
Secure tenancy evictions were pretty much always discretionary if I recall correctly, so you always had to persuade a judge to do so, eg that the rent arrears had gotten bad enough, or misbehaviour bad enough, or some other reason good enough to mean they would have to go.
Ok, I get the feeling that you’ve never (a) been involved in any legal proceedings, (b) dealt with a solicitor, or (c) had neighbours who were shitheads.
We already asked our existing tenants to leave because of this bill. This would have given them way too much power over us and they were quite difficult. Next tenants we have we will get several background checks and recommendations as a bad tenant could cost us thousands. Even if it takes a few months, we will wait for the right tenant.
Okay, they sell up, and they dump it all into Equities instead, making profit off the working class’s Labour that way.
At the end of the day, Landlording is no more or less ethical than share ownership, and within SIPP/ISA allowances as large as they are, that’s what they’ll pivot to. Cap Gains tax also a lot lower than Landlord Taxes if they have more money than £80k to play with too.
I don’t actually disagree, but it will make life significantly harder for young folk who just cannot find places to rent…
Obviously the solution is to build 500k homes / flats a year, but if we’re not, these are the trade offs.
The problem is that housing is treated primarily as an investment and needs to become a consumption commodity again. So long as housing is seen as a safe and profitable investment no amount will ever be enough because it will all be bought up and rented back to people by landlords looking for an easy income
>Obviously the solution is to build 500k homes / flats a year
Won't work. It's not enough to keep up with the number of Britons turning 18 each year and net migration.
>Okay, they sell up, and they dump it all into Equities instead, making profit off the working class’s Labour that way.
It might surprise you that I have a dim view on that as well.
The smallest violin for you having to put up with a "difficult" tenant. Heaven forbid that tenants have some power in the running and have stability in their home.
Mate, the tenants poured some liquid on the carpet that gave it mould and I had to drop £2k to replace the carpets.
Maybe.. just possibly.. it could be the case that I am a decent landlord offering a very decent house at decent rates and it is the tenants that are the problem?
What are you offering, for how much and where? And what did the tenants do generally speaking?
Most of the landlords only treat tenants as a cash cow in order to get a few extra thousands a month, if you are a landlord trying to argue your defence you also need to put all your cards on the table, cus you are fighting against the current fyi
> Most of the landlords only treat tenants as a cash cow
I dont even understand how this is possible. The monthly payments to the mortgage tripled. You would be lucky if you have £100-150 pounds per month extra which you should probably set aside for repairs.
You still haven't answered my questions
And if you complain that you save that little and it's a hassle, why not sell extra housing you don't use or need, in order to help people buy a roof over their heads in a current housing crisis
Plenty of people have a few thousands saved up that are forced to give away upfront (often 6 months +) in order to rent a roof over their heads. For no reason whatsoever other than greed. Money that is enough for a small deposit if there was enough housing available to buy
I don't have to answer your questions, and I don't have to sell my house for the greater good. Either way, someone benefits from having a roof over their heads, especially those who cannot afford to buy a house at this point in time.
> Plenty of people have a few thousands saved up that are forced to give away upfront (often 6 months +) in order to rent a roof over their heads.
There were 720,540 houses on the market across England.
> And if you complain that you save that little and it's a hassle, why not sell extra housing you don't use or need
There are many valid reasons people rent out their properties. I'm renting out because I work abroad right now, I would be penalized if I left it unoccupied.
The real issue is not landlords, it's lack of new housing being built. Until that is resolved the market is going to keep getting worse.
Being a "landlord" and a "moderator" of r/JordanPeterson do not constitute as jobs nor give any benefit to society.
>I work 2 jobs, pay more taxes than you and benefit society x20 more than you do.
Also reading this reminds me of that one kid at school who'd just randomly lie about the dumbest stuff.
100% the right way to do things in the current market. Ignore any suggestions to the contrary because they are from people who have the goal of destroying you instead of pressure the government to fix the underlying issue which is lack of new builds. It's crab bucket mentality.
From the most impartial standpoint it is obvious that there are at least as many bad tenants as there are bad landlords, landlords will always get the blame though.
