Buy to Let and private renting

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WFJ
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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by WFJ » Fri Sep 10, 2021 9:19 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Fri Sep 10, 2021 9:00 pm
WFJ wrote:
Fri Sep 10, 2021 9:03 am
Most of the anti-BTL arguments describe problems that would be much better solved elsewhere. There is nothing inherently wrong with renting, and the obsession with home ownership is peculiarly British.
On the last point, it isn’t. The 2019 UK rate of owner occupier households was 65.2 per cent. That’s lower than average in Europe (and much lower than, for example, Romania 95.8 per cent, Norway 80.3 per cent or Spain 76.2 per cent)

https://www.statista.com/statistics/246 ... in-europe/
Fair enough. Certainly not uniquely British then. I largely had Germany in mind as a counterexample, but perhaps that is not representative.

In any case, screwing up the availability of rental properties by hindering letting, without first dealing with the UK's piss-poor renters' protections and the disproportionate accumulation of wealth across generations would be a terrible idea. It could potentially aid those from those wealthier middle class families, who have either received significant inheritance from their grandparents or whose parents are able to help with house buying, while further sh.tting on over those at the bottom.

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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by dyqik » Fri Sep 10, 2021 10:34 pm

discovolante wrote:
Fri Sep 10, 2021 8:56 pm
dyqik wrote:
Fri Sep 10, 2021 8:39 pm
discovolante wrote:
Fri Sep 10, 2021 8:15 pm
Hm. The (current) grounds for possession for assured tenancies in England are here: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/50/schedule/2 I can't see anything about the landlord selling, would have been interesting to see the notice that was given to you. Did they get a court order? The Australia one may have been a valid one under ground 1 if the landlords had been living there beforehand I suppose.
Ground 4 (a) notice was written into every shorthold tenancy agreement I've ever seen or been offered. This is probably the reason for the 364 day/12 month thing Tom mentions above as well.

There's just no reason for rental agencies and landlords not to include that notice in every lease, while they have all the power in the market.
Ground 4(a) only works if 4(b) applies I.e. the tenancy had been a student let within the year before the current tenancy began?
They weren't student lets, but the rental agency was very insistent that what they were doing was under some grounds from the housing act. It might have been others.

At least once we received notice that papers had been filled with the courts to obtain possession.

As postdocs, we didn't have the option of fighting anything rather than just finding another house to rent.
Last edited by dyqik on Fri Sep 10, 2021 10:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by IvanV » Fri Sep 10, 2021 10:37 pm

tom p wrote:
Thu Sep 09, 2021 2:18 pm
If the number of houses being built were unconstrained by archaic planning regulations or the number of buy-to-lets was constrained or the rents were not constantly ratcheted upwards while the houses are not in any way improved, then that would be a reasonable position. But the opposite is true, and as such you are, unsurprisingly, completely and utterly wrong.
Buy-to-let massively drives house price inflation, pushing the prices of houses out of the reach of normal working people & ultimately leading to a transfer of wealth from the worse off to the better off & their undeserving children when they die.
The instability of living in a buy-to-let house also means that local society is harmed 'cos you don't invest time in your area when you might need to leave in a year.
As you correctly note, the underlying problem is the planning restrictions that reduce the quantity of housing. That's bound to do something horrible somewhere, whatever additional rules you try to put in to try and solve it, in a whack-a-mole kind of way. If there is a quantity restriction, there is a profit to be made. And all additional arrangements do is affect who gets to earn it. And the way people battle over trying to play the rules to take the advantages to themselves is bound to result in unhelpful happenings. If you screw it up too much, you end up with empty properties people refuse to let out or sell, which is even more of a disaster when you so restrict the quantity of property.

I went travelling for about 15 months when I owned my 3 bed semi in the dodgy part of town. The assured short-hold tenancy is ideal for that kind situation. I'm not going to let my house out unless I can reliably get the tenants out at the end. In a country with such powerful restrictions on property building, we want to incentivise everyone with spare property to rent it out when it is available. If someone wants to rent my temporarily available house, they should understand the situation, and I should reasonably get less rent for advertising an insecure tenancy. But my former colleague who had gradually built up a portfolio of 8 rental properties, that's a letting business and a different situation.

