The joy of being a landlord

[Zenduri]

That's why I charge extortionate rental prices, the tenants must pay for my exceptional landlordsmanship

Least your honest about it, more than most in this thread. Nice try btw

Edit: @Thekwango Props to being open and honest. You arent white knighting, you are being true to your cause thats its to profit from it and make your life better. Morally and socially the right thing is to rent at the cost to you however no-one will do that when the market for housing and rentals is this broke the least we can do is be honest with each other but there are a lot in here who cant even manage that

 

[Bald-Eagle22]

I don’t think private landlords who own 1/2/3 properties are the problem.

It’s the companies who own large blocks of apartments and are happily tacking in monthly service charges etc that seem most egregious.

I say this as someone who rents, and has rented with both private landlords and companies. The companies were worse by far.

But full disclosure, I’m a landlord with one property I let out. I just want good tenants tbh. when I’ve found good ones I like to keep them, so do not raise the rent until they decide to move out ,at which point I put it at market rate.

(See the rest of you fellow landlords in hell, I’ll bring the Pimms).

Have been doing the same with 3 properties for the last 15 years as mortgages have become cheaper , rent stays the same until a tennant moves out . One was in for 7 years the bugger .

However I need to do something by September as my cost will be going up around 45% on this time last year- management companies have become the new leaches and thanks the BOE my mortgages will triple in September. I was going to wait for one to move out so I could sell and clear the montages. I’m about 25% below market value so think it’s going to have to go up .

And yep I feel real bad about it believe it or not

 

[ColdAsIce]

Really? My flat in Aberdeen has lost around £50k - and that's not accounting for inflation.



Then we're done.

Unless you bought 2 weeks before the 2008 crash. I don't even know how this is possible Willing to donate £50 to a charity of your choice if you can prove it

 

[randomshenans]

Morally and socially the right thing is to rent at the cost to you

He has no mortgage on it, so should probably give it to them for free on that basis.

 

[JonRGV250]

I've no mortgage on my rental and the very suggestion that I should rent it for free is so monumentally idiotic that there's only one person in this thread that could possibly suggest it.
And FWIW my agent called me recently (again) and suggested I put up the rent by an eye watering amount.
To be honest, I probably should as the glow from the halo above my head is so bright it's causing a lack of sleep, but it's a cross i'll have to bear by keeping the rent low.

 

[adidan]

I've no mortgage on my rental and the very suggestion that I should rent it for free is so monumentally idiotic that there's only one person in this thread that could possibly suggest it.
And FWIW my agent called me recently (again) and suggested I put up the rent by an eye watering amount.
To be honest, I probably should as the glow from the halo above my head is so bright it's causing a lack of sleep, but it's a cross i'll have to bear by keeping the rent low.

Sounds like my situation, was advised to up the rent but said no. The buggers still stopped paying rent and left the place a right state anyway.

At least it's looking better after a bit of fixing up and paint. Once the floors go down it'll be ready to sell.

Good riddance.

 

[Thekwango]

Morally and socially the right thing is to rent at the cost to you however no-one will do that when the market for housing and rentals is this broke the least we can do is be honest with each other but there are a lot in here who cant even manage that

We will be renting below market rates, not because there’s no mortgage on the rental property to pay and not for some moral high ground but because we want someone in it long term - my view is, the right person will make it their home, which hopefully means they’ll take better care of it (they’ll be more than welcome to redecorate for example, within reason obviously, we may even come to some agreement on a temporary rent reduction if they’ve saved me having too!)
I appreciate I’m relatively lucky in that we live in a small town (10k residents or thereabouts) so if we don’t know the potential renters personally, it won’t be hard to find someone we know who does. Means we can do our ‘due diligence’ as best we can in advance of anyone moving in.

 

[Quartz]

Unless you bought 2 weeks before the 2008 crash. I don't even know how this is possible Willing to donate £50 to a charity of your choice if you can prove it

I bought at the peak, £230k. Neighbouring flats are being advertised for £180k.

 

[dowie]

When property prices everywhere have been going up for years, you, a person with a property in one of the largest scottish cities are the only one to make a 50k loss........

Cmon man.....

Edit: yes i know the City of Aberdeen is its own microcosm for housing and even then its only at most decreased by 9.9% (average) if that, so unless you bought a £500k flat there is no way you have lost £50k

That's clearly false, see here:

Why are House Prices Falling in Aberdeen?

The housing market in Aberdeen is constantly changing. We're taking a deeper look at why house prices are falling in Aberdeen.

www.webuyanyhome.com

Aberdeen has continually suffered from a loss in house value over the past ten years. In fact, in 2012, the average house price was £160,561, while the average price in 2022 was £144,615. That’s a drop of almost 10%.

What’s more shocking is that 17 years ago, the average house value was £296,273. This represents a large drop in property value.

