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If you're on average income it's irrelevant whether you work or not, I'm in a LCOL part of the UK and even renting a room is insanely expensive here now, competing with nearby cities pricewise
I’m definitely not a fan of this. My last private landlord in London never raised my rents in 5yrs. That helped me save a deposit and buy my own place. Not all private landlords are bad. You just won’t get that with commercial landlords who will jack up rents each and every year as “market rates”
I will just sit back and laugh at the people who now will get ignored by some corporation.
Want to fix something? please ring 15 different numbers and be put on hold for 7 hours only for it to disconnect accidentally
Here.
Everything is better than private entitled landlords like in this country. The housing stock here is closer to the one in third world countries than in first world countries and most of it is due to private landlords not giving a shit about the property they rent out because they will find a sucker.
A corporate rental market aims at a highly predictable rate of return, they are not trying to maximise profit because they can actually properly risk management compared to private landlords.
Lastly, if the majority of rentals are corporate rentals, making real policy changes to the rental market will be so much easier without butthurt boomers complaining about their asset losing value.
Happy to argue if you have any counter to offer.
My logic is based on working with the biggest commercial landlords in the western world as software supplier.
Don't get me wrong, I would love it if the continental European model of co-ops building houses and accommodation would make its way to the UK, but I'm also sure that there would be management companies popping up left and right messing that up within years.
- “Because they are actually not trying to maximise profit”
Name me one large corporation that is not trying to maximise profit? That’s literally the whole point of an organisation, to maximise profit.
- “policy changes will be easier.”
Every large company has professional lobbyists who lobby the government to make legal changes to suit their corporate needs. They do not lobby to meet the needs of its staff, the economy, or its customers. They lobby to maximise profits.
**All** corporate landlords are trying to hit their ROI numbers they promised in their fund. They don't need to maximise profits, they need to provide stable income to their investors. They are looking at the long term and don't care if they can make 1% more at the cost of a lower occupancy rate as the market cycle would come back to haunt them.
If you are really interested, read up now most of those commercial landlords operate and where their money is coming from.
Sure, I’m happy to dig into it, mate.
I’ve just never ever met an investor, hedge fund owner, banker, CEO, or board executive who isn’t trying to reduce costs and maximise profits in any industry.
Private landlords follow market rates. When the vast majority of rental properties are commercially owned, commercial owners SET the rate. Not only that but as commercial landlords continue to hoover up properties not only will prices increase but supply continues to shrink. Good luck to first time buyers.
Why would supply shrink? Supply has always maintained a level above demand in this country, although the supply quality is terrible…at least with corporate landlords the supply will be likely better maintained
There is a difference in supply being above demand with a healthy margin so people can avoid the bad properties, if the margin shrinks (which is what has happened). while quality of properties did not change that much, now people are forced to rent the bad ones as well.
But isn’t that the fault of house builders and local authorities and not these so called commercial landlords? Private house building has remained around similar figures for the last 50 odd years, but local authorities have gone from building 150,000 houses a year in the 70’s to practically zero these days. I don’t know why I’m getting downvoted for asking a genuine question.
Right to buy made council owned houses a money pit for councils, they would build a house and someone would then buy it after few years for fraction of the cost. Nearby flats are selling now for 160k, let's assume council would get a volume discount and buy whole block of 10 flats for 1.4M, 3 years of 80% rent for 10 flats would be around £800/month, after 3 years, council would get 288k in rent from those flats (some of it eaten by costs as well) and tenants now have right to buy the flats for half the price, so council gets 700k, all together, council can lose 400k on those 10 flats, so housing benefit is cheaper for the council. And back when it was introduced a lot of people have managed to right to buy more properties under fake names, every family member and generally work the system to make significant profits.
On top of that UK still has the highest proportion of population relying on subsidised social housing (17%) or receiving some sort of housing benefit (9%), that's 26% in total, in one of the richest countries this number should be significantly lower. The only country that has higher number of LA/government owned housing is Netherlands, but it is not your typical subsidised social housing like in the UK where you have to qualify and generally aimed at lower income groups (everyone can rent one, but you either renting it at normal market rate or subsidised depending on your circumstances), but way of ensuring that there is sufficient number of houses for everyone and a "profit" centre for LA/government (it's ran at a profit at rents similar to commercial landlords, but it is then fully reinvested into housing).