The trouble is that the assured shorthold tenancy gives you such a grip over the tenant that it is routinely used for long term business renting. The advantage to the landlord of that control is greater than any additional rent he could get for a more secure tenancy. And it helps, of course when your tenants take the piss. Like some people near me I am aware of, renting a property with 3 more bedrooms than they need, a Landrover and Audi TT of recent registration on the drive, and seemingly insufficient self-control to keep their bank accounts sufficiently solvent to pay the rent every month.

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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by discovolante » Fri Sep 10, 2021 10:44 pm

dyqik wrote:
Fri Sep 10, 2021 10:34 pm
discovolante wrote:
Fri Sep 10, 2021 8:56 pm
dyqik wrote:
Fri Sep 10, 2021 8:39 pm


Ground 4 (a) notice was written into every shorthold tenancy agreement I've ever seen or been offered. This is probably the reason for the 364 day/12 month thing Tom mentions above as well.

There's just no reason for rental agencies and landlords not to include that notice in every lease, while they have all the power in the market.
Ground 4(a) only works if 4(b) applies I.e. the tenancy had been a student let within the year before the current tenancy began?
They weren't student lets, but the rental agency was very insistent that what they were doing was under some grounds from the housing act. It might have been others.

At least once we received notice that papers had been filled with the courts to obtain possession.

As postdocs, we didn't have the option of fighting anything rather than just finding another house to rent.
I'm not suggesting they weren't, or you didn't. I don't know what grounds they were claiming to use, I was just responding to your statement that landlords are entitled to terminate a tenancy if they want to sell, based on the current law. In practice, as a general rule I personally wouldn't assume that my landlord or even their letting agent has much more of a clue about the law than the tenant. But tenants don't necessarily know that and get screwed over, repeatedly, because they either don't know their rights, or don't have the means to enforce them, or just don't feel like it's worth the hassle, like you didn't. I've definitely been in that last situation myself where it was easier to just move than try and argue it out with the landlord, even though I knew that I could have got my landlord at risk of prosecution if I had been bothered enough to try.
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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by Hunting Dog » Sat Sep 11, 2021 5:53 am

I'm an evil landlord: one house, tenants on their 4th year, rent has only decreased (when we got rid of managing agent) and I've spent over £7K on replacements (e.g boiler and kitchen fittings) and other maintenance issues.

Reason for writing though is that my tenants apparently own a couple of houses themselves in other areas that they rent out. Our neighbours here who are renting from the previous owner, own a house elsewhere they are renting out and are considering buying another one in a cheap area for BTL, whilst remaining as tenants here... Another couple I know who are renting nearby were considering getting a BTL in another area as an investment, not sure if they got around to it or not. The only renter I know that doesn't seem to also own property is a lady who is entirely on benefits. There seems to be quite a trend of tactical renting around here, just outside M25 (and a lot of stereotyping in this thread).

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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Sat Sep 11, 2021 6:27 am

Okay, bully for you. But i don't know what to tell you if you're somehow trying to claim that it's normal or standard for renters to own their own houses that they don't live in.

I haven't seen anyone here say that buy to let and rental markets in general are a bad thing. Clearly they aren't, and they offer a good option in many circumstances. The point is that as things stand in the UK, there are insufficient legal protections for renters and insufficient legal requirements for landlords. That creates problems.

It's transparently obvious that the current BTL market in the UK is adept at keeping purchase prices high, restricting the number of first time homes, overcharging tenants with above inflation rises without a requirement for home improvement, and so on.

So you're good, you've kept the rent low, you've invested, and encouraged the tenants to stay for a long time. Good. But you aren't the norm. Pretending you are helps no one.
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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by WFJ » Sat Sep 11, 2021 7:16 am

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Sat Sep 11, 2021 6:27 am
It's transparently obvious that the current BTL market in the UK is adept at keeping purchase prices high, restricting the number of first time homes, overcharging tenants with above inflation rises without a requirement for home improvement, and so on.
What specifically is the problem with people buying houses with a view to letting them, and what measures would you like to see to solve these problems? From the two you mention, only the first has anything to do with BTL, and the value in BTL is more a symptom of the affordability problem, rather than the cause.

