MPs should not be allowed to be landlords. They have too much influence over the housing market.
The point that everyone is missing, is the bad landlords ignore the laws, and the good landlords comply, which mean they incur more cost, which has three main impacts.
1) renters costs go up to cover the increased laws and rules.
2) as rents go up more bad landlords are enticed into the industry.
3) good landlords sell up, which increases the percentage of bad landlords.
The simple solution is to police the rules and regulations we have now, they are more than sufficient.
Some pop trivia, on average council supplied housing has more complaints than private housing and council supplies housing has incurred higher rent raises than private housing.
We all get so Done Over in the UK all party’s are the same they just want to Rob us all..
Do councils have this power?
The private rental market should either be completely abolished (replaced by council rentals), or heavily regulated (similar to some of our European neighbours).
Ha ha, yeah, right. Under this government it wouldn’t surprise me if they had a leaderboard of the worse properties rented out, and the most hideous conditions
The worse being at the top and rewarded, obviously.
Landlords are some of the most marginalised people in society. People providing people with a place to live who cannot afford on their own. PoL (people of land) do not deserve this.
It is not a person of lands fault if you waste your money on funkopops, starbucks and 5 different streaming platforms.
Do I count as a landlord if I only rented out my flat because I had to move quickly for a job and I am a renter myself elsewhere? Just trying to figure out if I’m a horrible bastard or not, I’m barely making any profit on the thing.
Make them subject to regular random inspections by an independent body too. Otherwise, it will be easy to get the licence and then to rent out properties that are unfit for habitation.
I rented in the north west whilst at uni. My landlady had 64 properties…..sixty fucking four.
My friend started coughing up some nasty stuff, pulled the bed back and the wall was covered in mold!
Same with the sofa and other furniture, we’d been in for one month.
My local council has a compulsory register for landlords. You’re guaranteed to get permission, even if you have a bad record. But it’s 500 quid for 18 months. There is no application process, no background check, you just pay 500 quid and they add your address to a list.
And people wonder by rents are so high.
I’m not opposed to a register. But it needs to be cheap (free really) and it needs to actually work. What criteria disqualify you? For how long? Can your spouse or an ltd company act as sock puppet?
Good luck with that. Tories voted that rented properties didn’t even have to be habitable.
Look at the root cause of why people become landlords. Then you can tackle this issue. The cause is that property investment is the only way to make money with 0 risk. Property never comes down in value and if it does then it goes back up very quickly.
Remove the idea of purchasing a property as a financial investment.
Sounds like a cost that will just be passed on to renters and probably have no impact on improving standards.
They should be regulted out of existence. We should have a state house building program like in the 1940s/50s.
Rental properties need an EPC rating of B and above. Now. We need that now.
This has already been the case where I live for over a year. One of the funny consequences was a fair few properties were put on the market very cheap, I got a house now worth 140k for 85k, because the cost and hassle of bringing them up to code for renting wasn’t worth it, so they just wanted rid of them quickly. Cost a bit to improve it so I could comfortably live there, but a bloody bargain none the less. Hopefully this will happen in a lot more areas.
My local council has a scheme like this but only in certain areas. I had a flat that needed so much work, damp problems, unfinished building works and strange designs used to cut costs.
I complained many times until the council inspectors came round and ripped the place to shreds (not literally).
Few weeks later and some threats to the landlord to revoke their license and the work was completed.
This needs to happen to stop exploitation of renters living in unsafe hell holes and paying top price for the privilege.
I can tell you now that won’t happen…most Tory MP’s are landlords…they all voted on a law that means homes do not need to be suitable for humans…I know its sound crazy and absolutely stupid cuz what else is a home for other than humans
312 Conservative MPs voted against forcing rented homes to be made fit for human habitation. No Labour, Liberal Democrat or SNP MPs voted against it.
Agree. It’s a service and should be held to a minimum standard. Some of the student housing stock is diabolical
All this licensing stuff won’t achieve anything. There’s a straight forward way to fix this. Create a maintenance fund for rental properties. Put a lien on rent until the fund is full. When the landlord refuses to fix stuff let the tenant call the council in for them to fix it. They can charge council prices and withdraw from the maintenance fund to do it.
They’ll never do this because of the council. For anyone who hasn’t visited a council estate home before, they can often be some of the most neglected properties in the country. It’s explained outwardly the council offer services to fix their properties but in truth they let them rot, some of the fixes you can see in these homes would make you sick. Leaking roof? Plyboard over the hole, toilet leaking? Ew piss, skip the sealant around half the unit. I’ve seen windows with blown seals repaired by fucking TOILET ROLL, this is the council making these efforts it’s disgusting. So many people are living in dangerously wet, fungus ridden houses the council simply refuse to pay attention to. If they had to actually service the windows of 1000 homes after 20 years of neglect I think they’d shit themselves to death.