There's a 10% drop in the average price over 10 years so how can you state that it's at most decreased by that amount? You can't! You understand what an average is right? If you do then think a bit more and you'll see that you're obviously wrong. Suppose he had a new build flat or suppose he bought > 10 years ago...


@Quartz could quite easily have lost 50k on a flat if it were a new build.

 

[Maple Leaf]

You worked hard all your life, made a lot of money, and therefore deserve to be able to spend your money on a mansion if you like. 7 bedrooms, gold plated urinal, 3 butlers in every room. Knock yourself out, you earned it. You could have the house you deserve, and fill it with the luxury you deserve. And nobody would complain. But that's not what this is about, is it? You take that hard-earned money, and you use it to basically enslave other hard-working people, except they work hard in low-paid professions.

What planet are you living on? Do you really think that landlords are all multi-millionaires living it up?

According to a London School of Economics review of UK private landlords:

'Over 60% of landlords in the survey owned only a single rented property. Only 7% owned five or more, but these larger landlords accounted for nearly 40% of the rented dwellings.' Source

According to a government review of UK private landlords:

'Most individual landlords (85%) owned between one and four properties, with just under half (45%) owning only one rental property. The remaining 15% of individual landlords owned five or more properties.' Source

Just for one second, imagine you're the factory worker paying 70% (and more!) of their take-home on renting this property. You can't save for a deposit, and you begrudge paying rent that's way higher than mortgage repayment would be (if you could get one). You can't have any pets. You can't change the wallpaper. You can't plant anything in the garden (the landlord has it just they way he likes it, when he comes to visit once a year).

Been there, done that. I know very well what it's like to live on low pay in an exhausting job with long hours and insecure prospects. The way I bought my own home was by becoming a landlord myself. I saved for over 15 years, got a bridging loan to reach the deposit and then set up a student HMO and I used the income from my tenants (who I live with) to pay the deposit loan off and to make up the difference between my income and my outgoings/mortgage/costs.

Of course, thanks to landlord-haters, like you, I would never be able to do that legally here if I was starting now. Because of Article 4. A law specifically passed to appeal to those with your political viewpoint which prevents anyone from setting up a new HMO without first getting planning permission (which round here is impossible).

I know other people in a similar position to myself. They are technically landlords but they are about as far away from the stereotype of being a rich landlord, that you have given above, as it's possible to be. For example, another local student HMO landlord (a painter and decorator) is only doing it to earn enough money to put his daughter through university. Another landlord I know is a woman in her 50s (a professional artist) who is a widow and she has student lodgers to help her make ends meet. Life is a lot more complicated than you imagine with your class warfare nonsense.

For your information, I sleep well at night because my tenants/lodgers are happy to live in my house because they know the deal they get with me beats the snot out of private/university PBSA accommodation (literally half the price) and is better value than my competitors. I have had two of my current lodgers for the last 6 years, through their PhDs and into postdoctoral research positions. They would not have stayed if they felt they were being ripped off!

 

[FoxEye]

(snip)

Get a better job, then.

When I met my wife in 2010 we had a combined income of 28k, so don't give me this BS about "it's not that easy" - it's always going to be impossible if you're not willing to do what it takes, and it's much easier to focus on what "isn't fair" when you aren't willing to be uncomfortable in life to have a better life for yourself. That's on you sunshine.

Lots of low-paid jobs are beneficial, nay essential, for society.

I listed some earlier. Carers, supermarket shelf stackers, delivery drivers, basic IT staff, admin staff, yadda, yadda.

If the answer to the question, "How can I not be a salve to a landlord?" is to basically not be employed in any of those professions, then we need to learn to live without those people. We can't depend upon carers to look after us and then treat them like ****.

And again, nobody questions that you "worked hard" yourself, and nobody questions your right to buy nice things for yourself, like a 7-bedroom mansion or a Ferrari or whatever you want. Most of the time, you spending your hard-earned does not deprive anyone else of something. The low-paid worker isn't on the list for that Ferarri, nor is he eyeing up the 7-bedroom mansion.

It's when you choose to start buying up the kind of basic housing that is becoming so scarce, purely because it represents a revenue stream to enable you to profit from *his* labour, *not* your own, that I cry foul.

Let's be 100% honest. There is a transition point where you can stop saying, "I worked hard for what I have" to (more honestly) start saying "I started by working hard, and then I got somebody else to start contributing to my mortgage payments and early retirement fund."

Why do you not feel that somebody paying 70%+ of their income on rent is unreasonable? How can you justify it in any way? "Sucks to be them!" - is that it? "I'm alright Jack, and if they don't do what I did then they deserve nothing. I will take all I can get."

 

[FoxEye]

Life is a lot more complicated than you imagine with your class warfare nonsense.

