Landlords selling up leaving 2,000 households a month in England facing homelessness
https://www.theguardian.com/money/article/2024/may/15/landlords-selling-up-england-homelessness-renting
by ProfessionalNewt7
Landlords selling up leaving 2,000 households a month in England facing homelessness
https://www.theguardian.com/money/article/2024/may/15/landlords-selling-up-england-homelessness-renting
by ProfessionalNewt7
35 comments
Can’t wait to hear how the landlords are the victim in all this, how unfair it is for them and how they deserve sympathy for relying on an investment for their income
If you start to feel sympathetic to landlords, go have a look on any landlord forum..I usually use Landlordzone..
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Sounds like they’ve made some poor financial decisions. Unfortunate.
Read carefully. People are ringing the council due to impending homelessness because the Landlord SAYS they are selling up and intends to evict them.
“…because the owner told them they were putting the property on the market.”
They’re not selling up. They’re saying they are, issuing a Section 21, then they’ll put the place back up for rent at double the price.
Landlords aren’t selling. Landlords are evicting. They are the ones driving the homelessness crisis.
No love for landlords, however they are small fry compared to the financial institutions that are going to be the countries future landlords.
This is why I tip my landlord, every month he risks going into negative equity just to keep a roof over my head.
Guarantee landlords are saying ‘we were the only thing protecting you from faceless corporate landlords’
As if social housing isn’t a thing.
Utter parasites.
Lets make landlords lives harder by making them pay more tax (s24)
Tenants: “yes, serves them horrible landlords right”
Outcome: costs passed onto tenants
Tenants: “greedy landlords”
Lets ban evictions and strip away their rights
Tenants: “yes, serves them horrible landlords right”
Outcome: reduction in supply of rentals and higher rent
Tenants: “greedy landlords”
When will you learn that going after landlords does nothing but hurt tenants. The only solution is the build. Anything else is very short term gains for longer term pain
If landlords were (correctly) called property scalpers or touts, it would be a very different narrative around them
In other words:
2000 homes a month are now re-entering the market for first time buyers, reducing the artificial stress imposed on the rental market by parasitic BTL landlords.
In the long run, this will only benefit renters. The more people that get onto the ladder, the less people there are renting, the less exploitation landlords can get away with. Seems like a good thing to me.
I know a few landlords are kicking people out so they can get new tenants in on a new contract before the rental reforms just because its their last chance of a massive rental increase before rental reforms. They are pretending to sell in order to do this.
If all the landlords do sell up (which I doubt they all will), what are the people who can’t afford to buy supposed to do?
But these people only rent because greedy landlords own all the properties and force up prices. If they’re selling-up, surely all the renters can buy all these newly for sale homes?
(Sarcasm, by the way)
This isn’t the epic win Redditbots think it is. The landlords are making a tidy little profit on investments meanwhile the rental stock goes down. Or they go back on the rental market with increased rent. This is bad for renters in the short to medium term (and beyond, depending on the governments reaction).
A contributing factor was mortgage rates increasing over the last two years because many landlords have a mortgage on the buy to let and have to appease the stricter affordability requirements of the lender.
But *some* of them used this as a smokescreen to increase rent even further than was necessary. And with the average rent cost higher, they will gladly evict a lower paying tenant in favour of a higher paying tenant.
What does the buyer do? Is there some trade in value on a used rental property at the bottle bank?
We got very very lucky when our landlord went to sell, and managed to buy the house off him at a slightly reduced price. Probably the most convenient way to get onto the housing ladder.
It was that or move into another rental that would be smaller, in a worse area for a higher rent cost. We really didn’t want to do that.
But many people won’t be in a position to do that, especially if you’re only given a few months notice.
If only he could have done that before interest rates went through the roof though…
Sorry?
If a landlord is selling up, then that is a home freed up for an ex-tenant to purchase.
They are not all being purchased by property firms who are going to keep them empty to force up prices everywhere else.
Hate the game, not the people. If the shoe was on the other foot- doubt any of us would do any different.
Of course the renters currently covering their landlords mortgage and giving them profit on top, still won’t be able to get a mortgage in their own name.
So who is buying all these thousands of houses?
Is this the bit where it’s foreign investment companies hovering up British housing stock, what problems could allowing that possibly cause?
“Messy “
It would completely ruin home owners like me. I’d be in massive negative equity for the rest of my life. Which would completely fuck us over.