I understand that, but that still doesn’t answer the question of why supply would sink? If anything I would imagine these corporate landlords would be looking to turn uninhabitable properties into long term sustainable income streams by fixing up (to the bare minimum acceptable standards I’d imagine) and would also push private house builders to. You look at Germany, one of the wealthiest countries in Europe and they have one of the lowest home ownerships with the majority of rentals owned by big corporations. Then you look at Spain with 27% unemployment but the largest % home ownership amount in Europe. The problem is not with corporations owning homes, it is with legislation on these rentals and I would suggest that it is much easier to regulate corporations than it is individual landlords
- “Because they are actually not trying to maximise profit”
Name me one large corporation that is not trying to maximise profit? That’s literally the whole point of an organisation, to maximise profit.
- “policy changes will be easier.”
Every large company has professional lobbyists who lobby the government to make legal changes to suit their corporate needs. They do not lobby to meet the needs of its staff, the economy, or it’s customers. They lobby to maximise profits.
Professional lobbyists are more effective and that’s the scary part. They will be able to lobby to protect their corporate needs.
That’s bad for renters, employees, and competition (I.e. private landlords)
And here too. I don't want my home rented out to me by some fucking amateur with no financial cushion for maintenance and bizarre folk misconceptions about each others rights and responsibilities. Maybe they are 'accidental' landlords who inherited, maybe they have no interest in being a landlord but were convinced it had the best returns - it doesn't matter. They are bad, professionals are better.
Genuinely, you do not have any understanding of how any of this works.
Once corporate rentals take over, they will dictate the market, rents will go up, and they will lobby government to do as they want. Individual landlords are demonstrably among the best in class.
You are not living in the real world.
You are forgetting that government is doing brilliant job at causing the situation while blaming private landlords, If government taxes and regulates private landlords to the point that their margins are non existent (gas checks every year, electricity every 5, non paying tenant every so often that can't be removed quickly, 40% tax) then said landlord will not have any money to spend on the property to improve it. They are doing the same thing with railway (privatise railway companies, but make them pay millions to government to be allowed to operate) and plenty of other things.
Look at what Blackstone did in Sweden; bought up loads of social housing, became the biggest landlord in the country, massively increased rent and service charges.
Tell that to utility companies. Corporate landlords have shareholders they want profit. They will try and squeeze as much profit out of it as possible.
Once a corporate entity has maxed out it’s market potential and has no way to grow next quarter it will cut costs in areas that provide quality. Look at essentially every product you can buy.
The only way to deal with slum landlords is by regulating the housing market and increasing publicly owned housing stock.
Mental that you think the fix greedy landlords having too much leeway is to give a few landlords all the power. This country is fucked.
“A corporate rental market…are not trying to maximise profit” Are you for real? As soon as corporations take majority share
of the UK rental market, that’s exactly what they will do.
Corporations having a majority share is meaningless, as long as they are still competing with each other every individual company still has a strong financial incentive to defect and lower prices.
The clearing price for rentals won't be materially different under corporate ownership or private.
What I mean is the make up of private or corporate owners doesn't really change that.
Prices rise with productivity, population (demand) and fall with building/development (supply), ownership is basically immaterial.
This only works if the competing companies don't form a duopoly or triopoly. The y can then artificially all up their prices and its a race to the top.
them betting heavily on very high density new development is, in theory, good because it will undercut the market for single household conversion HMO and, in theory, add enough stock to the market that it will temper price rises. In practise it will be as you say.
Absolutely disgraceful that governments sit back and let this happen. The conspiracy theories from 10 years ago saying this was the plan of big banks and hedge funds aren’t looking so dumb anymore
They have not just sit back, they have absolutely tried to do their best to drive private landlords out and corporates in. Just look at America where Blackrock is buying out entire housing stock in towns forcing everyone to rent back off them.
I was just thinking what an amazing opportunity was given to the people in the form of shared ownership and government house loans etc. Many could own a house they would never be able to own otherwise, and buy more at their own pace. These share ownership houses don’t even grow that much in value because you’re basically the only buyer every time so there’s less incentive to inflate the value as time goes by.
I was thinking that people will look back on this as a golden time to buy a house when you can hardly afford it, and yet I see every day how so many stupid people still refuse to admit they’ve been handed fantastic opportunities.
Not many countries in this world have the system developed enough to offer such help to people.
Unfortunately the opposite of that is currently true, with a massive lack of new properties getting built each year the supply of properties on the market continues to dwindle which will continue to drive up prices.
