House prices rose 7.3% this year, average now almost £250k

[413x]

We need to take away the mindset in this country that property is an asset, an investment, a means of generating regular (continual) income.

Property (residential) should be about servicing the needs of the population, not the desires of landlords (to make some nice cash).

Main reason to own a property is to pay for care when you're older as I see it.

Granted if prices were cheap you could just use savings.

But way the country is going if you don't have some form of assets at retirement.. More likely when you are no longer able to work.. That time will be horrendous where you probably just end up dying from not being able to pay for heating

 

[krooton]

There was a great meme near the beginning of 2020 lockdown where it was saying something along the lines "Look at all these people buying up the hand sanitiser and PPE and charging a fortune for it, now imagine that was housing. Oh wait."

I wonder if there is any correlation between people brushing off GPU scalpers and them also being property magnates

Maybe another halfway house would be limiting rental properties to 1 per person, kinda like the second home thing.

That would meant that @Ahleckz 's example would have been fine, but other people couldn't buy up multiple properties. I would also possibly make it limit house flippers, so that they can only flip one at a time, but I don't know if having multiple flips on the go is even a thing.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

Well my idea was more along the lines of you cannot employ another company to do such work for you, but you can employ people, provided you set up your own company to do so.

This creates a bunch more work for landlords to do (setting up company, managing payrolls, HR, blah blah), making the whole point of lettings agents (I pay you percentage, you deal with everything) moot.

At the end of the day, it is nigh on impossible for a landlord to manage a 10 property portfolio without agencies doing all the dirty work for them, so taking them out of the equation will force smaller portfolios.

ps. I'm just throwing ideas out there, I don't have some cast-iron plan to carry out a brainfart I had a few minutes ago

I know someone who manages over 30 residential properties and over 10 commercial properties themselves.

Again clueless.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

Imagine if a significant amount of people in this country were priced out of buying food. Actually you don't need to imagine currently do you. See the outrage over food banks and the rate at which people are being forced to beg for food to feed their children in this country. Sad, in the UK, we've reduced our citizens to begging for help from charitable people, to feed their kids. What a world.

Anyway back to houses... there should be *more* outcry that a significant % of people are paying up to 75% of their income as rent. And no, that does not apply just to London. Cornish people too typically pay between 55% and 75% of their wages on rent.

And in any case, I'm absolutely not against people buying houses, doing them up and then flipping them for a profit. So you can make a profit if you add some value. That's how the world should work. Add value, make money. Build an extension, put in a new kitchen, redecorate, flip, make some profit. All of these add value and are completely fine in my book.

Completely different from BTL tho. The "value" in BTL - as it is allowed to operate in this country - is very disputable. Esp for those landlords who insist on buying up all the basic starter housing they can lay their hands on, and thus forcing people out of ever entering the property market in the first place.

You can blame everybody else in this equation if you like. Blame employers, blame the govt, blame the workers.

But the fact remains - if landlords didn't insist on buying as much basic housing as they could get their hands on (which they do because it's profitable) then charge rents that are multiples of their mortgage, then people wouldn't be bled dry to the point that they will never be able to afford a deposit.

Question: Does paying 2x the average mortgage on rent (to you and others like you) help people to save for a deposit?

Do you actually care if the answer is "No, it keeps them down whilst I profit."

One thing absolutely cannot be disputed: landlords directly benefit when people are locked out of home ownership and locked into renting.

The more people locked out of home ownership the more landlords can be sustained and the greater the rents they can charge.

It would be nice if BTL landlords wouldn't pretend that their interests are not diametrically opposed to the interests of renters who aspire to be home owners.

Again you failed to answer your own ridiculous scenario of rental payments being less than mortgage payments with no understanding of how mortgage payments work.

I don't have a mortgage. Therefore the tenant isn't paying multiples of the mortgage.

Am I therefore better than those getting double?

 

[shiver]

Again you failed to answer your own ridiculous scenario of rental payments being less than mortgage payments with no understanding of how mortgage payments work.

I don't have a mortgage. Therefore the tenant isn't paying multiples of the mortgage.

Am I therefore better than those getting double?

You should be paying them to live there obviously!

 

[Psycho Sonny]

You probably won't like this, but in my world I'd tax you heavily if you left the property empty.

I'd also tax you on any rental income so that you could break even but not a whole lot more.

Your choice would then be to sell up, or keep the property (rented out) for the security of still owning it, but not making any kind of profit on it.

Then you would in future be able to sell if things went well with your GF, or move back in if they didn't. But you wouldn't be making profit from the tenants in the meantime.

But you'd be virtually forced to have those tenants or face crippling taxes on the empty property.

Rent caps (etc) would stop you making any kind of significant profit. And other regulations designed purely to protect the tenants.