The main causes of affordability problems for first time buyers are the lack of available houses in places people want to live and the inter-generational accumulation of wealth, which means only those from wealthy families with inheritances or parental help buying houses are able to get on the property ladder. A council tax/home tax system that penalised underutilisation of houses to encourage those whose children have grown up to downsize would help with the first, and taxing all inter-generational transfers of wealth, not just those where assets are kept until death, or the giver is unlucky enough to die within seven years of giving, would help with the second.

Better protections for tenants are important, but have nothing to do with BTL.

Any measures that screw with the rental markets by making letting more difficult or expensive, without directly benefitting tenants, would be a disaster. Almost all current measures to help first time buyers only benefit the kids of the wealthier middle classes, while further distancing those lower down from the bottom rung of the ladder, and making renting more expensive would make things even worse.

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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by discovolante » Sat Sep 11, 2021 7:45 am

Here is a link to my post earlier in the thread where I linked to a blog/report which discusses causes of house price rises in the UK: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=2737#p94171

And here is another link with some discussion/criticism of the report: https://www.housingrights.org.uk/news/d ... ing-crisis
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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by discovolante » Sat Sep 11, 2021 7:56 am

And here is some research from 2018 from York Uni on the private rented sector: https://pure.york.ac.uk/portal/en/publi ... 4f45).html

And I also linked to it in the context of something else earlier but there is also the English Housing Survey which provides something of an overview of a number of issues relating to well, housing, including the PRS https://www.gov.uk/government/collectio ... ing-survey

Anyway I'm going back to bed now because I was up late.
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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by nezumi » Sat Sep 11, 2021 8:30 am

The real answer to the issue is to enable councils to build social housing again! Let them build for rent or sale and reinvest the proceeds into more houses and better services. Obviously. They don't need to build so much it ruins the equity parade, just enough to slow it down to a point where property inflation doesn't outstrip wage inflation.

We could also incentivise removing office blocks and replacing them with cheap single person/couple/small family apartments. It's not like we need loads of office blocks now, is it? I don't know about London, but up here in the grim North there are office blocks that have sat empty for 20 years plus! I haven't seen any new ones going up round here lately though, thankfully.
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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by Allo V Psycho » Sat Sep 11, 2021 11:07 am

To be sure, Marx and Lenin weren't keen on the rentier class either. But perhaps the circumstances might be more complicated?

1) A couple own a house in Scotland, but one of them has to take a job in England. They decide to both move, in order to stay together. It is actually worth buying a house in that part of England rather than renting, but they intend to move back to Scotland when that job runs out/retirement. They rent out the house in Scotland (though the income is less than the mortgage, it still helps)

2) A woman wakes up one morning to find her husband dead in bed beside her. She feels unable to live in that house anymore, but it doesn't sell (partly due to the market, and partly due to a flood risk). She rents a small house nearby, but rents the original house to help cover the mortgage.

3) Following a bitter divorce, one partner is not able to live in a now empty house, and has to rent elsewhere, but is still liable for the mortgage. The house is put on the market, but doesn't sell. He rents out the house to help with the mortgage (though it doesn't cover it: local rents are lower than mortgages).

4) A person forms a new relationship, moves in with the new partner, and sells his house. He now has a reasonable cash sum, but with interest rates so low, he is losing money all the time, so feels he might need a safe investment to help support their future old age needs. He considers buying somewhere to let, with the long term aim of selling it when they need to support their elderly care.

All of these are true stories, happening within my family and close friends. But some of the proposals on the thread seem quite punitive towards 'landlords'. For instance giving tenants a 'right to buy' : what if the owner doesn't want to sell, for good reason, like example (1)? Who determines the market value of the property at that point? And with a discount? Where does the discount come from?