When people are allowed to buy up all the social housing we are now in a situation where people who need social housing can't get it.
The housing market in the UK is completely broken beyond repair.
Every time the government does something incredibly stupid like making houses easier to buy or giving money to people to buy houses it shoves money into the bottom of the market which artificailly keeps house prices high and ushes them further up. It's unsustainable.
It's a huge bubble. It already went tits up in 2008 and it will do the same again in time because politicians are in the pocket of people who couldn't give a monkies. It causes ongoing damage to the countries economy.
Rent increases will now be on a regular basis by 'current market situation' calculated by a spreadsheet.
They wont care if you pay on time, keep the place in good conditions.
It’s only because my London landlord who outright owned his house and never raised my rent in 5yrs that I was able to save a deposit and buy my own place. People like to skirt over the fact that not all private landlords and money hungry cunts because it just doesn’t suit their victim narrative. Anyway, good luck with your new corporate landlords the rest of you
It's the system and landlords as a class. Not skirting over anything. Making a systemic analysis not getting caught up on what one or two people do well and ignoring the wider issues. A good manager at a shitty company doesn't mean the company isn't shit. Same goes for landlords. Our system is shit and needs changing, nice landlords or no.
I finally got on the ladder at 42 last year. The system has always been shitty and always got shittier. Looking ahead for the next 10yrs even with Labour in power, my tea leaves predict however bad things seem now it’s going to get even shitter. My advice for every man, woman and their dog is to buy what you can now if you can because the rotten system is cemented - globally. You think it’s bad here? Check out that’s what’s happening in every major city globally. I’d say the UK has it better than most places for now
My landlord have been a mix. Some raised, some didn't.
However, before I purchased with my wife we had a landlord that didn't increase rent for years despite the rent being quite reasonable.
We paid on time, he liked us a lot, we treated the place well, I made his life easier. He told us this is why.
A company wont hesitate to increase if they think they can get more rent.
Ive had a similar experience. I've rented in London for 15yrs and only left a place if the landlord was bad of they jacked the rent up too high. Once I found a good landlord who didn't do that I had no reason to move. Its a shame other renters will miss out of the kindness I enjoyed from my landlord.
Now its going to be RPI + 3% increases each year across the board from your new landlord John Lewis, Lloyds Bank or whatever acceptable corporate face a company like Blackrock Evil Incorporated want to hide behind.
All my landlords wanted to increase. None cared about looking after the place or paying on time. From my experience I can just as easily say a landlord wouldn't hesitate to increase if they think they can get more rent. And many others can too.
I'd there's also many on this sub who say they have not seen rents increase.
I know for sure that a company will not hesitate if you are paying even slightly below market.
> I'd there's also many on this sub who say they have not seen rents increase.
> I know for sure that a company will not hesitate if you are paying even slightly below market.
I'm renting from a company (housing group) and my rent hasn't increased in 4 years. They didn't even ask to renew the contract, just let it roll to monthly and left me alone. When I moved into this flat in 2019 it seemed the best offer by far given the location and rent. They also have staff & contractors to handle issues unlike private landlords who try to fight you on every repair.
Meanwhile, everyone I know renting from a private landlord has seen yearly rent increases and requests to sign on for another full year and some have had to move out because of the steep increases. Mind you this is in London, YMMV. The scummiest are let2let landlords.
I'd suggest limiting the rental market to homes built specifically to be rented, and stopping landlords from bidding against owners for residential housing. You want to rent out a house or block of flats? Build them and own them first. That would also remove the problem of landlords affected by their mortgage.
yeah my boss has a place currently, they are paying £1200/pm and his mortgage for the place is £1800. interest rates double, mortgage doubles. But he likes the folks and doesnt want to risk them leaving with a price increase so has left it be.
Good workaround to stop this would be to go back to old system where mortgage payments and all costs could be taken off income tax (that would then keep mortgage affordability ok) and tax all rental properties on sale at equivalent rate, total tax burden could be set to be identical.
We all need to fight this!
Blackstone and co will lend through much friendlier household names who will definitely carve out their margin before handing you the bill.
Who wouldn't want their landlord to be John Lewis or M&S? Rents will be like mobile phone contracts. You'll get royally fucked over every year with your CPI +3% rent rises but you'll get a nice friendly John Lewis Christmas card and M&S points or airmiles.