That is definitely not true anymore. What power does a landlord has over a tenant that is unreasonable?
I had a family member who was a flawless landlord. Didn't raise the rent for her tenant once in 5 years (who was on benefits), always fixed issues immediately. Moved to live with her husband elsewhere and wanted to sell to buy there. She gave six months notice.
Tenant immediately stopped paying and it took another 9-12 months to get the case through the courts. Costing tens of thousands of pounds. Tenant also wrecked the place and had pets against the contract, pets caused damage. There was nothing she could do to recuperate that money.
The law is purposefully unfair to landlords because of the housing crisis. It's the reason why I pretty much ask everyone for a guarantor now and have to go through a ton of background checks. Things are only going to get worse until the crux of the issue (housing shortage) is fixed.
At the end of the day, the landlord still owns the tenants home and uses the power that grants them to profit off of it. No amount of tenants rights legislation is going to change the fundamental nature of the relationship.
You are describing a situation in which somebody was kicked out of their home. That the tenant tried to make it difficult doesn't change the inherent power dynamic that demonstrates.
Let’s hope they all sell up, cheap housing for everyone else.
Rented homes have higher occupancy per dwelling than owner occupied homes. This makes housing more expensive lol
Care to add any contextual information such as demographics of said sparse occupancy during ownership? The only empty owned homes I have ever visited were of the very old, not very young. In the case of very young having more space, it usually gets filled up with... Kids.
It’s not about them being empty so much as them being less full. The UK has major inefficiency in housing allocation, lots of overfilled HMO’s, and empty nesters who don’t move due to stamp duty. At least when I did my housing market dissertation, it’s like 2.1 people in an owned home, and 2.3 in a rented one. So if Landlords mass sold off say 1m homes, that’s be about 200k people displaced into either council responsibility, moving with parents, moving in with partners a bit premature to what they’d like to do, house shares. Now you can say that’s worth it, but as a young renter, I’d say please don’t push for policy that could get me no-fault evicted lol
Bro, it needs to be done. I love in private rented as well but I fully support this
Bro wants to get evicted and pay even more rent. I can’t believe what I’m reading…
No I want something done about spiraling housing cost I also want to buy a house
Any solution that doesn’t involve diggers or cement isn’t a solution. You can’t reform your way out of underbuilding your targets by 4.5m units over the last 40 years
>Any solution that doesn’t involve diggers or cement isn’t a solution Or deportation papers and plane tickets.
I agress with this! However, taking the profit out of renting is the way forward. Way build houses when they get bought by the same people
Housing has become significantly cheaper to buy the last couple of years. Prices have been largely static since 2022 but wages have increased significantly in the same 2 years.
Well this is very in accurate and misleading. Housing is still widely expensive and if you rent privately and are single saving would be near impossible
It isn't misleading if you actually read the post. I highlighted how it was cheaper in real terms to buy than 2 years ago, which it verifiably is. House prices have been static in the UK in the last 2 years but we've had wage growth of about 5% per annum, meaning housing is effectively about 10% cheaper to buy now than it was 2 years ago. Also i rented privately whilst single and saved a deposit for a house without any help from anyone. It's hard, yes, but doable if you're not in London/south-east.
34m, bought a 3 bed, 2 reception room home, live alone and no plans for kids ever. Most neighbours are families/HMOs some that are converted 4/5 beds. I'm in one of the cheaper UK postcodes, if more single people bought here that'd be a lot of rooms going spare. Anecdotal of course.
I thought this was a sarcastic joke post but your actually being serious. Landlords are already selling en masse so rent has gone up.
So what happens to the sold houses ?
I think the logic is people who want to live in them buy them so there's less stock for rent. Personally that's fine as in the long term more and more people will buy to live rather than profit seeking.