My point is that not all 'landlords' are evil profiteering rentiers - there are a range of circumstances that such legislation would have to cover , and it isn't simple. None of the house prices involved in these examples are huge, incidentally. These are houses in the North of England and Scotland, not flats in London.

I've rented seven times in my life. Only two were (probably) commercial 'rentier' owned (both in London) and their management was quite professional - problems dealt with and rents high but as agreed. The other five were 'small scale' owners, who I met and knew (and for one of them became friends with!). Again, there were no real problems. One had to give me two months notice, as she had managed to sell the house: I fully understand why.

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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by Imrael » Sat Sep 11, 2021 12:14 pm

Perhaps worth saying that a lot of proposals I've heard (excluding shoot all landlords, which is probably an edge case solutions, and not here of course) would drive smaller individual renters such as me and huntingdog out but not much worry larger landlords. This feels like a bad thing, although I've no real evidence for that.

One thing that might help and be practical is capital gains tax relief for selling to a sitting tenant. I'd actually like to sell out when the current tenant leaves, but theres quite a big tax hit associated with that. If some of that was relieved a tenant would have a bargaining chip for a cheaper purchase price.

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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by JQH » Sat Sep 11, 2021 5:36 pm

Allo V Psycho wrote:
Sat Sep 11, 2021 11:07 am

But some of the proposals on the thread seem quite punitive towards 'landlords'. For instance giving tenants a 'right to buy' : what if the owner doesn't want to sell, for good reason, like example (1)? Who determines the market value of the property at that point? And with a discount? Where does the discount come from?
I suppose there could be a clause saying right to buy didn't apply if the landlord owned less than three properties.

As for who determines the price of the property - do it the same way as council homes were valued. And as for the discount, it comes from the same place as the council house discount - from the pockets of the landlord. You may regard that is punitive and so it is; since we are citing personal experience, in mine landlords are in general rack renting scum and I hate the bastards,
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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by El Pollo Diablo » Sat Sep 11, 2021 7:30 pm

WFJ wrote:
Sat Sep 11, 2021 7:16 am
El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Sat Sep 11, 2021 6:27 am
It's transparently obvious that the current BTL market in the UK is adept at keeping purchase prices high, restricting the number of first time homes, overcharging tenants with above inflation rises without a requirement for home improvement, and so on.
What specifically is the problem with people buying houses with a view to letting them, and what measures would you like to see to solve these problems? From the two you mention, only the first has anything to do with BTL, and the value in BTL is more a symptom of the affordability problem, rather than the cause.

The main causes of affordability problems for first time buyers are the lack of available houses in places people want to live and the inter-generational accumulation of wealth, which means only those from wealthy families with inheritances or parental help buying houses are able to get on the property ladder. A council tax/home tax system that penalised underutilisation of houses to encourage those whose children have grown up to downsize would help with the first, and taxing all inter-generational transfers of wealth, not just those where assets are kept until death, or the giver is unlucky enough to die within seven years of giving, would help with the second.

Better protections for tenants are important, but have nothing to do with BTL.

Any measures that screw with the rental markets by making letting more difficult or expensive, without directly benefitting tenants, would be a disaster. Almost all current measures to help first time buyers only benefit the kids of the wealthier middle classes, while further distancing those lower down from the bottom rung of the ladder, and making renting more expensive would make things even worse.
I don't know what to tell you, other than you've ignored the rest of my post which agrees that buy to let and renting aren't a problem in and of themselves, and then constructed a contradictory response. Maybe have a read of some of disco's links.
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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by Allo V Psycho » Sun Sep 12, 2021 8:17 am

JQH wrote:
Sat Sep 11, 2021 5:36 pm
Allo V Psycho wrote:
Sat Sep 11, 2021 11:07 am

But some of the proposals on the thread seem quite punitive towards 'landlords'. For instance giving tenants a 'right to buy' : what if the owner doesn't want to sell, for good reason, like example (1)? Who determines the market value of the property at that point? And with a discount? Where does the discount come from?
I suppose there could be a clause saying right to buy didn't apply if the landlord owned less than three properties.