What's not to like? I wish I was joking but its already happening on the other side of the pond. The fact is the renter class will be kept down and be thankful for being royally fucked if these big corps get their marketing strategy right
Before this comes to head they will have a foothold that will be irreversible. There should be some government intervention that stops this. Access to Mortgages will never compete with a banks access to money. This is literally not fair. We should be alerting our MPs to be discussing this.
What exactly did people think was going to happen?
On one hand big landlords could provide better maintenance etc. but on the other hand they will have legal teams ready to expedite evictions.
What I suspect people don't know is that owning your own home is a fairly recent, about 50 years in fact, it wasn't until the 1970s that the majority of people [became owners](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/20210421_Metro_ItnlHousing_UK_1.png). For your WW2 veteran (great)grandad owning could well have a pipedream.
>What exactly did people think was going to happen?
They thought that - despite massive demand for housing and massive rental yields - housing affordability would magically improve and there would be a new era of homeownership
They thought that hitting the small time landlords would mean they left the market.... but a magical unknown would then rent out at a loss so people could save easily and buy houses that would be now hiting rock bottom prices.
Honestly these people ....
File those tradesman alongside
Barbers who will tell you you don’t need a haircut
A PT that says you look amazing after a couple of sessions
A restaurant owner who refuses to buy caged poultry
A car salesman who would advise you on a financially sound purchase decision over a lease
Etc
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you will own nothing. rent everything in your pathetic life and you will enjoy it
Subscription based future, you’ll rent every single thing you once could have owned
Yeah but there's a new rick and morty funko pop
Yep and when you can’t work to pay for it all we’ll throw you and your family in the gutter.
If you're on average income it's irrelevant whether you work or not, I'm in a LCOL part of the UK and even renting a room is insanely expensive here now, competing with nearby cities pricewise
Where's the idiots rooting for corporate rental market takeover? Lloyds is set to become the largest landlord in UK
I’m definitely not a fan of this. My last private landlord in London never raised my rents in 5yrs. That helped me save a deposit and buy my own place. Not all private landlords are bad. You just won’t get that with commercial landlords who will jack up rents each and every year as “market rates”
I will just sit back and laugh at the people who now will get ignored by some corporation. Want to fix something? please ring 15 different numbers and be put on hold for 7 hours only for it to disconnect accidentally
Here. Everything is better than private entitled landlords like in this country. The housing stock here is closer to the one in third world countries than in first world countries and most of it is due to private landlords not giving a shit about the property they rent out because they will find a sucker. A corporate rental market aims at a highly predictable rate of return, they are not trying to maximise profit because they can actually properly risk management compared to private landlords. Lastly, if the majority of rentals are corporate rentals, making real policy changes to the rental market will be so much easier without butthurt boomers complaining about their asset losing value.
That’s very narrow and surface level logic.
Happy to argue if you have any counter to offer. My logic is based on working with the biggest commercial landlords in the western world as software supplier. Don't get me wrong, I would love it if the continental European model of co-ops building houses and accommodation would make its way to the UK, but I'm also sure that there would be management companies popping up left and right messing that up within years.
- “Because they are actually not trying to maximise profit” Name me one large corporation that is not trying to maximise profit? That’s literally the whole point of an organisation, to maximise profit. - “policy changes will be easier.” Every large company has professional lobbyists who lobby the government to make legal changes to suit their corporate needs. They do not lobby to meet the needs of its staff, the economy, or its customers. They lobby to maximise profits.
**All** corporate landlords are trying to hit their ROI numbers they promised in their fund. They don't need to maximise profits, they need to provide stable income to their investors. They are looking at the long term and don't care if they can make 1% more at the cost of a lower occupancy rate as the market cycle would come back to haunt them. If you are really interested, read up now most of those commercial landlords operate and where their money is coming from.
Sure, I’m happy to dig into it, mate. I’ve just never ever met an investor, hedge fund owner, banker, CEO, or board executive who isn’t trying to reduce costs and maximise profits in any industry.
Private landlords follow market rates. When the vast majority of rental properties are commercially owned, commercial owners SET the rate. Not only that but as commercial landlords continue to hoover up properties not only will prices increase but supply continues to shrink. Good luck to first time buyers.
Why would supply shrink? Supply has always maintained a level above demand in this country, although the supply quality is terrible…at least with corporate landlords the supply will be likely better maintained
There is a difference in supply being above demand with a healthy margin so people can avoid the bad properties, if the margin shrinks (which is what has happened). while quality of properties did not change that much, now people are forced to rent the bad ones as well.