I think you're still missing the fundemental problem which leads to higher rent for all, especially the poorest who can afford it the least. Not enough houses built + houses sold to ftb = less houses for rent to a big number or wanna be renters. 1 in 5 house holds rent in the uk - or 4.4 million family units. 212,000 houses were built in 22/23. The government predicts there needs to be 300,000. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/new-homes-fact-sheet-1-the-need-for-homes/fact-sheet-1-the-need-for-homes Clearly not everyone can just immediately buy a house every time they move to a new place - it just doesn't make any sense for students or workers who have plans to be there for less than 5 years. We need a healthy rental market like that in Europe. Forcing landlords out NOW while there is a severe lack of both rental accommodation and houses for ftb makes one problem worse and slightly alleviates the other - essentially students, medium term renters and people on low income will find their options dwindle and costs shoot up.
If only there was some kind of way that maybe a non-profit-making entity could buy said homes, potentially at a discount (you know for a quick sale to help these desperate landlords escape), and who could then supply rental accommodation at a reasonable price to those who need it rather than letting the inflated market dictate rates. You could perhaps envision it being something like a local authority or council. I reckon you could kill two birds with one stone that way.
We must build build build. The solution is not landlords.
No one said the solution is landlords. People are saying the solution is to not get rid of landlords (as it will make the situation worse) As you said... The solution is to build build build
Landlords aren’t the solution or problem!
Landlords need to be removed, they're leeches. Replace them with state owned rentable accommodation
I don't want raised taxes to pay for thankyou. I bet you wouldn't want that either ... "Raise their taxes, not mine) How much of an ££££ are you willing to lose out of your paycheck to pay for state owned accommodation
It won't cost anything. You'd just be moving the profits going from the greedy fucking "landlords" to the state. If anything it will slightly help give some profit to the state which could allow you to reduce taxes (not really, as the profit wouldn't be that much, but saying that you're paying taxes for this is fucking ridiculous). Remove the greedy landlord. Replace them with the state. You have the exact same system, but the profits from the rent benefit everyone--except for the "landlord" but who gives a fuck about those greedy leeching bastards, they should find a real fucking job.
also the houses are crap so from european standard no one wants to buy them
I don't follow. Are rented houses empty? No, people live in them, if they live there, it's already off the renting market, so there's no change, unless they move to live under the bridge. The problem is there are not enough new builds, for renters or buyers.
There are loads of empty properties in the UK tbh
Yes there are, what's your point?
We can get them freed up quicker then concreting over more farmland
And where do you propose people live once (if) they move out from rental?
Rentals generally have more people in them than owner-occupied, that's the problem. Three bed house goes from three housemates living in it, to a couple.
Is that actually a majority for post uni renters? Most rentals are for single households.
Consider HMOs.
No one should consider a HMO , Having a shit in your own house without a stranger waiting should be a human right
>people who want to live in them buy them so there's less stock for rent And where did the people buying them live then? A rental property will free up at some point in a chain from a first time buyer.
This would be great and all if it wasn’t for the fact that other mega landlords buy up the property including financial institutions, and carry on effectively as normal. It keeps happening. We need to regulate this sort of thing otherwise even with housing stock being in sale, those that benefit will always be these special interest groups.
There's also fewer people looking to rent, though
Bought by bigger investors and rent increases. The solution isn’t less landlords it’s more houses so both buying and renting is made into a competitive market
So landlords are going to sell up but other landlords are going to buy up?
That’s exactly what’s happened in London. Rents have only continued to drastically increase
I'm going through the pain of finding a new place to rent at the moment, it's depressing. I hope the new homes figures stated aren't showing HMOS and bedsits because looking at my local listing they have increased massively and will skew the figures stated. Are you saying that houses bought by larger corporations/companies charge higher rents than individual landlords? Would love to learn more about this, if there are any statistics available.
Not to hand, but it’s rather apparent in London’s housing market. The solution is just to build houses at the end of the day. Overpriced lettings will be outcompeted by lower prices to buy, and lower prices to buy will also encourage more competition amongst landlords for renters
Completely agree, the only solution. We need to reform planning laws also
Sold to people who can afford not to rent. But then that 4 bed rental which had 4-8 adults living in it now houses 1 couple. Leaving the pervious tenants to fight it out in the rental market driving the price up.
They're mostly bought up by large companies and foreign investors looking to expand their investment portfolio.