As for who determines the price of the property - do it the same way as council homes were valued. And as for the discount, it comes from the same place as the council house discount - from the pockets of the landlord. You may regard that is punitive and so it is; since we are citing personal experience, in mine landlords are in general rack renting scum and I hate the bastards,
My parents bought the council house where I was brought up - a two bed council house on a Glasgow council estate - for less than a third of its market value in the 'way that council houses were valued' under Thatcher. In other words, the loss of value fell on the city council and their social housing stock, damaging the ability of the council to provide social housing for anyone else and therefore forcing people on to the private housing market.

In my example (1) above,
1) A couple own a house in Scotland, but one of them has to take a job in England. They decide to both move, in order to stay together. It is actually worth buying a house in that part of England rather than renting, but they intend to move back to Scotland when that job runs out/retirement. They rent out the house in Scotland (though the income is less than the mortgage, it still helps)
This, lightly disguised, was me. Under your punitive scheme, I couldn't have risked letting the house at all - it would have had to stand empty, and would have been lost to the market altogether. I think this is an example of something others have cited in this thread - that punitive actions would reduce the total available stock, pushing up rents and making more and more marginal accommodation 'lettable' by the rack renters.

I'm genuinely sorry your experiences have all been bad. I've obviously been lucky. And I don't know what the ratio of bad/acceptable actually is. But surely deliberately and consciously punitive actions against landlords are not going to make rented accommodation more available, and therefore as rentals become scarcer, rents will be driven up, and people needing to rent will become more and more desperate?

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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by WFJ » Sun Sep 12, 2021 8:32 am

El Pollo Diablo wrote:
Sat Sep 11, 2021 7:30 pm
I don't know what to tell you, other than you've ignored the rest of my post which agrees that buy to let and renting aren't a problem in and of themselves, and then constructed a contradictory response. Maybe have a read of some of disco's links.
I was interested in an explanation of how it is obvious that BTL is responsible for keeping house prices high, which was why I quoted that paragraph and responded to it. The blog post Disco linked to did not discuss BTL, and the commentary only mentions it in passing. Unsurprisingly, I'm not going to go through a 200 page report or years of surveys on the off chance that this explanation lies in there somewhere.

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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by noggins » Sun Sep 12, 2021 11:58 am

Isnt the fundamental thing behind BTL is that its the one investment where a regular person can leverage their money. I dont think you can go to Barclays and say, ive got 100 grand, lend me another 100 so i can buy 200k of shares.

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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by noggins » Sun Sep 12, 2021 12:26 pm

How could regional or central government build social housing. As my last two councils (lambeth and croydon) cant be trusted with a f.cking lego set.

(Interupt - hey, renters, what happens in practice if a tenant wants to quit a couple of months into a 6 month tenancy? Asking for the tenant. Pm if you like)

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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by discovolante » Sun Sep 12, 2021 12:48 pm

noggins wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 12:26 pm
How could regional or central government build social housing. As my last two councils (lambeth and croydon) cant be trusted with a f.cking lego set.

(Interupt - hey, renters, what happens in practice if a tenant wants to quit a couple of months into a 6 month tenancy? Asking for the tenant. Pm if you like)
Erm it's probably tough luck unless the landlord agrees or there is a break clause. See here https://england.shelter.org.uk/professi ... ld_tenancy

In practice could be worth seeing if the landlord would be happy for the tenant to find a replacement.
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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:24 pm

noggins wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 11:58 am
Isnt the fundamental thing behind BTL is that its the one investment where a regular person can leverage their money. I dont think you can go to Barclays and say, ive got 100 grand, lend me another 100 so i can buy 200k of shares.
Buy to let is just a small business. It’s also possible to get a loan to start up any other small business.

IMHO buy to let is much more popular because many people think they understand property ownership and rental (probably because they’ve done it themselves already).