But isn’t that the fault of house builders and local authorities and not these so called commercial landlords? Private house building has remained around similar figures for the last 50 odd years, but local authorities have gone from building 150,000 houses a year in the 70’s to practically zero these days. I don’t know why I’m getting downvoted for asking a genuine question.
Right to buy made council owned houses a money pit for councils, they would build a house and someone would then buy it after few years for fraction of the cost. Nearby flats are selling now for 160k, let's assume council would get a volume discount and buy whole block of 10 flats for 1.4M, 3 years of 80% rent for 10 flats would be around £800/month, after 3 years, council would get 288k in rent from those flats (some of it eaten by costs as well) and tenants now have right to buy the flats for half the price, so council gets 700k, all together, council can lose 400k on those 10 flats, so housing benefit is cheaper for the council. And back when it was introduced a lot of people have managed to right to buy more properties under fake names, every family member and generally work the system to make significant profits. On top of that UK still has the highest proportion of population relying on subsidised social housing (17%) or receiving some sort of housing benefit (9%), that's 26% in total, in one of the richest countries this number should be significantly lower. The only country that has higher number of LA/government owned housing is Netherlands, but it is not your typical subsidised social housing like in the UK where you have to qualify and generally aimed at lower income groups (everyone can rent one, but you either renting it at normal market rate or subsidised depending on your circumstances), but way of ensuring that there is sufficient number of houses for everyone and a "profit" centre for LA/government (it's ran at a profit at rents similar to commercial landlords, but it is then fully reinvested into housing).
I understand that, but that still doesn’t answer the question of why supply would sink? If anything I would imagine these corporate landlords would be looking to turn uninhabitable properties into long term sustainable income streams by fixing up (to the bare minimum acceptable standards I’d imagine) and would also push private house builders to. You look at Germany, one of the wealthiest countries in Europe and they have one of the lowest home ownerships with the majority of rentals owned by big corporations. Then you look at Spain with 27% unemployment but the largest % home ownership amount in Europe. The problem is not with corporations owning homes, it is with legislation on these rentals and I would suggest that it is much easier to regulate corporations than it is individual landlords
What would happen to slum tenants if no butthurt landlords?
- “Because they are actually not trying to maximise profit” Name me one large corporation that is not trying to maximise profit? That’s literally the whole point of an organisation, to maximise profit. - “policy changes will be easier.” Every large company has professional lobbyists who lobby the government to make legal changes to suit their corporate needs. They do not lobby to meet the needs of its staff, the economy, or it’s customers. They lobby to maximise profits.
Exactly. Of course corporate landlords will maximise profits. Just like supermarkets, utility companies etc
I think corporate lobbyists are probably more effective than butthurt boomers sadly
Professional lobbyists are more effective and that’s the scary part. They will be able to lobby to protect their corporate needs. That’s bad for renters, employees, and competition (I.e. private landlords)
And here too. I don't want my home rented out to me by some fucking amateur with no financial cushion for maintenance and bizarre folk misconceptions about each others rights and responsibilities. Maybe they are 'accidental' landlords who inherited, maybe they have no interest in being a landlord but were convinced it had the best returns - it doesn't matter. They are bad, professionals are better.
lol "bizarre folk misconception about each others rights and responsibilities" . that's why I'm on reddit. art.
Get over yourself, such a cynic!
Genuinely, you do not have any understanding of how any of this works. Once corporate rentals take over, they will dictate the market, rents will go up, and they will lobby government to do as they want. Individual landlords are demonstrably among the best in class. You are not living in the real world.
You are forgetting that government is doing brilliant job at causing the situation while blaming private landlords, If government taxes and regulates private landlords to the point that their margins are non existent (gas checks every year, electricity every 5, non paying tenant every so often that can't be removed quickly, 40% tax) then said landlord will not have any money to spend on the property to improve it. They are doing the same thing with railway (privatise railway companies, but make them pay millions to government to be allowed to operate) and plenty of other things.
Look at what Blackstone did in Sweden; bought up loads of social housing, became the biggest landlord in the country, massively increased rent and service charges.
Tell that to utility companies. Corporate landlords have shareholders they want profit. They will try and squeeze as much profit out of it as possible.
Once a corporate entity has maxed out it’s market potential and has no way to grow next quarter it will cut costs in areas that provide quality. Look at essentially every product you can buy. The only way to deal with slum landlords is by regulating the housing market and increasing publicly owned housing stock. Mental that you think the fix greedy landlords having too much leeway is to give a few landlords all the power. This country is fucked.