All I need to do is look at the statistics. The trends.

This country is heading in the wrong direction, and it's incredible that people will defend it at all.

Homelessness, up. In-work poverty, up. Rent as a proportion of income, up. Food bank usage, up. Housing support paid to private landlords, up (it's in the £billions annually). Home ownership, down. Age of first time buyers, up. The wealth divide between the haves and have-nots, up, up, up. Inequality already out of control and getting worse every year.

1/3 of rental properties found not fit for human habitation (just lol). Tenants living with mould, leaking roofs, damp, etc. Afraid to ask for anything to be fixed as they end up evicted for their trouble. This year saw no-fault evictions up 50% from 2019 levels (after a temp ban during covid).

There are many, many people who have been evicted down here purely so the rent could jump more than the max allowed. You can easily find people who end up getting evicted every year or two so their old landlord could drastically hike the price. I find the idea of "ethical landlords" hilarious when confronted by the experience of so many which is the polar opposite. As @Zenduri said, we must have the entire country's collection of ethical landlords posting here on this forum.

And building more properties for sale on the so-called "open market" is not the cure; especially not here in the South West. Not only are they being snapped up immediately by landlords, but also being bought as 2nd homes or for use as Air BnBs. In any case, all of these extra houses are priced far in excess of what most locals can afford. Even the so-called affordable ones. "Affordable housing" is the punchline of a sick joke for most people down here.

I suspect that, far from the rhetoric of "providing a service", many landlords here would not want to start facing competition from local councils, should the UK govt see sense and allow councils to increase their social housing provision once again (i.e. a programme of mass building or buying, in order to provide low-cost social rentals). I imagine there would be much wailing about how unfair it was that councils were pushing average rents down.

It's funny to hear landlords accuse the working class of "a massive sense of entitlement", given the absolute crying and gnashing of teeth when landlords lost their tax breaks on mortgage interest, etc. When for years they also had much more favourable mortgage deals than any owner occupier could get, too.

 

[FoxEye]

What planet are you living on? Do you really think that landlords are all multi-millionaires living it up?

You completely missed the point of the "7 butlers and gold-plated urinal" comment.

The point was nobody was saying they couldn't use the money they'd worked for to buy things they wanted; to have any amount of luxury they desired. They could spend any amount on a single property, up to and including the point at which they were hiring 7 butlers for each room

The intent isn't to stop people spending their money on things they want.

The intent is to stop people using their (relative) wealth to profit whilst at the same time disadvantaging others below them. Using their money to entrench their advantaged position, and in so doing lock their tenants out of the housing market. To hinder their tenant's own aspirations. (I put it to you that *most* people considering becoming a landlord are in a much better financial position than a low-paid worker.)

Let's face it, when you're spending 70%+ of your income on rent, it's much harder to afford training, education, etc. You find yourself working all hours of the day just to pay the damned rent. Where are you then going to find the money to fund yourself through an Open Uni course? (avg cost: £7k per year).

 

[Lopéz]

You're quite an enigma to me, FoxEye.

If you channeled the same level of time and effort into improving your own situation as you do into finding reasons why you can't, you might find yourself in a better position.

You're obviously intelligent, as evidenced by your well-crafted and structured posts here, even though I may not agree with most of your viewpoints.

It seems like you're generally dissatisfied with your current circumstances - and aside from wanting to be perceived as someone who rebels against "the man" and rejects "the system," I struggle to understand why you choose to focus on the barriers that prevent you and people like you from succeeding, instead of taking action to actually pursue success.

You've mentioned before that you don't define "success" by widely accepted societal norms - material possessions like cars, relationships, houses, or nice clothes for example. However, you also seem bitter about not being able to attain some of these things, so it's confusing to me.

 

[bigmike20vt]

All I need to do is look at the statistics. The trends.

This country is heading in the wrong direction, and it's incredible that people will defend it at all.

Homelessness, up. In-work poverty, up. Rent as a proportion of income, up. Food bank usage, up. Housing support paid to private landlords, up (it's in the £billions annually). Home ownership, down. Age of first time buyers, up. The wealth divide between the haves and have-nots, up, up, up. Inequality already out of control and getting worse every year.

1/3 of rental properties found not fit for human habitation (just lol). Tenants living with mould, leaking roofs, damp, etc. Afraid to ask for anything to be fixed as they end up evicted for their trouble. This year saw no-fault evictions up 50% from 2019 levels (after a temp ban during covid).

There are many, many people who have been evicted down here purely so the rent could jump more than the max allowed. You can easily find people who end up getting evicted every year or two so their old landlord could drastically hike the price. I find the idea of "ethical landlords" hilarious when confronted by the experience of so many which is the polar opposite. As @Zenduri said, we must have the entire country's collection of ethical landlords posting here on this forum.