When my grandad went into a home, we rented out his flat to help pay for the home expenses. I was in charge of running the place and the flat was always running smoothly and I always made sure it was in perfect condition to live in.
Speaking to the tennents, they always said how shocked they were at how quickly I fixed stuff, apparently this is incredibly uncommon and in their previous places they had basically been forced to live in mould, damp housing with appliences that didn’t work.
Honestly, it was such an easy job for me to manage, I don’t understand how these landlords just let their properties go to shit. I have a full time job and still manage to make sure the property is always in full working condition and that the tennents are safe and happy.
It’s really not hard to do. These landlords are a sorry excuse for humans, and must simply enjoy making people suffer for the sake of a couple of hundred quid a year. Shame on them.
I tend to disagree with 95% of the anti landlord crap on here, but absolutely they need to be licenced. Spend the licence fee on inspectors to check every home at random for basic stuff like energy efficiency, safety, hygiene standards etc. I know too many middle class landlords who treat its as a passive investment, rather than a hands-on business where you have chosen to be the custodian of people’s homes.
Also I see no problem with making it harder for landlords to get buy-to-let mortgages. Homes should be homes, not investments
Its time that every domestic rental property where on a national data base with pictures this includes private rentals, councils.housing association and the details of the landlord
These data base can be accesible at the town halls and the libary.
Each landlord pays a nominal annual fee of lets say £100 per property.
If the property isnt on the list it cannot be let.
Any properties that are not maintained to proper standards should be confiscated. That would concentrate a few minds.
And who is going to run this licencing scheme and inspect properties? The council? With what money? Regulations are useless without enforcement.
Didn’t the tories vote against regulations to ensure that landlords had to make their rental homes fit for human habitation??
Many already are operating under selective licensing schemes but it’s always the minority of landlords that give everyone a bad name. There’s also the issue that many tenants treat the properties they occupy like skips and couldn’t care less about looking after them.
30 comments
MPs should not be allowed to be landlords. They have too much influence over the housing market.
The point that everyone is missing, is the bad landlords ignore the laws, and the good landlords comply, which mean they incur more cost, which has three main impacts.
1) renters costs go up to cover the increased laws and rules.
2) as rents go up more bad landlords are enticed into the industry.
3) good landlords sell up, which increases the percentage of bad landlords.
The simple solution is to police the rules and regulations we have now, they are more than sufficient.
Some pop trivia, on average council supplied housing has more complaints than private housing and council supplies housing has incurred higher rent raises than private housing.
We all get so Done Over in the UK all party’s are the same they just want to Rob us all..
Do councils have this power?
The private rental market should either be completely abolished (replaced by council rentals), or heavily regulated (similar to some of our European neighbours).
Ha ha, yeah, right. Under this government it wouldn’t surprise me if they had a leaderboard of the worse properties rented out, and the most hideous conditions
The worse being at the top and rewarded, obviously.
Landlords are some of the most marginalised people in society. People providing people with a place to live who cannot afford on their own. PoL (people of land) do not deserve this.
It is not a person of lands fault if you waste your money on funkopops, starbucks and 5 different streaming platforms.
Do I count as a landlord if I only rented out my flat because I had to move quickly for a job and I am a renter myself elsewhere? Just trying to figure out if I’m a horrible bastard or not, I’m barely making any profit on the thing.
Make them subject to regular random inspections by an independent body too. Otherwise, it will be easy to get the licence and then to rent out properties that are unfit for habitation.
I rented in the north west whilst at uni. My landlady had 64 properties…..sixty fucking four.
My friend started coughing up some nasty stuff, pulled the bed back and the wall was covered in mold!
Same with the sofa and other furniture, we’d been in for one month.
My local council has a compulsory register for landlords. You’re guaranteed to get permission, even if you have a bad record. But it’s 500 quid for 18 months. There is no application process, no background check, you just pay 500 quid and they add your address to a list.
And people wonder by rents are so high.
I’m not opposed to a register. But it needs to be cheap (free really) and it needs to actually work. What criteria disqualify you? For how long? Can your spouse or an ltd company act as sock puppet?
Good luck with that. Tories voted that rented properties didn’t even have to be habitable.
Look at the root cause of why people become landlords. Then you can tackle this issue. The cause is that property investment is the only way to make money with 0 risk. Property never comes down in value and if it does then it goes back up very quickly.
