The joy of being a landlord

[Scam]

I rent my main home

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.

Indeed. And that's the way it should be. But the UK since the Eighties has had a terrible relationship with property and that's just where we're at right now

 

[dlockers]

Like who? Seriously, who in their right mind wants to rent long-term in this country? 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.

You're probably onto something here. These mega old folks homes keep cropping up where I live (both home, and home home) and the fees are outrageous. I worked for an IT company that helped do some consolidation of servers for care homes that were being acquired by a larger care home group. Once sold "new", these places seem next to impossible to shift on the second hand market (my wifes family still unable to get rid of their dead grannys flat due to astromical service charge). I bet there is going to be a massive crash and these places will essentially become retirement farms to free up good quality housing stock they've resisted leaving...

 

[MrRockliffe]

I've seen both sides of the discussion here.

My dad has rented his place out, been absolutely trashed - more than the deposit paid. Estate agents were idiots and didn't note all the damage as "they weren't sure what condition it was in before". Wtf

My current landlord is a legend. Gives me money off my rent at Christmas. Instant repairs when they need doing/I can't do it myself. But I treat the place well. I've painted all the walls, kept it nice and clean and sorted out a few dodgy things.

 

[Blackjack Davy]

Like who? Seriously, who in their right mind wants to rent long-term in this country? 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.

Nah there is the catch all solution to all problems: benefits. The govt will just hand over eye watering amounts of money because it means they don't have to actually do anything to resolve the issues same as always.

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.

No such thing I spent a year in my first place before I was kicked out because they wanted to sell on the second place was a dive because it was all that was available at short notice, my sister rented her flat out after getting hitched but sold up eventually when they wanted to put the money down on a house the tenant was really unhappy he thought as an older resident he'd be there for life. There is absolutely zero security with renting you know you could be asked to leave at any moment unless you have a secured long term tenancy agreement and I don't know anyone who has one of those its the main reason for wanting to buy in my case knowing I can't be kicked out unexpectedly my mother was the same spent short periods in rented or grace and favour homes and was having to move on frequently due to job changing or being kicked out until they finally had enough for their own place. As for maintenance you have a point there but it was still far below what i paid in rent for an equivalent property

 

[Blackjack Davy]

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?

I'd love to know where you live £900 for a 3 bed house? You'll be lucky to get a two bed flat for less than a grand here even a shoebox sized no-bedroom studio is north of £450

 

[fez]

state-funded retirement camps

That doesn't sound like the sort of thing people would spend a long time in before their spot was "freed up".

 

[Scam]

That doesn't sound like the sort of thing people would spend a long time in before their spot was "freed up".

The rate we're going it might come to that! Maybe you get 5 years retirement to enjoy - then a hole in the head, lol

 

[NVP]

Instead of moaning about not being able to afford something because of someone else, take advantage of the situation (like they did) and write a business plan for a care home?

 

[Maple Leaf]

It would be cheaper to rent if the councils had them all.

Personally I don't think we should have landlords.
It's all about profit and squeezing the money out of renters.

Have you seen how bad Councils are at spending our money and getting value-for-money? Many of them have lost millions on various poorly researched schemes and are having to increase Council Tax by 15% in some areas this year. For example, City of York Council recently spent £8 million on 25 electric vehicles to replace diesel powered recycling collection trucks, but they are now having to pay more to have them stored as they cannot be used because there are not enough charging points for them! There are many more examples of Councils wasting tax payers' money with little thought and using it to invest in wildcat schemes which make a loss.

Council houses were made available for sale to their tenants by Thatcher's government in the 1980s as a bribe to working class voters. You cannot blame those wicked private landlords for that. To build 2 million Council houses would cost at least £200 billion. We don't have enough money for the NHS, Social Care, welfare payments and the Armed Forces as it is, so how do you propose to find all that extra money?

As I said before, this is a capitalist country, why should my tax money be used to give those who made a choice to live the way they do a cheap secure long-term house tenancy? I have worked hard all my life (often for dog**** pay), secured a BSc and a PhD in a STEM subject, have never claimed JSA/UC, have lived in rented rooms/flats/run-down terraced houses (privately owned by landlords) for 16 years before taking out a large mortgage and buying a modest semi-detached house in the north of England. Renting from Councils would never have worked for me because I had to move every year, or two, for educational opportunities, training placements, jobs, research positions etc and that's a mile away from the social housing paradigm.

 

[cheesyboy]

In fact, Europe and Switzerland there are so many more renters.

This is substantially a myth.

Yes, Switzerland is unusually low in home ownership among European countries but otherwise only really Germany has lower home ownership rate than the UK.

And, critically, they have far higher renter protections than we do.