But they’re not demolishing the houses after they’re sold – people who were renting then move into a house permanently…
If the housing market drops 10% and a previous mortgage would have cost £1000 a month. That only drops it down to £900.
If you couldn’t afford £1000 you’re still going to struggle at £900.
A crash in house prices isn’t going to suddenly release a load of affordable houses to people with not much money.
This would be a prime opportunity for the Bank (of England?) to offer them ‘right to buy’ mortgages; over a long enough term the cost could certainly be recouped, if it were desirable to be ‘in the black’ (*vide* the ‘National’ Debt).
The measure could then be extended to ‘construction’ mortgages, perhaps with some portion of the interest being disbursed to adjacent landowners to encourage planning permission.
I really don’t get the hatred for landlords. Any frustration should be aimed at the government as they were the ones who incentivised this situation, and with what was stupidly low interest rates it made sense to invest in property.
That said it’s still an investment. Not an infinite money making machine. The landlords who are complaining should only hear one answer: capital at risk, it should be no different than when you invest in the stock market. Yes it sucks when the stock market collapses but unfortunately that’s part of capitalism.
I’m in this situation and finding a suitable place to rent is an absolute farce, i’m looking at a 25% rent increase for similar houses only in a worse area, and giving up our pets is non negotiable.
The estate agent is an absolute knob too, and tries to arrange a single viewing nearly every day.
I’m worried that i’m going to have to find somewhere far away which would mean quitting my job, which really isn’t an option because i’m at an important place in my career. It’s also essentially meant we have to put off trying for a baby because we don’t know where we’ll be in a year.
I’m absolutely miserable.
“we hate landlords they buy up all the properties”
Landlords sell properties
“Bloody landlords”
Regardless of the situation, they have assets to sell. They’re walking away with money in the bank.
Renters have nothing.
Landlords have all the power.
Soooo some big corporate landlord company will swoop in?
My sister and her partner had a really weird situation with a landlord they’d used for 4+ years across 2 properties. They signed a second year on the second property only 6 months into the first year meaning they had 18 months remaining. After maybe 6 or 7 months mrs landlord was expecting and they wanted to use the house as their family home. It was a lovely house and they had lived there prior so not unreasonable. They also had about as good of a relationship as you could have so my sister was pretty calm. They also wanted to buy so leaving early could have been a god send.
The months went by and there was always news of the pregnancy etc and my sister had found a house although part of a chain. They were gearing up to move and the house fell through so they ended up staying the rest of the contract.
Cut to maybe 3 months post moving out and they bump into mrs landlord who wad bemused when my sister asked about the baby + house. No baby and they sold the house. It was all a lie complete with fake scans etc
Bizarre
Housing scalpers who benefited the most from very low interest rates. Torys created a housing investment pyramid ponzi scheme. Now landlords can fleece you for every penny to live there. You get a payrise? Landlord lets you know he’s increasing your rent or face a section 21.
Somthin needs to change.
Easy to hate landlords but the reality is without them, instead of a 5 person hmo a lot of houses would have a 2-3 person family
😂 so they’re scum when they own the houses and scum when they sell them? Brilliant
Landlords selling is bad. Reddit doesn’t want to hear it, but right now, more rentals are needed. More houses are needed, not less Landlords. The number of Landlords will self correct when there are enough houses.
Rents are so high because there aren’t enough rentals. More rentals would lead to rent dropping. It’s very basic supply and demand. Landlords don’t randomly pick a rent, the market decides it. More options for tenants leads to lower rent.
If you rent, you live more densely than if you own. What I’m saying here is, more people are statistically likely to live in the exact same house if it is a rental, than if a first time buyer owns it. Get rid of all landlords, to first time buyers, you end up with more issues because the same number of houses then have less people living in them. So before you come back with “it’s not like the house disappears if a landlord sells, someone will own it and live in it” – you need to remember that rentals have more people living in them, it’s not like for like.
Houses are expensive to build. If they were cheap to build compared to the current house prices, people would be throwing them up all over the place. They aren’t, we aren’t even close to hitting house building targets that are so small they don’t fix the problem. I hate to tell you all, houses aren’t going to suddenly crash unless something big changes. Maybe a short squeeze from remortgages if rates go up again, but nothing longterm to let people get a house if they can’t afford it now.
We need planning permission changes. We need it to be easier to get a house built, good quality houses, but easier to get that build going. There is so much land we don’t let people build on, either we need less people, or we need to let more houses go up. The solution I pick, more houses.