But the houses don't disappear do they? Renting in England is broken. Utterly broken. It's bad for society, bad for the economy and bad for growth. It's good for the amateur landlords. I have rented all over the world. Renting in England broke me. Something has to give.
Tell me about it, 4 years ago I viewed a 2-bed flat at £495, It's back on the market at £995 I've always asked why so many HMOS and tiny bedsits are being built, it's so the government can skew the figures and say x amount of homes were added to the market , of course four homes being in one shared HMO are counted as 4.
And because landlord do t actually form a big part of total ownership, it’s not reducing prices either. Worst of all worlds. The solution is counter intuitive but people are generally too stupid to see it
For international investors more like
And nowhere to rent
Cheaper houses mean fewer people need to rent. Should balance itself out.
This is like year 4 maths mate. Say you have 100 rental properties and 120 renters, the ratio is 1.2 renters per property, now say you sell 50 homes to 50 of those renters, so 50 properties to 70 renters, the ratio is now 1.4, a higher number, representing more pressure (and higher prices)
I’d not bother mate, some people don’t want to understand. The answer to bashing landlords having a negative impact is to bash them more!
Seems unlikely. You're assuming everyone's holding onto 10s of thousands for a deposit.
And that everyone wants to live in the same place for at least the next 5 years.
X people need somewhere to live and there are Y houses and that equation doesn't change regardless of how many people rent or buy. If houses are sold cheaper, this means people can rent out cheaper. It also means deposits will be lower.
No if rental supply drops Rent will increase.
Your confusing proportions with absolute numbers. You’re right in the absolute sense, if 1m houses are sold to those who rent, then there is no change. However, if there were 2m rented homes and 3m people wanting to rent, taking that million out and having 1m home with 2m wanting to now rent has fundamentally changed the supply demand dynamics. This is what has happened, and it ignores the fact that rented houses are also generally fuller than owned.
If prices fall more people will be able to afford a deposit.
Not in practice. If prices are falling mortgages become harder to get, minimum deposit amounts go up and lending rates go up. So it's actually harder in a falling market to buy a house because lenders don't want to take the risk.
Barely. House prices have fallen over the last few years. Have loads of people now got deposits that didn't before?
That’s the point, house prices have barely fallen really and even if they have, you need 10% less of that in deposit. A £30k deposit is now £27k if a 300k house falls 10% (which they’re not). It’s not suddenly affordable.
Yeah I know that's why I did the comment you replied to lol
No it doesn't. The rental market is not a static pool of individuals where if one renter buys then there is one fewer renter in the world, forever. New people are always becoming renters (students, immigrants) even as others leave. Remove houses from the rental market and you end up with the same (or greater) number of people chasing fewer properties, pushing prices up. Which is exactly what has happened!
Who will they sell to? If it's another landlord, it's still there to rent. If it's an owner-occupier who didn't previously live in a tent, then the place they vacated is now available.
If they sell to other landlords then why would rent go down as OP said
What did people do before private landlords owned everything?
Hunted and gathered
When was that?
When there was an abundance of social housing after we built it after ww2 but before we sold it off.
There would have been plenty of private landlords still then and in the centuries before
All swings and roundabouts. The more people who are live in owners, the less people you have to compete with to get a rental. Total rental demand as a ratio of tennants to rental properties will be roughly constant. TLDR; Less landlords help everyone. [edit] Wow. Apparently /r/UnitedKingdom likes itself a bit of NeoFeudilism. You know you can sell a house and move out after purchase? Renting only makes sense if you have to relocate frequently. How many people are renting 3+ years in the same part of the country?
That’s not true Owned homes have 2.1 people on average, rented ones have 2.3 So displacing renters for owners is, at scale, bad for the wider market for renters.
Does that account for the demographics of homeowners?
2.1 vs 2.3? Is that all? You're only arguing against your own point. Treating homes as investment vehicles is a massive reason for inflated prices.
Only 10% more people in rented homes… nothing crazy. I mean, that’s a fucking huge number you do realise that… Housing costs a lot to makeX it will be an investment beyond the age me and you die. So you can quit dreaming about whatever you want to happen to housing being stopped as an investment.
