The joy of being a landlord

Soldato
Joined
11 Sep 2009
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France, Alsace
It has been exceptionally simple maths for many years. I watched a colleague build a housing empire side of desk at work. He bought a house with 20% down on BTL; house prices rose, he then took out the equity of the previous property and put 20% down on another BTL - rinse repeat.
With the rates today you'd probably be needing at least 25% down to get better rates - it's the difference between 3.9% and 6.9% which is huge over the 22yr period. But yes to what you said.
 
Soldato
Joined
21 Jan 2010
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23,255
I think like anything, an investment is an investment. You could go all in on stocks, gold, watches, bonds, or property. Or, you could have a mix of them all. While property and real estate (both commercial and resi) comes with higher costs because of upkeep and wear, it also comes with the balance of general appreciation and the big part of it being a tangible asset that people use as a store of value. That store of value just comes with a cost to keep at the same time.
But unlike many investment instruments, it delivers a monthly "income", albeit small. It also lets you fiddle tax for your own benefit e.g. claiming mileage to drive to the property, stationary etc..
 

fez

fez

Caporegime
Joined
22 Aug 2008
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Location
Tunbridge Wells
A few people in this thread have said that rent shouldn't be so high/higher than someone could get a mortgage for.
I don't think that is the case unless I'm missing something.

Looking around my postcode:

a 3-bed semi built in the 1980's cost about £260,000.
The rent on that house is about £900 a month
if you put a £50,000 deposit down, a 4.5% 25-year mortgage would be £1,168 a month £268 more than renting!

a 3-bed new build is about £365,000
The rent on that house is about £1200 a month
if you put a £50,000 deposit down, a 4.5% 25-year mortgage would be £1,750 a month £550 more than renting!

Are people putting down £100,000+ deposits or getting mortgages with a 60-year term?

The average mortgage term now is 30 years and unsurprisingly, in times of high interest rates, landlords won't be clamouring to hoover up properties when prices haven't really dropped to compensate. People who are trying to make the maximum from being a landlord will have be taking interest only mortgages and reinvesting the extra capital they have to take more properties on. When they sell those houses, as long as they have appreciated in value it will have done very nicely for them. With historically low interest rates in the past 10 years they will have had a nice time of it.

If it wasn't profitable people wouldn't do it. Owning a second home isn't stress free and you can have issues. People do it because its been a very good way to make a lot of money.
 
Soldato
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Location
France, Alsace
But unlike many investment instruments, it delivers a monthly "income", albeit small. It also lets you fiddle tax for your own benefit e.g. claiming mileage to drive to the property, stationary etc..
REITs or dividend stocks offer you similar.

The tax right offs on property ownership is no different to owning / running your own business, but a business has far fewer liabilities than property. The best way to buy properties is using an SPV for tax :p
 
Caporegime
Joined
8 Sep 2005
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30,098
Location
Norrbotten, Sweden.
Yeah ripping off students is a dream.

5 or 6 to a property
Low expectations of quality
Rinse the deposit for damages every year. Quoting the same damage on the Inventory that they said they'd fix last year.l, but saying you did it yourself.
A desperate captive market.
You can rob them too once a year.
(Happened to me, actually key entry and all our sound systems stolen. Mine was just a all in 1 boombox affair. Others lost separate systems worth 100s.)

Welcome to east Oxford. Crowley road.
Scum land lords rinsing teenagers for everything and giving nothing but damp back.

Useless letting agents creaming off the top and doing literally nothing to help you but empty your bank account.
 
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Soldato
Joined
23 May 2006
Posts
7,207
Rent it to students at 1000 a month each
that is exactly what a friend of mine does.... rents out student houses, he does really well out of it because his houses are actually nice (unlike the utter flea pit i stayed in at uni - in truth i didnt care but my mum hated it) and has a 24/7 call out promise which for kids away from home for 1st time parents really like. Not spoke to him for a while, he was getting worried as the uni was building a purpose built block of flats for students which would likely compete with his business.

he has had a few ****** people he has had to throw out but for the most part an email to parents sorts issues out.

he did say the worst (as in time wasting) callout was one at 4am to a girl who found a big spider in her room and she phoned him in absolute bits, so he had to go out and put it out of the window :D

he reckons profits wise its massively more than renting out the houses to individual people, albeit some more paper work and more stress.
 
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Soldato
Joined
23 May 2006
Posts
7,207
Yeah ripping off students is a dream.

5 or 6 to a property
Low expectations of quality
Rinse the deposit for damages every year. Quoting the same damage on the Inventory that they said they'd fix last year.l, but saying you did it yourself.
A desperate captive market.
You can rob them too once a year.
(Happened to me, actually key entry and all our sound systems stolen. Mine was just a all in 1 boombox affair. Others lost separate systems worth 100s.)

Welcome to east Oxford. Crowley road.
Scum land lords rinsing teenagers for everything and giving nothing but damp back.

Useless letting agents creaming off the top and doing literally nothing to help you but empty your bank account.
again tho not all are like that! (I would like to say not even most, but i dont really know......)
 
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Associate
Joined
2 Feb 2006
Posts
704
Then there is the running costs. Rent needs to cover maintenance, reinventions, insurance, and a pot of money to cover problems like renter skipping town. e.c.t Most of the anti landlord posters in here conveniently forget about the running costs of being a landlord and conveniently ignore the people who want to rent over buying there own home for a list of valid reasons. Its those anti landlord posters that are wrong and in some cases I find the anti landlord posters the immoral ones brushing good landlords who are helping under the same group as the bad ones.

Yeah this is kind of my point. Some people do actually want to rent and have no interest in buying a house.

In my examples you can pay less rent than a mortgage would be and by renting you have no worries about maintenance. You get a mortgage you have all those bills and more on top.

Yeah there is risk involved, but a LL would rather a good long term tenant, the risk works both ways.
 
Soldato
Joined
20 Oct 2002
Posts
18,138
Location
London
Yeah this is kind of my point. Some people do actually want to rent and have no interest in buying a house.
Like who? Seriously, who in their right mind wants to rent long-term in this country? :confused: Boomers with their decent pensions can barely afford to rent once retired currently, what the heck is a 30-something going to do in 30-40 years when they can no longer work? It's an absolute ticking time bomb. The state should concentrate on building old people's homes rather than anything else, millennials and gen z's will have to be shipped out into state-funded retirement camps en masse at this rate.
 
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Soldato
Joined
11 Sep 2009
Posts
13,994
Location
France, Alsace
Like who? Seriously
I rent my main home :p

I dont have to deal with any of the **** with it at all. I can put money into other things. The house prices have been fairly static here over 10yrs. Sure, I'd own it afterwards, but the cost of ownership vs. that benefit when I can put my money in other places makes way more sense for me. I know that me being not in the UK has a bit part to play in that also and know that you specifically mentioned the UK. Just showing the difference. In fact, Europe and Switzerland there are so many more renters.
 
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