And building more properties for sale on the so-called "open market" is not the cure; especially not here in the South West. Not only are they being snapped up immediately by landlords, but also being bought as 2nd homes or for use as Air BnBs. In any case, all of these extra houses are priced far in excess of what most locals can afford. Even the so-called affordable ones. "Affordable housing" is the punchline of a sick joke for most people down here.

I suspect that, far from the rhetoric of "providing a service", many landlords here would not want to start facing competition from local councils, should the UK govt see sense and allow councils to increase their social housing provision once again (i.e. a programme of mass building or buying, in order to provide low-cost social rentals). I imagine there would be much wailing about how unfair it was that councils were pushing average rents down.

It's funny to hear landlords accuse the working class of "a massive sense of entitlement", given the absolute crying and gnashing of teeth when landlords lost their tax breaks on mortgage interest, etc. When for years they also had much more favourable mortgage deals than any owner occupier could get, too.

I dont disagree with a lot of that..... however where i disagree is your intimation that a large percentage of the landlords on these forums are liars....

i would say (from memory so forgive slight inaccuracies) given that over half of the landlords in the uk only have one or 2 properties, but that the top 10% of landlords own (from memory) over 1/4 of all rented properties, I would say it is certainly feasible that the majority here are good eggs... because all it would take would be a relitively small number of the landlords owning large numbers of properties to skew the figures.
I genuinely do not understand how slum landlords get away with it. our flat had a small issue with black mould (nothing like the disgusting mess we saw in the press a few months back). we fixed it 2 or maybe 3 times as soon as we heard before the council got involved after the tenants complained (which is good, i support the council looking into potentially serious issues).

despite it being the tenants fault - conclusion of the person who was sent to check it out - they had blocked all air vents and disconnected the storage heaters in the flat to save energy so the flat was a damp mess (it was also like a chinese laundry in there) we STILL had to carry the can for it and still could not take any deposit from them after we eventually got rid of them (it took ages to get them out as well)
so i just do not see how slum landlords pull it off.

and yes i dont feel guilty kicking them out, they caused black mould issues in the flat multiple times, never happned before or since... they flooded the shop below because they refused to have a bath and not a shower for ONE NIGHT whilst the plumber fixed a leak - he left the job half finished over night and said dont use the shower have a bath if you must......... but still the council was on their side with no support for us.


oh and call me a liar if you will but i would absolutely support the government having a proper inventory of rental properties..... but it is on them to either get them built out buy on market rates... no one forced them to sell their old stock so they should not get to do forced purchases off landlords - unless they are foreign investment properties sitting empty all year round. i dont have any sympathy for those... properties are to be used imo.

 

[Thekwango]

so it's confusing to me.

not really confusing at all. it's easier to pick faults in others rather than addressing ones own failings first. crying and blaming everyone else for ones own failings in life is always much easier to stomach than looking in the mirror.

edit: that said i do agree with some of their points on the rental market but that's not what they are actually angry about.

 

[adidan]

The intent is to stop people using their (relative) wealth to profit whilst at the same time disadvantaging others below them. Using their money to entrench their advantaged position, and in so doing lock their tenants out of the housing market. To hinder their tenant's own aspirations. (I put it to you that *most* people considering becoming a landlord are in a much better financial position than a low-paid worker.)

Let's face it, when you're spending 70%+ of your income on rent, it's much harder to afford training, education, etc. You find yourself working all hours of the day just to pay the damned rent. Where are you then going to find the money to fund yourself through an Open Uni course? (avg cost: £7k per year).

So I kept my rent down and still got shafted by a tenant. You'll be glad to hear I'll be putting it on the market so aspiring renters can buy it.

 

[Tykey]

to the landlords here : I wish some of you would more carefully consider tenants in receipt of benefits. yes i know benefit claimants conjure up visions of shameless/rab c nesbitt etc but some of us are just not like that. i receive disability benefits due to a long term health condition. i'm clean, quiet, don't drink or smoke, polite/respectful of property and others etc. i know i'd be a great tenant. but the private landlords i've encountered don't want to know as soon as they learn i am in receipt of dwp benefits and i have no chance of a council property.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

Rents are never going to come down while market conditions continue to support rising prices.

Decades of a lack of supply is going to do that. Prices are only going to reduce if supply starts to outpace demand. Demand for housing isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

 

[Quartz]

to the landlords here : I wish some of you would more carefully consider tenants in receipt of benefits.

Agreed. My tenant is on benefits and has been good. A big problem with tenants on benefits is that insurers can charge more.

Demand for housing isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

There's plenty of housing in Aberdeen, low prices too. Someone on minimum wage can get themselves on the housing ladder. But employers don't want to move here, and given the SNP's attitude to wealth creation and interference with local rates, I can understand why.