The joy of being a landlord

Soldato
Joined
10 Jul 2008
Posts
7,877
Come on then landlords. Give us all a breakdown.

Tell us how many properties you have?
How much did you mortgage them for?
How much your mortgage payments are?
.. and how much the renters are paying?

Lets put some figures into the light.

A friend of ours back in 2012, already had about 3 or 4 properties in his "portfolio". I hate using that term as it makes him sound much more business like than I would give him credit for! :)
He came to us saying he wanted to add another, and had seen one close to us and knew we were wanting to upsize to a new rental with an additional bedroom. They basically bought a house with the sole intention of renting to us for a long term at a good price. This worked well for both of us. He was quite a good landlord to us and I was able to do generally what I wanted to the property within reason.

He bought that house for about 250k and to be fair, he worked hard bringing it up to spec as it needed a lot of stuff doing. Probably dropped 20k into renovating it. When we moved out in 2020 it was on the market for 370k. So we paid for his mortgage during that time, and he profited about 100k. We didn't go through an agent so costs were low. We didn't even do a deposit. All trust really. Worked out well for both of us but on paper, I've paid about 100k in rent which I will never get back, and he makes 100k. Do I hate him for it? No. It's part of the game. It's part of the broken UK. We had a good house for a good rental price for a nice period of time and was secure and good for the kids. I hate "the game" rather than landlords themselves. Some landlords however, are horrible landlords in that they only have eyes for the profits and want to do very little in terms of maintenance and upkeep and helping tenants. I appreciate there are awful tenants as well.

He's probably over the years made a few hundred grand easily I would have thought. He has a full time profession completely unrelated to property.
 
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fez

fez

Caporegime
Joined
22 Aug 2008
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25,769
Location
Tunbridge Wells
I think it's lovely that the small percentage of good & caring landlords out there seem to be converged on OCUK in this thread ;)

I think there are a reasonably large sub-set of landlords who don't extract the pee with rents and there are a large enough majority of landlords who would take their tenants first borns if they missed a months rent.

We are lucky enough that the mortgage on the house we rent out is a very good tracker rate which is, I believe either half or 1% above base rate which for years was insane. We haven't raised the rent because the cost to us hasn't really risen that much and we don't need to. I think its super ****** when Landlords put the price of rent up simply because they have an excuse. The number of landlords that magically seem to have had their costs increase 10-15% is somewhat surprising :rolleyes:

I have no issues admitting that we have been very lucky and we are fundamentally a part of one of the biggest issues in this country at the moment. As others have said, you have 2 choice choices. Play the game or get played. I spent much of my 20s waiting for a housing market correction that never came. There is no logic to house prices other than "what will people endure".

The choice you do have as a landlord is how ****** you are. Do you fix issues when they happen? Do you keep on top of maintenance? Do you price gouge and charge "market rent" or do you just look to cover your costs etc. With the current state of the housing in this country, being a landlord is fundamentally grey morally at best.
 
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NVP

NVP

Soldato
Joined
6 Sep 2007
Posts
12,649
Defo not. Just the landlord part.
Then I guess I laugh at the renter part? Is that what you wanted @Efour

You are a modern day Andrew Tate. What you going to spend your £100 a month wealth on? :D
Is Andrew Tate not modern enough for you :cry:

Either way, I think the majority of those who've seen me post over the years have figured out where my "wealth" actually comes from, I'm fine with not showing it off.
 
Soldato
Joined
21 Jan 2010
Posts
23,247
It is funny how many hobbyist landlords are fighting the corner of landlords; yet fundamentally lack the understanding that being a landlord is about making money at or above market value.
 
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fez

fez

Caporegime
Joined
22 Aug 2008
Posts
25,769
Location
Tunbridge Wells
Either way, I think the majority of those who've seen me post over the years have figured out where my "wealth" actually comes from, I'm fine with not showing it off.

Is it the friends you made along the way? :p

It is funny how many hobbyist landlords are fighting the corner of landlords; yet fundamentally lack the understanding that being a landlord is about making money at or above market value.

I think everyone and every landlord understands that. The reality, like all things though is a spectrum. From the landlord that charges about 30% less than they could because they don't need the money and the house doesn't cost them anything to the people that try to extract every penny from their tenants. We've had the mortgage on ours for circa 15 years so unsurprisingly the amount left on the mortgage has dropped. We aren't got to drop the rent as the mortgage drops because the cost to us has increased over time. The only thing that has dropped is the mortgage payment. Maintenance etc has shot up.

No one buys a rental property to lose money. There is just a very direct correlation between how crappy you are as a landlord and how much profit you can make from your endeavour. Its like any business. At some point you have to decide how you want to operate. You might be making £3m a year but if you cut customer service and reduced the quality of your product and little and moved manufacturing to China you might be able to make £4-5m/year. Some would do it in a heartbeat and **** their current staff and customers and others wouldn't think the extra money was a price worth paying for their morals.
 
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Soldato
Joined
7 Feb 2004
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8,139
Location
North East
With the situation as it is, i don't understand why people seem to think private landlords are expected to run some sort of charity. They are taking the risk (house being trashed/non payment/squatters etc) and putting in the money up front. No one would do it for a nil return and there aren't enough rentals as it is. The reason most people rent is because they don't have the capital. Unsurprising, it costs for someone to front it on your behalf.