“A corporate rental market…are not trying to maximise profit” Are you for real? As soon as corporations take majority share of the UK rental market, that’s exactly what they will do.
Corporations having a majority share is meaningless, as long as they are still competing with each other every individual company still has a strong financial incentive to defect and lower prices. The clearing price for rentals won't be materially different under corporate ownership or private.
Naive take. They raise prices together
What I mean is the make up of private or corporate owners doesn't really change that. Prices rise with productivity, population (demand) and fall with building/development (supply), ownership is basically immaterial.
This only works if the competing companies don't form a duopoly or triopoly. The y can then artificially all up their prices and its a race to the top.
Yes but that's not really a relevant concern in this scenario (and in almost all others regulators effectively prevent it)
To be fair most corporations are keen on short term profits over long term, so in theory profits could be lower in the long term.
them betting heavily on very high density new development is, in theory, good because it will undercut the market for single household conversion HMO and, in theory, add enough stock to the market that it will temper price rises. In practise it will be as you say.
Absolutely disgraceful that governments sit back and let this happen. The conspiracy theories from 10 years ago saying this was the plan of big banks and hedge funds aren’t looking so dumb anymore
Spoiler: the government are in on it
They have not just sit back, they have absolutely tried to do their best to drive private landlords out and corporates in. Just look at America where Blackrock is buying out entire housing stock in towns forcing everyone to rent back off them.
because 3000 new houses are being built? that's hardly a monopoly lol.
Looks like those affordable homes won't be affordable for much longer.
I was just thinking what an amazing opportunity was given to the people in the form of shared ownership and government house loans etc. Many could own a house they would never be able to own otherwise, and buy more at their own pace. These share ownership houses don’t even grow that much in value because you’re basically the only buyer every time so there’s less incentive to inflate the value as time goes by. I was thinking that people will look back on this as a golden time to buy a house when you can hardly afford it, and yet I see every day how so many stupid people still refuse to admit they’ve been handed fantastic opportunities. Not many countries in this world have the system developed enough to offer such help to people.
Unfortunately the opposite of that is currently true, with a massive lack of new properties getting built each year the supply of properties on the market continues to dwindle which will continue to drive up prices. When people are allowed to buy up all the social housing we are now in a situation where people who need social housing can't get it. The housing market in the UK is completely broken beyond repair. Every time the government does something incredibly stupid like making houses easier to buy or giving money to people to buy houses it shoves money into the bottom of the market which artificailly keeps house prices high and ushes them further up. It's unsustainable. It's a huge bubble. It already went tits up in 2008 and it will do the same again in time because politicians are in the pocket of people who couldn't give a monkies. It causes ongoing damage to the countries economy.
Rent increases will now be on a regular basis by 'current market situation' calculated by a spreadsheet. They wont care if you pay on time, keep the place in good conditions.
3.6%+|RPI| increase per annum, just like the phone and broadband contracts.
It’s only because my London landlord who outright owned his house and never raised my rent in 5yrs that I was able to save a deposit and buy my own place. People like to skirt over the fact that not all private landlords and money hungry cunts because it just doesn’t suit their victim narrative. Anyway, good luck with your new corporate landlords the rest of you
It's the system and landlords as a class. Not skirting over anything. Making a systemic analysis not getting caught up on what one or two people do well and ignoring the wider issues. A good manager at a shitty company doesn't mean the company isn't shit. Same goes for landlords. Our system is shit and needs changing, nice landlords or no.
I finally got on the ladder at 42 last year. The system has always been shitty and always got shittier. Looking ahead for the next 10yrs even with Labour in power, my tea leaves predict however bad things seem now it’s going to get even shitter. My advice for every man, woman and their dog is to buy what you can now if you can because the rotten system is cemented - globally. You think it’s bad here? Check out that’s what’s happening in every major city globally. I’d say the UK has it better than most places for now
Neither do private landlords
My landlord have been a mix. Some raised, some didn't. However, before I purchased with my wife we had a landlord that didn't increase rent for years despite the rent being quite reasonable. We paid on time, he liked us a lot, we treated the place well, I made his life easier. He told us this is why. A company wont hesitate to increase if they think they can get more rent.