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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by IvanV » Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:46 pm

WFJ wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 8:32 am
I was interested in an explanation of how it is obvious that BTL is responsible for keeping house prices high, which was why I quoted that paragraph and responded to it. The blog post Disco linked to did not discuss BTL, and the commentary only mentions it in passing. Unsurprisingly, I'm not going to go through a 200 page report or years of surveys on the off chance that this explanation lies in there somewhere.
An economist writes...

BTL improves the efficiency of the allocation of capital to house owning. People who have good access to capital can buy a house and rent it out to people who have income to pay for occupying it, but poor access to the capital to buy it. That increases competition for house ownership and so increases the price of the asset. It ought also to improve the allocation of house occupation to occupiers, as access to capital ceases to be such a constraint on getting into the house you want.

It also explains why for so long buying was so much cheaper than renting. Not all the potential property occupiers with income to live in a house had access to the capital to buy it. So if you did have access to capital, you could buy it cheaper than the implicit rental stream was worth. Free up more capital to buy houses, and the price of houses goes up, and so the interest cost of the capital to buy a house gets nearer to the value of rental stream.

Clearly renting ought to be a bit more expensive than buying, because the owner has liabilities (eg maintenance) and risks (eg hidden defects, someone getting planning permission to build a sewage works nearby) that they retain. We can also understand that the price of houses goes up when interest rates go down, especially the expectation of what interest rates will be over a 20-year-ish kind of time-span.

If further explains why corporations with cash piles and not knowing what to do with it, like Waitrose, think it might be a good idea to go into property rental just now.
Last edited by IvanV on Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by dyqik » Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:46 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:24 pm
noggins wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 11:58 am
Isnt the fundamental thing behind BTL is that its the one investment where a regular person can leverage their money. I dont think you can go to Barclays and say, ive got 100 grand, lend me another 100 so i can buy 200k of shares.
Buy to let is just a small business. It’s also possible to get a loan to start up any other small business.

IMHO buy to let is much more popular because many people think they understand property ownership and rental (probably because they’ve done it themselves already).
It's a small business that requires almost zero work to run. As compared to say driving an Uber, wedding floristry or running a whelk stall.

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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by IvanV » Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:51 pm

dyqik wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:46 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:24 pm
noggins wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 11:58 am
Isnt the fundamental thing behind BTL is that its the one investment where a regular person can leverage their money. I dont think you can go to Barclays and say, ive got 100 grand, lend me another 100 so i can buy 200k of shares.
Buy to let is just a small business. It’s also possible to get a loan to start up any other small business.

IMHO buy to let is much more popular because many people think they understand property ownership and rental (probably because they’ve done it themselves already).
It's a small business that requires almost zero work to run. As compared to say driving an Uber, wedding floristry or running a whelk stall.
The people I know who have done it effectively have been skilled at doing house maintenance and renovation, and stakhanovites at actually carrying out that maintenance and renovation. There were extended periods when they were doing that every weekend for many months on the trot.

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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by dyqik » Sun Sep 12, 2021 2:30 pm

IvanV wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:51 pm
dyqik wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:46 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Sep 12, 2021 1:24 pm


Buy to let is just a small business. It’s also possible to get a loan to start up any other small business.

IMHO buy to let is much more popular because many people think they understand property ownership and rental (probably because they’ve done it themselves already).
It's a small business that requires almost zero work to run. As compared to say driving an Uber, wedding floristry or running a whelk stall.
The people I know who have done it effectively have been skilled at doing house maintenance and renovation, and stakhanovites at actually carrying out that maintenance and renovation. There were extended periods when they were doing that every weekend for many months on the trot.
That's still not a full time job though, is it?

And in any case, many small landlords go through a rental agency and just hire people to do maintenance.

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Opti
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Re: Buy to Let and private renting

Post by Opti » Sun Sep 12, 2021 2:31 pm

The people I know who have done BTL have mostly fallen squarely into the group defined as successors to Peter Rachman and Nicholas van Whatshisface (who, for a short period, I was a tenant of).
I'm sure there are some very fair and reasonable landlords out there, but there are, for sure, a lot of shits in the business. Tenants need more protection and security in the UK. They enjoy that in Spain.
Time for a big fat one.

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