To me that's better then you basically becoming an "accidental" landlord, but deciding even after you married your GF that you'd still like to keep the other place, because the rental income was really quite nice... then before you know it you're a landlord with intentions of buying another, and maybe another...

Say he has no mortgage.

Are you really saying in your world he would be taxed 80% of his rental income?

Again ridiculous concept you keep on banging on about.

 

[Psycho Sonny]

You should be paying them to live there obviously!

I'll go round and provide 3 cooked meals a day too in his world.

 

[Vanilla]

You probably won't like this, but in my world I'd tax you heavily if you left the property empty.

This already happens. There used to be no / limited council tax for empty properties. Now you have council tax nonmatter what. In addition empty homes attract a even higher council tax - up to 300% in some conditions.

 

[Uther]

The government should ideally go on a mass social housing building spree, literally hundreds of thousands of houses for rent all over the country.
Unfortunately as a lot of MP's are probably landlords themselves it will never happen. Nobody needs more than one house, which is their home.

 

[stuman]

Say he has no mortgage.

Are you really saying in your world he would be taxed 80% of his rental income?

Again ridiculous concept you keep on banging on about.

Why not? They would then sell and recoup their money to reinvest in less destructive markets. Putting the house back onto the market and reducing the supply, demand, rent racket. Or decide that the tax reduced amount was better than the normal investment markets and rent it out.

The amount of tax would be moved to ensure market balance.

 

[Vanilla]

The government should ideally go on a mass social housing building spree, literally hundreds of thousands of houses for rent all over the country.

You'd want to swap landlords who care about their properties and are very reactive with the government? Have you ever seen how they operate housing?

The government would have to charge market rate and provide a poor service. Unless you're looking for subsidised renting? Below market rate?

 

[Psycho Sonny]

Why not? They would then sell and recoup their money to reinvest in less destructive markets. Putting the house back onto the market and reducing the supply, demand, rent racket. Or decide that the tax reduced amount was better than the normal markets and rent it out.

The amount of tax would be moved to ensure market balance.

In that scenario if just spread the equity out across more properties in that case.

So I'd buy even more property so I don't pay any tax as tax is only on profits in his world.

 

[Vanilla]

Why not? They would then sell and recoup their money to reinvest in less destructive markets. Putting the house back onto the market and reducing the supply, demand, rent racket. Or decide that the tax reduced amount was better than the normal investment markets and rent it out.

The amount of tax would be moved to ensure market balance.

It could be bought up by someone with a LTD company who would just pay 20% tax on rental income. You'd achieve nothing but drive more people towards this method

 

[stuman]

In that scenario if just spread the equity out across more properties in that case.

So I'd buy even more property so I don't pay any tax as tax is only on profits in his world.

ahh yes. "based on profit".

Base it on rental income.

 

[stuman]

It could be bought up by someone with a LTD company who would just pay 20% tax on rental income. You'd achieve nothing but drive more people towards this method

rental income tax at the same rate for LTD company.

 

[Vanilla]

rental income tax at the same rate for LTD company.

Corporation tax isn't granular like that.

 

[Semple]

Btl shouldn't be unprofitable. But it should be a sliding scale. The more you have the less profitable it is.

No i would say that's the worst case scenario.

I would bet most landlords in this country are only 1 or 2 BTL owners. You want serious landlords in this country, not those who are using it to make a quick buck (no offence to any landlords). If anything it should be a sliding scale the other way, so it's considerably less attractive for anyone who wants to purchase a 2nd or 3rd property, to the point it becomes irrelevant by the time you're buying your 50th property - obviously everything still taxed.

 

[CaptainRAVE]

The government should ideally go on a mass social housing building spree, literally hundreds of thousands of houses for rent all over the country.
Unfortunately as a lot of MP's are probably landlords themselves it will never happen. Nobody needs more than one house, which is their home.

They’re building loads of houses in my area - of course none of them are even remotely affordable, have sufficient services/infrastructure and a large number are on flood plains.

 

[stuman]

Corporation tax isn't granular like that.

Well then you would have to get creative and look to leverage these mega rental companies to to pay a Housing Duty or fee, you could disguise it in a green research and development way. Force them to get the properties up to a crazy high efficiency value and other "rental Rights". Build 10% rental properties per year. Or other methods of taxing-nottaxing.

 

[stuman]

No i would say that's the worst case scenario.

I would bet most landlords in this country are only 1 or 2 BTL owners. You want serious landlords in this country, not those who are using it to make a quick buck (no offence to any landlords). If anything it should be a sliding scale the other way, so it's considerably less attractive for anyone who wants to purchase a 2nd or 3rd property, to the point it becomes irrelevant by the time you're buying your 50th property - obviously everything still taxed.

This would only work with a very rigid set of social boundaries that would be enforced so that you don't end up with mega-renta-corp creating their own racket of terrible housing lawyered up to the nines to wriggle out of providing good basic housing.