Remove the idea of purchasing a property as a financial investment.
Sounds like a cost that will just be passed on to renters and probably have no impact on improving standards.
They should be regulted out of existence. We should have a state house building program like in the 1940s/50s.
Rental properties need an EPC rating of B and above. Now. We need that now.
This has already been the case where I live for over a year. One of the funny consequences was a fair few properties were put on the market very cheap, I got a house now worth 140k for 85k, because the cost and hassle of bringing them up to code for renting wasn’t worth it, so they just wanted rid of them quickly. Cost a bit to improve it so I could comfortably live there, but a bloody bargain none the less. Hopefully this will happen in a lot more areas.
My local council has a scheme like this but only in certain areas. I had a flat that needed so much work, damp problems, unfinished building works and strange designs used to cut costs.
I complained many times until the council inspectors came round and ripped the place to shreds (not literally).
Few weeks later and some threats to the landlord to revoke their license and the work was completed.
This needs to happen to stop exploitation of renters living in unsafe hell holes and paying top price for the privilege.
I can tell you now that won’t happen…most Tory MP’s are landlords…they all voted on a law that means homes do not need to be suitable for humans…I know its sound crazy and absolutely stupid cuz what else is a home for other than humans
312 Conservative MPs voted against forcing rented homes to be made fit for human habitation. No Labour, Liberal Democrat or SNP MPs voted against it.
If the nation is serious about [making housing systemically affordable forever](https://survivingtomorrow.org/this-real-estate-bubble-wont-pop-2f52f23709f8), they will ban for-profit land-lording and institutional investment in human shelter.
Agree. It’s a service and should be held to a minimum standard. Some of the student housing stock is diabolical
All this licensing stuff won’t achieve anything. There’s a straight forward way to fix this. Create a maintenance fund for rental properties. Put a lien on rent until the fund is full. When the landlord refuses to fix stuff let the tenant call the council in for them to fix it. They can charge council prices and withdraw from the maintenance fund to do it.
They’ll never do this because of the council. For anyone who hasn’t visited a council estate home before, they can often be some of the most neglected properties in the country. It’s explained outwardly the council offer services to fix their properties but in truth they let them rot, some of the fixes you can see in these homes would make you sick. Leaking roof? Plyboard over the hole, toilet leaking? Ew piss, skip the sealant around half the unit. I’ve seen windows with blown seals repaired by fucking TOILET ROLL, this is the council making these efforts it’s disgusting. So many people are living in dangerously wet, fungus ridden houses the council simply refuse to pay attention to. If they had to actually service the windows of 1000 homes after 20 years of neglect I think they’d shit themselves to death.
When my grandad went into a home, we rented out his flat to help pay for the home expenses. I was in charge of running the place and the flat was always running smoothly and I always made sure it was in perfect condition to live in.
Speaking to the tennents, they always said how shocked they were at how quickly I fixed stuff, apparently this is incredibly uncommon and in their previous places they had basically been forced to live in mould, damp housing with appliences that didn’t work.
Honestly, it was such an easy job for me to manage, I don’t understand how these landlords just let their properties go to shit. I have a full time job and still manage to make sure the property is always in full working condition and that the tennents are safe and happy.
It’s really not hard to do. These landlords are a sorry excuse for humans, and must simply enjoy making people suffer for the sake of a couple of hundred quid a year. Shame on them.
I tend to disagree with 95% of the anti landlord crap on here, but absolutely they need to be licenced. Spend the licence fee on inspectors to check every home at random for basic stuff like energy efficiency, safety, hygiene standards etc. I know too many middle class landlords who treat its as a passive investment, rather than a hands-on business where you have chosen to be the custodian of people’s homes.
Also I see no problem with making it harder for landlords to get buy-to-let mortgages. Homes should be homes, not investments
Its time that every domestic rental property where on a national data base with pictures this includes private rentals, councils.housing association and the details of the landlord
These data base can be accesible at the town halls and the libary.
Each landlord pays a nominal annual fee of lets say £100 per property.
If the property isnt on the list it cannot be let.
Any properties that are not maintained to proper standards should be confiscated. That would concentrate a few minds.
And who is going to run this licencing scheme and inspect properties? The council? With what money? Regulations are useless without enforcement.
Didn’t the tories vote against regulations to ensure that landlords had to make their rental homes fit for human habitation??
Many already are operating under selective licensing schemes but it’s always the minority of landlords that give everyone a bad name. There’s also the issue that many tenants treat the properties they occupy like skips and couldn’t care less about looking after them.