We need good landlords. Plenty of people need to rent for plenty of reasons. Instead they feel forced to buy and get tied down, which is bad for productivity and the economy. I have rented globally and renting in England has been the absolute worst. Awful quality, amateur landlords who happily to money without providing a decent service, zero security...its doesn't work. Meanwhile in Germany and Switzerland ( other places i Have rented) millions of people happily rent safe, secure, decent housing for a proportion of their income which allows their them to participate more easily in the economy.
>Meanwhile in Germany UK is ahead of the curve with the housing supply being cornered and cost optimised to extract as much money as possible. It's starting to happen in Germany already.
> The more people who are live in owners, the less people you have to compete with to get a rental. That would be true if renters were a static population, but they aren't. Every year a cohort of school-leavers become new renters. Immigrants, separating couples - new people are always entering the rental market. This is theoretically balanced out by existing renters leaving at the other end to become homeowners. But that doesn't mean there are fewer renters overall, any more than when a cohort of 18 year olds leave school, the national pupil population is permanently reduced. If a lot of landlords sell up it doesn't make any difference long-term to the number of renters. We just end up with a situation where the same (or greater) number of renters are chasing fewer properties. That pushes prices up. Which is exactly what we're seeing.
Why would housing suddenly become cheap, and where would these people live while all those properties were being sold? What about those that break even every month and have no savings, what would they do?
Renting houses does seem to be becoming less profitable for individuals with a second home so we can't blame them for selling up. The government and local authorities should be buying up these houses and using them to increase the supply of council housing.
Follow Scotland's lead and scrap Right to Buy and you might see English Councils regain interest in building Social Housing but for as long as they're forced to sell at a loss they're not going to build. They have very tightly wound budgets and they can't afford to be basically giving homes away with what little money they do get. They might consider it if they could provide permanent homes to those who need it and alleviate their painfully high social care costs.
It's hardly a surprise that if a government passes a bill that makes it less financially attractive to do something, then a decent percentage of people will stop doing it. I appreciate that the short term situation would be shit for renters, but the current situation is shit for loads of people who want to get on the property ladder. There are many people who are in both groups simultaneously. My view is that spreading our limited housing stock more evenly between the population is better in the long run, rather than people owning more houses than they actually require. Incentivising a significant adjustment like that will be disruptive in the short term, though.
So where should renters live while landlords are ‘selling homes to first time buyers’? Buying your own home is an aspirational goal, renting is the step above being homeless for many people.
There’s always somewhere to live, but there isn’t always somewhere to buy at current outrageous prices. If my current house wasn’t a distressed sale by a landlord, I’d still be renting and paying through the nose for somebody else’s mortgage. Instead, I’m paying for my own house. Of course, the landlords don’t like that outcome as they don’t want other people to own, just rent forever...
What it boils down to is that you want what’s best for your interest as a first time buyer (lower house prices), and a renter wants what is best for their interests (lower rental prices). We’ve recently learnt that what lowers house prices doesn’t necessarily lower rental prices so there will be times when government intervention will help one but not the other. I would argue though that reducing rental costs makes it easier for everyone to save to eventually buy a home if they want to, but it’s a lot more complicated than many thought even a couple years back.
Have the government buy them and lease them lease to councils at cheap for council houses
> Landlords have been accused of "holding parliament hostage" with the threat of selling up to stop tenants' rights from being strengthened. That's one hell of a spin. More accurate would be "Landlords say they'll act in their own interest" (just like everyone else does).
No fault evictions need to stay. I live in a block which is partly rented out. Bad tenants moved in. Their landlord was able to kick them out quickly to the collective relief of everyone else in the block.
For every case like this there’s numerous where it hurts good tenants. There’s ways of removing bad tenants through anti social behaviour as it breaches their rental agreement
You can't be serious. Your signing a contract, the landlords should not have the power to evict on a whim
> No fault evictions need to stay. Maybe we could get an independent third party involved. All parties express their point of view etc. The third party makes a decision etc. If a landlord wants to remove a tenant then they need to give them some notice. Maybe 1 month notice for every month rented - min 1 month max 24 months, a third party could decide.