Someone will be making money somewhere in the chain however the housing provision is met, so it's not as though getting rid of private landlords will mean houses are suddenly going to be built at cost and given away or rented out at cost. Capping rents would probably only drive down the quality of housing or reduce the number of properties rented out.

I will accept that landlords who don't meet standards, maintain houses properly etc are an issue - these should have tougher action taken against them. However, similarly, some tenants are an issue, so there are outliers on both sides. Having seen a couple of episodes of the repossession programs on TV is enough to put me off ever renting a property out.

Getting mad at the private landlords isn't really helping anything and it seems to me they're a necessary evil and taking up slack in the failure of successive governments to adequately plan housing provision.

The bigger question is why are there insufficient housing association/council houses, affordable homes etc? If these worked effectively and could meet demand, the private landlords wouldn't be required. Perhaps this would have tempered the rise in property prices over the last few decades if the buy to let market wasn't so lucrative?
 
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Soldato
Joined
17 Dec 2009
Posts
10,262
I’m very much looking forward to tenants gaining more rights that’s been promised for years now. A lot of my friends and colleagues rent and I don’t understand how they live in such conditions.

A no fault eviction can be pretty much instant or if you stop paying rent to pay to fix problems the landlord should fix but can’t be bothered to do so, but you get nothing back rent wise if your shower doesn’t work for a week or the heating packs up?! Madness.
 
Soldato
Joined
23 May 2006
Posts
7,207
I think it's lovely that the small percentage of good & caring landlords out there seem to be converged on OCUK in this thread ;)
I like to think we are good landlords (my wife and i) we only have one property, my wifes flat before we met......it will be either a good retirement nest egg or a good place for our lad to live (rent cheap but not rent free) if he stays local but that is 15 years away.
we rent out at below market rate - havent touched the rent price in 5 years. our current tennant and the one before have been great......... but the 1st 2 were utterly shocking and despite what people say we found the council was always on the side of the tenant. they were vile.

1st ones only paid 1 month rent...... didnt pay for 3 months or so, then it took another 2 months to get the keys to go in. they had scarpered at least a month earlier, place trashed, food still on plates and the fridge also had food in. had to get it professionally cleaned.

2nd tenant complained of black mould. never been an issue before or since, turned out they had blocked all vents as well as unplugged all storage heaters in the flat. with no heat, and no ventilation of course there was a black mould problem. twice we sorted and they complained to the council, who were not interested at all in our side or the fact they were not looking after the property. we eventually kicked them out but that took ages too

they also flooded the shop below the flat, which did not go down well, and somehow we carried the can for that too. after all that.......... we had to give their full deposit back (i raged!)
 
Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
9,330
Location
Pembrokeshire
I’m very much looking forward to tenants gaining more rights that’s been promised for years now. A lot of my friends and colleagues rent and I don’t understand how they live in such conditions.

A no fault eviction can be pretty much instant or if you stop paying rent to pay to fix problems the landlord should fix but can’t be bothered to do so, but you get nothing back rent wise if your shower doesn’t work for a week or the heating packs up?! Madness.

Should a landlord knock off something from the monthly payment because the shower stops working or the heating packs up?

Is the landlord ignoring the issue or acting immediately to get the issue resolved?

This is always a binary topic. If the government really gave a monkeys they'd actively be buying up privately rented properties to increase their stock. Offer market rate for the property and no CGT and watch public sector housing stock rocket.
 
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Soldato
Joined
21 Jan 2010
Posts
23,247
Is it the friends you made along the way? :p



I think everyone and every landlord understands that. The reality, like all things though is a spectrum. From the landlord that charges about 30% less than they could because they don't need the money and the house doesn't cost them anything to the people that try to extract every penny from their tenants. We've had the mortgage on ours for circa 15 years so unsurprisingly the amount left on the mortgage has dropped. We aren't got to drop the rent as the mortgage drops because the cost to us has increased over time. The only thing that has dropped is the mortgage payment. Maintenance etc has shot up.

No one buys a rental property to lose money. There is just a very direct correlation between how crappy you are as a landlord and how much profit you can make from your endeavour. Its like any business. At some point you have to decide how you want to operate. You might be making £3m a year but if you cut customer service and reduced the quality of your product and little and moved manufacturing to China you might be able to make £4-5m/year. Some would do it in a heartbeat and **** their current staff and customers and others wouldn't think the extra money was a price worth paying for their morals.
The bit you are missing though is you could have extracted the capital and equity gains of your current property and bought 5 more.

You are either in the game or on the sidelines; hobbyist landlords aren't good IMO.
 
Man of Honour
Joined
19 Oct 2002
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29,605
Location
Surrey
I'm not jealous at all. I do regret not buying several properties in the past but it was something we looked at and decided against (probably the wrong decision, but hey ho).

However, complaining about the relatively small hassle of managing an investment property isn't a good look when a lot of people can't afford to buy their own home at all and are struggling with rent.
 
Soldato
Joined
26 Aug 2018
Posts
4,152
Location
Outside your house
The system isn't helpful to renters nor landlords.

It's not designed for landlords who want to treat their tenants right and give them a home, nor is it designed for good tenants who just want a home at a reasonable, stable price.

It's great for people who want to milk people dry or tenants who just want to live for free and hang on until the courts kick them out.

Other countries have a higher percentage of renter's than the UK, probably because their systems are designed and work better.

Not all landlords are the same, not all tenants are the same.
 
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