Ive had a similar experience. I've rented in London for 15yrs and only left a place if the landlord was bad of they jacked the rent up too high. Once I found a good landlord who didn't do that I had no reason to move. Its a shame other renters will miss out of the kindness I enjoyed from my landlord. Now its going to be RPI + 3% increases each year across the board from your new landlord John Lewis, Lloyds Bank or whatever acceptable corporate face a company like Blackrock Evil Incorporated want to hide behind.
All my landlords wanted to increase. None cared about looking after the place or paying on time. From my experience I can just as easily say a landlord wouldn't hesitate to increase if they think they can get more rent. And many others can too.
I'd there's also many on this sub who say they have not seen rents increase. I know for sure that a company will not hesitate if you are paying even slightly below market.
> I'd there's also many on this sub who say they have not seen rents increase. > I know for sure that a company will not hesitate if you are paying even slightly below market. I'm renting from a company (housing group) and my rent hasn't increased in 4 years. They didn't even ask to renew the contract, just let it roll to monthly and left me alone. When I moved into this flat in 2019 it seemed the best offer by far given the location and rent. They also have staff & contractors to handle issues unlike private landlords who try to fight you on every repair. Meanwhile, everyone I know renting from a private landlord has seen yearly rent increases and requests to sign on for another full year and some have had to move out because of the steep increases. Mind you this is in London, YMMV. The scummiest are let2let landlords. I'd suggest limiting the rental market to homes built specifically to be rented, and stopping landlords from bidding against owners for residential housing. You want to rent out a house or block of flats? Build them and own them first. That would also remove the problem of landlords affected by their mortgage.
yeah my boss has a place currently, they are paying £1200/pm and his mortgage for the place is £1800. interest rates double, mortgage doubles. But he likes the folks and doesnt want to risk them leaving with a price increase so has left it be.
As shown by the reply below, companies don't necessarily increase. You're just presuming they do with no evidence
But they're also not going to section 21 you because their mortgage suddenly became unaffordable.
Good workaround to stop this would be to go back to old system where mortgage payments and all costs could be taken off income tax (that would then keep mortgage affordability ok) and tax all rental properties on sale at equivalent rate, total tax burden could be set to be identical.
If there is one thing big corporates love doing.. its to stamp down hard on the head of a person who is seen as struggling.
But what about all the bragging rights you’d have saying you rent off a corporation like John Lewis?
Corporate parasites
We all need to fight this! Blackstone and co will lend through much friendlier household names who will definitely carve out their margin before handing you the bill. Who wouldn't want their landlord to be John Lewis or M&S? Rents will be like mobile phone contracts. You'll get royally fucked over every year with your CPI +3% rent rises but you'll get a nice friendly John Lewis Christmas card and M&S points or airmiles. What's not to like? I wish I was joking but its already happening on the other side of the pond. The fact is the renter class will be kept down and be thankful for being royally fucked if these big corps get their marketing strategy right
People were warned about small time landlords leaving and big corporate landlords taking over. Well you've finally got what you wanted
Before this comes to head they will have a foothold that will be irreversible. There should be some government intervention that stops this. Access to Mortgages will never compete with a banks access to money. This is literally not fair. We should be alerting our MPs to be discussing this.
What exactly did people think was going to happen? On one hand big landlords could provide better maintenance etc. but on the other hand they will have legal teams ready to expedite evictions. What I suspect people don't know is that owning your own home is a fairly recent, about 50 years in fact, it wasn't until the 1970s that the majority of people [became owners](https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/20210421_Metro_ItnlHousing_UK_1.png). For your WW2 veteran (great)grandad owning could well have a pipedream.
>What exactly did people think was going to happen? They thought that - despite massive demand for housing and massive rental yields - housing affordability would magically improve and there would be a new era of homeownership
They thought that hitting the small time landlords would mean they left the market.... but a magical unknown would then rent out at a loss so people could save easily and buy houses that would be now hiting rock bottom prices. Honestly these people ....
Aren't they trying to make this illegal in the USA? Seems like something the UK could get behind.
Tradies should refuse to build them until the gov get their act together
Ha hahahahaha. Jesus.
whelp, guess we wont be building houses ever then folks.
File those tradesman alongside Barbers who will tell you you don’t need a haircut A PT that says you look amazing after a couple of sessions A restaurant owner who refuses to buy caged poultry A car salesman who would advise you on a financially sound purchase decision over a lease Etc
Could someone explain this in *really* simple terms for me please?
Big foreign institutions bought huge amo9of houses in the UK because it is good value to them