List of countries by home ownership rate - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Werewolf]

Have you seen how bad Councils are at spending our money and getting value-for-money? Many of them have lost millions on various poorly researched schemes and are having to increase Council Tax by 15% in some areas this year. For example, City of York Council recently spent £8 million on 25 electric vehicles to replace diesel powered recycling collection trucks, but they are now having to pay more to have them stored as they cannot be used because there are not enough charging points for them! There are many more examples of Councils wasting tax payers' money with little thought and using it to invest in wildcat schemes which make a loss.

Council houses were made available for sale to their tenants by Thatcher's government in the 1980s as a bribe to working class voters. You cannot blame those wicked private landlords for that. To build 2 million Council houses would cost at least £200 billion. We don't have enough money for the NHS, Social Care, welfare payments and the Armed Forces as it is, so how do you propose to find all that extra money?

As I said before, this is a capitalist country, why should my tax money be used to give those who made a choice to live the way they do a cheap secure long-term house tenancy? I have worked hard all my life (often for dog**** pay), secured a BSc and a PhD in a STEM subject, have never claimed JSA/UC, have lived in rented rooms/flats/run-down terraced houses (privately owned by landlords) for 16 years before taking out a large mortgage and buying a modest semi-detached house in the north of England. Renting from Councils would never have worked for me because I had to move every year, or two, for educational opportunities, training placements, jobs, research positions etc and that's a mile away from the social housing paradigm.

Or the vehicles were ready earlier than expected but had to be taken or they'd lose them and potentially pay more for a new order, or the electrical infrastructure is behind schedule which can be completely out of the hands of the council as they don't control that but have to arrange it with the supply operator who can/will put a hold on new work if for example there is a need to repair existing stuff that comes up or they face delays in their works*.
It could also be something as simple as the council have a planned charging facility at a location where building work is not complete due to covid, an awful lot of construction has been massively delayed due to covid and other factors over the last couple of years, this is not unique to council work as it's happening all over the place.

It's also worth noting that won't be "wasted" money, as they will get used (and are unlikely to be coming to much harm parked up), and they were almost certainly bought because existing ones were nearing the end of their expected working lives/cost effective lives.

*The lead time on upgraded power infrastructure can be years, and easily cost millions if you want priority. One of the reasons supermarkets typically take energy efficiency fairly seriously and if they're looking at an expansion of a store they might do a full refurb as the cost of replacing things like air-con and refrigeration plants that work fine entirely can be much cheaper than increasing the incoming electrical supply to just cover the expansion (and give long term savings).

 

[Maple Leaf]

It's also worth noting that won't be "wasted" money, as they will get used (and are unlikely to be coming to much harm parked up), and they were almost certainly bought because existing ones were nearing the end of their expected working lives/cost effective lives.

At £320,000 each I hope that's the case! However, paying to park up 25 electric trucks for months on a third-party's property without use and keeping their batteries topped up carries a significant cost too.

Anyway, that might not be a good example, but my point regarding bad investments made by Councils still stands:

...Croydon now wants the government to write off an eye-watering £540m of debt. No local authority has ever been allowed to default on its debts before. Croydon's general fund owes a total of £1.3bn.

It's less than two years since the borough was handed a "capitalisation" direction of £120m, at the time a record bail-out. That came after its first two Section 114 notices, effective declarations that the council couldn't balance its budget following a year of Covid over-spends and half a decade of dodgy property deals and fuelling the money pit that was the council-owned housebuilder, Brick by Brick.

This time, after a third S114 in two years, the "spectacularly useless" south London borough (according to a perceptive Question Time panel member) is asking for another bail-out, of £224m, as well as raising its council tax by 15 percent, on top of the half-a-billion debt write-off...

Private Eye | Local zeroes: Rotten Boroughs Awards 2024

The Rotten Boroughs Awards for 2024 are as follows:

www.private-eye.co.uk

There are plenty of other badly run Councils around.

 

[dowie]

It would be cheaper to rent if the councils had them all.

Personally I don't think we should have landlords.
It's all about profit and squeezing the money out of renters.

So what? I get that rent-seeking behaviour isn't exactly all that great and I'd not want to be a landlord myself (unless it was a commercial property investment) but they provide a service people need, it's not just people forced into long-term renting by lack of supply of housing/lack of affordability.

How do you expect young people to move to a new city and find a new job if landlords aren't available? Local councils need to prioritise vulnerable people, people living in the borough already etc... whereas a young person might want a studio or 1 bedroom or a flatshare near a particular station or perhaps in a particular area where their mates are (in my case, in my 20s, that was a choice of either Clapham or Islington).

You might want to get a flatshare with friends, you might want to check out some flatshares with rooms available and see if you like the people or not and of course, the nicer properties and nicer areas will cost a bit more. How does a local council deal with allocation?

 

[dowie]

At £320,000 each I hope that's the case! However, paying to park up 25 electric trucks for months on a third-party's property without use and keeping their batteries topped up carries a significant cost too.

