WFJ wrote: Wed Aug 03, 2022 11:04 am
You can't make housing more affordable by screwing with rental markets. You'll just make things worse for the less well off. Right to buy is a terrible idea whether applied to privately or publicly owned housing.
I don't know about a terrible idea... but certainly anything that is bought needs to be replaced with a more social low-cost housing. And the council housing authorities that owned the original stock won't have the funding to do so .
Making housing affordable is a sensible and worthy goal. Making buying a house more affordable might be, but not if it comes at the expense of making housing less affordable overall.
Right to buy is a subsidy given to those fortunate enough to both be able to afford to buy their homes and have the stability to tie themselves to one location for a long period, but this subsidy is paid by those not lucky enough to meet these criteria.
Interfering with rental markets might be a good idea if it is done in a way that benefits tenants. For example by better regulating landlords or giving more rights to tenants. This may also have knock-on benefits for making house buying more affordable, as it makes being a sh.t landlord less profitable taking some sh.t landlords out of the buying market.
Right to buy, and other methods that aim to give owner-occupiers a competitive advantage in the house-buying market over landlords, interfere with rental markets for the benefit of owner-occupiers not tenants. This is a Tory-esque policy that screws those at the bottom for the benefit of the wealthy.
Speaking of rental market interference. The government was going to end 'no fault evictions' in England https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61817249 (I think maybe discussed elsewhere?), although God know what's happen now. Of course as the article mentions these were introduced in Scotland in 2017. (Although 'no fault' is a bit of a misnomer as e.g. landlord selling or moving in can be a ground for eviction, so they should probably be called 'no reason' evictions.) As were 'rent pressure zones' which councils could use to limit the amount rent could be increased by in certain areas, linked to CPI. Which has never actually been used, mind.
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.
The rental market seems to work better for long term occupation in other countries (e.g. Germany, Sweden) in terms of security for the renter... but they have the same issue in that there is not enough to go around.
having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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UK house prices are now falling fast in real terms. It'll take a while for this to flow through to rents but it will balance out.
Plus demographics: population decline from people starving and freezing to death, plus non-functional health and social care for the elderly. Combined with emigration to non-sh.t hole countries.
Interfering with rental markets might be a good idea if it is done in a way that benefits tenants. For example by better regulating landlords or giving more rights to tenants. This may also have knock-on benefits for making house buying more affordable, as it makes being a sh.t landlord less profitable taking some sh.t landlords out of the buying market.
Not sure why this differentially takes out sh.t landlords. As a non-sh.t (I hope) small scale landlord I plan to sell up as soon as current tenant moves on. (Basically one sh.t tenant can comfortably wipe out the profit from a decade of good ones, and making evictions harder exacerbates this. Seems to me its landlords trying to be non-sh.t that have inherently lower margins and are more lilkely to be driven out.
Interfering with rental markets might be a good idea if it is done in a way that benefits tenants. For example by better regulating landlords or giving more rights to tenants. This may also have knock-on benefits for making house buying more affordable, as it makes being a sh.t landlord less profitable taking some sh.t landlords out of the buying market.
Not sure why this differentially takes out sh.t landlords. As a non-sh.t (I hope) small scale landlord I plan to sell up as soon as current tenant moves on. (Basically one sh.t tenant can comfortably wipe out the profit from a decade of good ones, and making evictions harder exacerbates this. Seems to me its landlords trying to be non-sh.t that have inherently lower margins and are more lilkely to be driven out.
As a non-sh.t landlord, you are presumably doing more than the bare minimum you can get away with, so you aren't going to be affected by better enforcement of regulation or tightening of regulations, or by giving more rights to tenants (evicting bad tenants for real cause wouldn't be affected by removing non-cause evictions, for example). If you are affected by that, then you are a sh.t landlord.
Even if you are affected a bit, sh.t landlords will be affected more than non-sh.t landlords, which means non-sh.t landlords are relatively favored.
Imrael wrote: ↑Fri Aug 19, 2022 1:20 pm
Interfering with rental markets might be a good idea if it is done in a way that benefits tenants. For example by better regulating landlords or giving more rights to tenants. This may also have knock-on benefits for making house buying more affordable, as it makes being a sh.t landlord less profitable taking some sh.t landlords out of the buying market.
Not sure why this differentially takes out sh.t landlords. As a non-sh.t (I hope) small scale landlord I plan to sell up as soon as current tenant moves on. (Basically one sh.t tenant can comfortably wipe out the profit from a decade of good ones, and making evictions harder exacerbates this. Seems to me its landlords trying to be non-sh.t that have inherently lower margins and are more lilkely to be driven out.
As a non-sh.t landlord, you are presumably doing more than the bare minimum you can get away with, so you aren't going to be affected by better enforcement of regulation or tightening of regulations, or by giving more rights to tenants (evicting bad tenants for real cause wouldn't be affected by removing non-cause evictions, for example). If you are affected by that, then you are a sh.t landlord.
Even if you are affected a bit, sh.t landlords will be affected more than non-sh.t landlords, which means non-sh.t landlords are relatively favored.
Hm - multi quoting hasnt gone well. I take your point and in the large you may be right. My personal experience (anecdata and all that) is that a sh.t tenant can run up a huge bill in the time taken to evict. In my case around £21K between a previous inspection and him running off and not paying rent - about 7 weeks. Also, some of those costs are either insured or factored into agents fees, which dont really distinguish. And if the property is comfortably within the statutory requirements, sh.t-but-barely-legal is operating on higher margins.
I suppose the larger question is what our target is for ideal landlords. Is it bigger companies, housing associations, single property "accidental" landlords like myself, small scale buy to let operators.