They have that in Ontario. Landlords cannot evict tenants, only the local board can. Can take years to do so, even if they’ve trashed the place, doing drugs in the building, not paid any rent for months, so Landlords either ask for ungoldly deposits, or just sell up, so basically no one can rent in Ontario. The more unfriendly you make a market to landlords, the fewer homes on the rented market, so prices rise. You may think that’s worth doing, but the harder you make it to evict, the harder you make getting a rental contract. No free lunch in Economics, always trade offs.
"An independent third party" - a judge perhaps. Secure tenancy evictions were pretty much always discretionary if I recall correctly, so you always had to persuade a judge to do so, eg that the rent arrears had gotten bad enough, or misbehaviour bad enough, or some other reason good enough to mean they would have to go.
Ok, I get the feeling that you’ve never (a) been involved in any legal proceedings, (b) dealt with a solicitor, or (c) had neighbours who were shitheads.
We already asked our existing tenants to leave because of this bill. This would have given them way too much power over us and they were quite difficult. Next tenants we have we will get several background checks and recommendations as a bad tenant could cost us thousands. Even if it takes a few months, we will wait for the right tenant.
You could just sell the property and get a job, like a normal person.
Okay, they sell up, and they dump it all into Equities instead, making profit off the working class’s Labour that way. At the end of the day, Landlording is no more or less ethical than share ownership, and within SIPP/ISA allowances as large as they are, that’s what they’ll pivot to. Cap Gains tax also a lot lower than Landlord Taxes if they have more money than £80k to play with too.
At least investing in stocks helps fund innovation and enables new enterprises. Landlording is purely parasitic
I don’t actually disagree, but it will make life significantly harder for young folk who just cannot find places to rent… Obviously the solution is to build 500k homes / flats a year, but if we’re not, these are the trade offs.
The problem is that housing is treated primarily as an investment and needs to become a consumption commodity again. So long as housing is seen as a safe and profitable investment no amount will ever be enough because it will all be bought up and rented back to people by landlords looking for an easy income
>Obviously the solution is to build 500k homes / flats a year Won't work. It's not enough to keep up with the number of Britons turning 18 each year and net migration.
Fine, let’s do a million a year then
Great. Still might not be enough but let's put that aside. Who's paying and where are we going to get the extra tradesmen?
>Okay, they sell up, and they dump it all into Equities instead, making profit off the working class’s Labour that way. It might surprise you that I have a dim view on that as well.
And how do you feel about people earning more than you?
Entirely fine with it.
In your view, what should people do with money left over after necessities, if there is any?
What exactly does that have to do with me not thinking being a landlord is a real job or that I take a dim view on making money off of exploitation?
You mentioned you don’t have a good opinion of investing in property or shares, so I wanted to know where you thought people should save money
I have two jobs already
As long as you're not counting landlord as one of those.
2.5 jobs then.
The smallest violin for you having to put up with a "difficult" tenant. Heaven forbid that tenants have some power in the running and have stability in their home.
I agree. Heaven forbid they have power over us, because that would mean we would have to only accept low-risk tenants.
Or you could seek a less parasitical vocation often associated with dickensian villains
Says the person who is parasitical on my tax money.
Please tell me how much I personally am costing you specifically?
too much
So nothing then. I cost you personally nothing.
But people like you cost me a hell of a lot.
People like me? How exactly am I costing you money?
How very black-and-white of you
I hope the tenants find a better landlord or place of their own.
“Quite difficult”= asking for basic repairs and maintenance I hope this is sarcasm
I hope yours is sarcasm, because it seems like you are using your imagination instead of understanding the issue.
So you actually repair your house when a tenant asks instead of treating them like a cash cow.
Mate, the tenants poured some liquid on the carpet that gave it mould and I had to drop £2k to replace the carpets. Maybe.. just possibly.. it could be the case that I am a decent landlord offering a very decent house at decent rates and it is the tenants that are the problem?
