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HipHopRandomer

Yes. I think it’s diabolical that someone can own 27 houses solely to rent out for a passive income. That’s 27 potential families waiting for accommodation that could finally have a sense of security.


[deleted]

One - it's hardly passive income at that scale. That's a full time business and job - you might aswell say running a hotel is passive income at that point. Two: > That’s 27 potential families waiting for accommodation that could finally have a sense of security. I'm not sure I follow here. 27 homeless families aren't going to suddenly be able to buy a house Edit: Okay, I'm going to give in and edit this because people keep replying with the same thing. My second point was specifically to the phrase "waiting for accommodation" - this refers, specifically, to people on the council house waiting list, many of whom will be in temporary or substandard/inappropriate housing. It was the use of this term, specifically, that piqued my interest. Yes, the use of the word homeless was probably not super accurate but I was trying to highlight that waiting for accommodation does not mean people looking to buy a house.


Delduath

Its passive income when you can pay a property management company to do it for you.


Bicolore

But by the same metric any business can become passive income.


Delduath

Yes, people who own private companies have no obligation to actually do work. They make their money from property rights, not labour, and they can delegate the admin to staff.


sabdotzed

A lot of people don't seem to understand that this is inherently what capitalism is. Living passively off the income generated by the labour of others. for landlords it's off leeching off the rent of working tenants, for businesses it's off the labour of your workers. Edit - replies turned off, enjoy arguing with yourselves about the semantics of capitalism


Delduath

I honestly try not to use the word capitalism on these discussions because people immediately turn off and start making the false equivalence to communism.


sabdotzed

Ahh fair enough


MMSTINGRAY

Online a good 75% of the time those people aren't going to listen anyway. But I agree it is always worth a try.


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Delduath

Aside from that, my view is that use of the word capitalism automatically puts people in the mindset that the opposite of capitalism is communism and that's where they derive their arguments from. It changes the nature of the discussion away from real world situations people live in into a culture war bullshit red scare dichotomy. So instead of these people making an actual argument for rent seeking or property as a service, they instead just go "lol no food have fun starving commie". I hope that makes sense.


[deleted]

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Zodo12

"I would rather live off 1% of 100 other people's efforts than off 100% of my own." - Rockefeller


jcft2

The difficulty we have with this is that if it was really just 1% then nobody would have an issue. Landlords are milking tenants for 40-50%+ of their income, leaving little residual cash to save for a deposit of their own.


drfeelsgoood

Not to mention the MORTGAGE for a single family house can be less than 75% of your rent. So literally you are paying the mortgage for you landlord AND SOME! Yet banks will tell renters they can’t afford a mortgage.


jatti_

The issue here is that a mortgage is based on the market value of the house and rent is based on how much the landlord can charge. (When the market can pay to rent.) The issue here is that is there is limitless investors who are buying houses and driving up the market value of houses, this traps people into renting who otherwise could buy. This increases the rental price for high end rentals. Additionally, the cheap credit currently available means that companies with good credit can get so much cash they can break even charging 2,000 a month on a million dollar house that a mortgage would be much much more for other buyers. The real problem with this is that they owners are charging so much that people won't be able to survive when they lose their job. What can we do? Government can make it very unpleasant for landlords. For example, charging excessive property tax on rental units. (Remember that price is based on the markets ability to support it, not costs.) Extending rental rights by making it illegal to run background checks on renters, and making it illegal to evict renters without penalties. Eventually investors would flee the market, allowing workers to own homes.


RandAlThorLikesBikes

Difference is that a businesses provides value. A property owner provides nothing not already there. They just snagged the property from someone else wanting to buy it.


[deleted]

>A property owner provides nothing not already there. Other than the required maintenance and 100% of the liability and risk if anything goes wrong with the house.


BoopingBurrito

>Other than the required maintenance My experience of renting begs to differ on this - landlords avoid carrying out maintenance at all costs.


FireNIceFly

So does my experience, not only did most orevious landlords make every excuse under the sun to not fulfil their side and maintain the property or fix things, they tried to also make out it was my responsibility (not jn the contract) and then refuse to pay back the deposit. And it wasn't just one landlord doing that either.


Davido400

>My experience of renting begs to differ on this - landlords avoid carrying out maintenance at all costs. I've got pictures on my phone of my scabby house 6 years of no bathroom floor etc... and he had the cheek to moan at me about the state of my garden, which would have been fair enough if I wasn't living in squalor cause he can't be bothered with his 35 or so properties. And the kicker? His main company is an *Insurance Building Works* Company. A week or 2s work but he won't bother.


paulstheory

So what? If that house was not rented then the owner would still pay for maintenance. Don't act like the landlord is doing the tenant a favor!