Anyway, that might not be a good example, but my point regarding bad investments made by Councils still stands:

[...]
There are plenty of other badly run Councils around.

I do wonder sometimes if we ought to move to more of a US-style system where local authorities are responsible for their own taxes and budgets... they can of course elect to default but that has the obvious effect of making borrowing much more expensive for them in future.

The problem is that they're already too reliant on national government and some areas really aren't net contributors at all.

 

[Rroff]

Town I work in the council has spent vast millions on "improving the traffic flow" through town - still gets just as backed up as it ever did - meanwhile perfectly good traffic light controlled junctions have been turned into hideously complex roundabouts, roundabouts which worked OK turned into hideous traffic light controlled junctions, etc. etc. and then when some of those didn't work they decided to mash both approaches together... you'd think it was a big city the way they've approached the traffic flow yet still it is still less than optimal for a medium size town. I imagine a future council will end up decommissioning half the traffic lights just to save money...

Not to mention a lot of other goings on which seems incredibly poor use of money.

 

[Allnamestaken]

My council has spent millions redecorating the town square multiple times, no one has liked the **** they have put up and they’ve had to take it down multiple times and just leave the square open as it should be. Yet they keep trying to add fancy sculptures or fountains.

Millions that could be ******* used on something useful.

 

[Freakbro]

Now, I'm no expert on political ideologies, but what has this

As I said before, this is a capitalist country,

got to do with this

why should my tax money be used to give those who made a choice to live the way they do a cheap secure long-term house tenancy?

Capitalism is an economic theory about the control of trade and industry by private individuals for profit.

Paying taxes to support society is not an antithesis to Capitalism, it fits perfectly well in that economic theory and is driven by the political ideology, which in this country is fundamentally Liberalism. There seem to be a mix of ideologies between social and neo Liberalism, but it all gets a bit undefined when you drill down into it.

Sound to me you are thinking about Capitalism (ignoring the fact we dont have fully unfettered Capitalism in this country anyway) combined with Libertarianism, which thank god we don't have and is still an unpalatable fringe.

 

[platinum87]

Now, I'm no expert on political ideologies, but what has this



got to do with this


Capitalism is an economic theory about the control of trade and industry by private individuals for profit.

Paying taxes to support society is not an antithesis to Capitalism, it fits perfectly well in that economic theory and is driven by the political ideology, which in this country is fundamentally Liberalism. There seem to be a mix of ideologies between social and neo Liberalism, but it all gets a bit undefined when you drill down into it.

Sound to me you are thinking about Capitalism (ignoring the fact we dont have fully unfettered Capitalism in this country anyway) combined with Libertarianism, which thank god we don't have and is still an unpalatable fringe.

Taxes are suppose to be a service charge to run the country, military/police/courts etc.

Once you start coming up with more and more things to spend money on, increasing taxes more and more, its not fitting perfectly well, and you enter the communist mindset right away, all things exist all at once.

If we will talk about capitalism, we should look at Singapore, not the US, and not the UK, and not the EU.

But yes, the two quotes you quoted dont make sense, should replace capitalist with, almost communist, then it would make sense.

 

[Freakbro]

Taxes are suppose to be a service charge to run the country, military/police/courts etc.

You missed things like education, health service, food & energy security....the list does go on.

Once you start coming up with more and more things to spend money on, increasing taxes more and more, its not fitting perfectly well, and you enter the communist mindset right away, all things exist all at once.

No, you really don't I know bat**** crazy Libertarians think the NHS is Communism, but you have to be rather an extremist to start pulling the Communism card out when talking about Western Social Liberalism.

If we will talk about capitalism, we should look at Singapore, not the US, and not the UK, and not the EU.

Thankfully you are in a minority in the UK who agree with you about holding up Singapore as the model to aspire to.

But yes, the two quotes you quoted dont make sense, should replace capitalist with, almost communist, then it would make sense.

Honestly, you come across like Angillion with their singular focus on identity politics in any discussion of any topic, you just seem to shout "Communism" at everything.

Do you think of yourself as a Libertarian?

 

[platinum87]

You missed things like education, health service, food & energy security....the list does go on.



No, you really don't I know bat**** crazy Libertarians think the NHS is Communism, but you have to be rather an extremist to start pulling the Communism card out when talking about Western Social Liberalism.



Thankfully you are in a minority in the UK who agree with you about holding up Singapore as the model to aspire to.



Honestly, you come across like Angillion with their singular focus on identity politics in any discussion of any topic, you just seem to shout "Communism" at everything.

Do you think of yourself as a Libertarian?

I didnt miss anything.

How is it not communist, its funded by the taxpayer, if every company was owned by the state, we would be in full communism, your healthcare, or anyone elses, is none of my business, likewise, my healthcare, is none of your business.

What's wrong with Singapore?

I'm not anything, im just explaining things.