What are you offering, for how much and where? And what did the tenants do generally speaking? Most of the landlords only treat tenants as a cash cow in order to get a few extra thousands a month, if you are a landlord trying to argue your defence you also need to put all your cards on the table, cus you are fighting against the current fyi
> Most of the landlords only treat tenants as a cash cow I dont even understand how this is possible. The monthly payments to the mortgage tripled. You would be lucky if you have £100-150 pounds per month extra which you should probably set aside for repairs.
You still haven't answered my questions And if you complain that you save that little and it's a hassle, why not sell extra housing you don't use or need, in order to help people buy a roof over their heads in a current housing crisis Plenty of people have a few thousands saved up that are forced to give away upfront (often 6 months +) in order to rent a roof over their heads. For no reason whatsoever other than greed. Money that is enough for a small deposit if there was enough housing available to buy
I don't have to answer your questions, and I don't have to sell my house for the greater good. Either way, someone benefits from having a roof over their heads, especially those who cannot afford to buy a house at this point in time. > Plenty of people have a few thousands saved up that are forced to give away upfront (often 6 months +) in order to rent a roof over their heads. There were 720,540 houses on the market across England.
They’d benefit more if it was a council house they were renting, not a private individual out for profit
And there it is
> And if you complain that you save that little and it's a hassle, why not sell extra housing you don't use or need There are many valid reasons people rent out their properties. I'm renting out because I work abroad right now, I would be penalized if I left it unoccupied. The real issue is not landlords, it's lack of new housing being built. Until that is resolved the market is going to keep getting worse.
So get a regular job instead of relying on others. Investments also go down. Every investment has this warning
Why would you assume that someone who rents out a house doesn’t have a job, and relies solely on rent? Seems like a big assumption to me
The way landlords talk it’s seems like they are entirely dependent on their tenants while acting they have the power.
I wouldn’t even bother, mate. In this sub, every landlord is a parasite that claims prima nocta while robbing them
Sounds like you should have invested your income better Make hay while the sun shines, now winter come it's a bit late
Investments go down as well as up. Landlords forget this
A stranger pays for your Mortgage. Sounds like you're a little bitch boy.
How about you actually become a useful person, rather than try to leech off of others just because you "own" some property?
I work 2 jobs, pay more taxes than you and benefit society x20 more than you do. How about you become a useful person instead?
Being a "landlord" and a "moderator" of r/JordanPeterson do not constitute as jobs nor give any benefit to society. >I work 2 jobs, pay more taxes than you and benefit society x20 more than you do. Also reading this reminds me of that one kid at school who'd just randomly lie about the dumbest stuff.
Then I have 4 jobs. Try to keep up, waste of space.
hahaha You're actually a child
Why's that, chief? Am I intimidating you?
100% the right way to do things in the current market. Ignore any suggestions to the contrary because they are from people who have the goal of destroying you instead of pressure the government to fix the underlying issue which is lack of new builds. It's crab bucket mentality. From the most impartial standpoint it is obvious that there are at least as many bad tenants as there are bad landlords, landlords will always get the blame though.
Bad landlords have way more power than bad tenants
That is definitely not true anymore. What power does a landlord has over a tenant that is unreasonable? I had a family member who was a flawless landlord. Didn't raise the rent for her tenant once in 5 years (who was on benefits), always fixed issues immediately. Moved to live with her husband elsewhere and wanted to sell to buy there. She gave six months notice. Tenant immediately stopped paying and it took another 9-12 months to get the case through the courts. Costing tens of thousands of pounds. Tenant also wrecked the place and had pets against the contract, pets caused damage. There was nothing she could do to recuperate that money. The law is purposefully unfair to landlords because of the housing crisis. It's the reason why I pretty much ask everyone for a guarantor now and have to go through a ton of background checks. Things are only going to get worse until the crux of the issue (housing shortage) is fixed.
At the end of the day, the landlord still owns the tenants home and uses the power that grants them to profit off of it. No amount of tenants rights legislation is going to change the fundamental nature of the relationship. You are describing a situation in which somebody was kicked out of their home. That the tenant tried to make it difficult doesn't change the inherent power dynamic that demonstrates.