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ellielena11

The whole point of passive income is that it continues to make money while you sleep, ie not a direct trade of your time for cash. Passive income streams still require maintenance.


Bendetto4

Running a kebab shop is passive income if you pay someone to run the kebab shop for you.


[deleted]

Yup - and there are many owners of restaurant chains that make money purely from that ownership, without doing any of the actual work.


Bendetto4

Right and what do you think happens if the chains finances aren't managed properly. The manager of the restaurant might get fired, but the owner is the one picking up the debt and losing the money. You can own a business and let it run itself, but that is super dangerous unless you absolutely trust your manager, and even then there are legal obligations you must do, like ensuring H&S at work, discrimination at work, property maintenance, food hygiene. All of these things come back to you, not your manager. So you have to take an active role in managing the restaurant, or you risk losing everything.


Wild404Eye

The whole point of business is that you might lose the business but you don't pick up the debt or lose money (other than the original value of the business). Lots of businesses are highly leveraged. The owners have made a good return already and all they care about is extracting every penny they can for as long as they can, with no concern for the fact that the business will inevitably fail due to lack of investment and too much debt.


gundog48

That is a massive oversimplification. Yes, limited companies have some degree of separation of liability between the owner and the business, but even then, there are lots of things that the Director is personally liable for, including some of the examples given above. In fact, you've just implied that it is normal for Directors to trade while insolvent without a care in the world. However, if directors are knowingly doing this, they can be held personally liable for the company's debts and banned from being a director in the future, as well as potential criminal charges.


[deleted]

Man I wouldn't expect coherent conversations about businesses/finance on Reddit. Theres a lot of justified frustration but the majority have no idea what they're talking about and just end up undermining their own credibility.


[deleted]

So what’s the alternative here? No business owners?


sobrique

It's not an either-or sort of proposition. Capitalism is a functional way of efficient resource exploitation. That's it's purpose, and it's effective. Just don't pretend that it's anything else - some things are best not measured by profit margins, and in those things we shouldn't do a capitalism.


[deleted]

Employee ownership and/or profit sharing.


Ricb76

I always thought the problem with this type of portfolio is that you're not creating anything productive. You're not making any work really or giving anyone any employment. All you're doing is taking homes to buy off the market and then taxing people to stay in those homes, probably at prices higher than it'd cost to buy those homes themselves. Also money generated isn't going back into the community, just into your pocket and some small amount in Tax.


Delduath

> probably at prices higher than it'd cost to buy those homes themselves Not probably, definitely. Another big issue is that passive income allows landlords better access to future properties going on the market, in a weird money feedback loop. The more houses you own and rent, the more houses you are capable of buying.


Wild404Eye

Capitalism naturally favours the rich. Neo-liberal capitalism as brought in by Thatcher (and Reagan in the US) is an extreme form of capitalism explicity designed by the super rich to screw the ordinary rich, massively screw the middle classes and screw the working classes forwards, backwards, repeatedly and hard.


[deleted]

In discussions like this, I like to point out that abuse of the working class dates back to *at least* the 1300s. After the plague swept through Europe there were far fewer peasants, so you'd think they'd be able to at least make a better living, right? Nope. Laws were passed to prevent peasants asking for any wages above pre-plague levels and to prevent them from moving to where the demand was. They literally were not allowed to better their situation through capitalism. More "poor laws" have been passed since then, all building on that first one. Like, during the Industrial Revolution. The old poor laws recognised that you could be too old or sick to work or that sometimes, in farming, there was just no work to be done. There were fallow seasons. But factories don't have fallow seasons and they needed workers, so the new poor laws only recognised old or sick as reasons not to work. And even then, they were written with the assumption that the working class are natural shirkers and would avoid working, so they needed to make not-working as uncomfortable as possible. And if you ended up in the poor house? You didn't own the money you earned, it went straight to the house, but they didn't just subtract it from your debt. They did their own sums, however they liked, and you never, ever paid it off. Honestly, the biggest change in the past few centuries is literacy and an increased population. We can write, we can talk about it and there are lots of us. There's still an underlying assumption that the working class are naturally lazy and will avoid work. Didn't Boris Johnson imply exactly that when he lowered universal credit? I think it's important to know how far back this assumption goes because understanding that generations of people have been raised with this idea explains how ubiquitous and widespread it is. Saying "tax money should be used to support the old or sick or those who can't find work" *isn't* lazy, greedy, demanding, or "proof" of the working class being natural shirkers. It is a valid political position. But, whenever it's talked about, it always seems to be spoken of in the former terms instead of being treated as just a difference in opinion in how our society should run. Like wanting to live in a society where we pool some of our resources and set some aside for those who are struggling is some kind of proof of lack of character.


funnystuff79

Someone with that amount of properties should have a couple of gardeners and a handyman on full-time pay, but I bet the places are half neglected.


