Not everybody who rents want to be a renter.
The demand comes from people who don't want to be homeless
Landlords buy all the property knowing that everybody needs a house to live in. Also, you think renters would prefer to pay more in rent money to their landlord than they could get a mortgage on the same property for? That's a service they really want? To pay more and own nothing? Sure, sure.
Yep we all queueing up to pay expensive rents, no security, no right of repair, and little freedom to make it a home (decorating, free choice of broadband etc.), its all just market demand lol.
I mean I guess if you stop building enough social homes, and bump up the requirements to buy a property, you could call it that, but at best its manipulated demand.
We're well past that. We're now in the "rent costs are more than 50% of earnings" phase.
In London, a 1-bed flat is an average of 45% of GROSS median pay. 24% of gross in the rest of the UK.
To reiterate, that's a 1-bed flat and median (middle value) salary, before tax.
Purely coincidence I'm sure, but birth rates are the lowest they've ever been.
Doing quick maths in my city, assuming the person works full time on average salary (no LHA) for area (for those on LHA its way worse).
Average one bed flat non slum landlord rent, vs average gross salary its about 38%. Very depressing when you consider that's gross. Its also only going to get worse, our average rent inflation is 9% (excluding housing associations, council properties and other associations which all push the official averages down). For people who live in houses with at least 2 wage earners the % improves a lot as 1 bed flats are about 80% the cost of a 2 bed house.
I'll bite.
You do realise that landlords provide a valuable service, don't you? You do realise that landlords take considerable risks, don't you? You do realise that property can decrease in value, don't you? Not everyone wants to buy a house. Not everyone intends to stay long term. And on the flip side, you do realise that people moving out of a house may not want to sell it for various reasons and therefore will want to let it out, don't you?
In a perfect world I think there is a little market for private landlords, however if we look at what we got now, it isnt people choosing as a first choice to live the way they do, the reason the private market is so big, is simply because of it been forced on people. For many people the alternative is living in a hotel or sleeping on the street.
Are 11 million people choosing to rent privately? 6 months security, rates above mortgage rates, and above social rents.
£23.4 billion of taxpayers money went to private landlords in 2018-2019. 21 billion a year earlier.