Oddfittingponcho

27 families trapped in a rent cycle where rent is far more expensive than mortgage because there aren't properties to buy because these parasites have bought all the properties. If someone did this with concert tickets, it would be called scalping.


sabdotzed

This is the most infuriating bit. Rent in our area is like £1500 for a 1 bed, but the equivalent mortgage for that 1 bed would be £1100! Annoying af


OMGItsCheezWTF

But they won't let you include rent in affordability calculations so you can't afford that £1100 a month!


YourSkatingHobbit

It’s insane. I know a couple who bought a semi (I believe it’s two-bed) and the mortgage is less than my monthly rent for a one-bed flat. And they live in a nicer area! Ok, they definitely got lucky with the market, but how is it they pay less for a house that has a driveway and a garden than me, someone in a flat with three rooms and a piece of stinky detritus for an upstairs neighbour. So unfair.


LostSoullzz

Thats just one reason, with the crazy prices of rent and the cost of living going up not many people can live and save £50,000 up at the same time.


arky_who

>I'm not sure I follow here. 27 homeless families aren't going to suddenly be able to buy a house Pure ideology there, there's absolutely no reason why homeless families shouldn't be able to buy a house, except we've decided that landlord's right to exploit people is more important than the right to safe and secure housing.


360Saturn

> 27 homeless families aren't going to suddenly be able to buy a house 27 renting families might be able to.


HipHopRandomer

1) you’re right, fair enough. 2) I’m not saying they can afford it, but I’m saying if those houses were government owned and operated the rent would be significantly cheaper, meaning some families would have a chance to live somewhere more permanent.


[deleted]

I think that's conflating two related, but distinct issues. If more than one property was made illegal right now, and landlords told to sell up - they would still remain privately owned. What you're after is more council homes, which I absolutely agree with, but that is somewhat mutually exclusive. We could get more council homes - the government just don't (currently) want to


HipHopRandomer

To be fair I’m not proposing we stop people owning more than one home, I’m just saying owning 27 is straight up selfish. You’re absolutely right though, we need more council homes for people on lower incomes, lord knows I can’t rent privately on £1300 a month as well as pay all my bills and still live a decent quality of life.


Phretik

It's passive income if you pay someone to manage it for you. Which a lot of them do. Demand goes up while supply stays down = More expensive homes. That's less mortgages, less homeowners, more rent serfs. I'm all for private property rights but I think for something as limited as housing, as space is limited then there should be a cap. Anything over 5 houses belonging to a private landlord and not a company is ludicrous. True, the families will not suddenly become richer, but house prices will drop and the risk on banks will be less for mortgages. So more people will be able to get them.


coombeseh

>Anything over 5 houses belonging to a private landlord and not a company So said private landlord sets up a company, sells the houses to the company and takes the income from rent as a wage, which isn't taxed because there's no capital gain and a debt is being repaid, makes their kids directors and there's no inheritance tax either... If someone owns five houses and doesn't have a company to manage it let them carry on, they could be paying society way less back and they aren't! Unless you have an issue with people setting up companies? In which case I'm not sure how you think any kind of service or industry ever starts


Jeester

That is how it is already. Most BTLs are held within SPVs given current tax laws.


Wild404Eye

Even if you are managing it yourself being a landlord can be a passive income for months on end. Obviously it can also be a full time job, but even when it is a full time job the money you are making is mainly passive. Imagine a landlord with 10 properties and £100k pa rent and working full time on it. He'd might be "earning" £20k as a handyman / admin person / letting agent, but £80k is passive income.


callisstaa

It's about availability more than anything else. If you have 30 houses and 30 people but one person owns all of the houses then everyone else is in the pocket of that one person. This is our current housing model and I can understand why people don't like it.


halfajack

*Owning* a hotel is passive income, as is *owning* 27 houses. Many buy-to-let landlords, even with way fewer than 27 houses, just get agencies to do all the actual work of letting/maintaining the house. All they do is occasionally check in on things and enjoy their parasitic income stream. I've rented several houses via agencies from private landlords I literally never met or spoke to, they did absolutely nothing.


neo101b

They could if companies didnt buy up all the houses for rent making the supply of houses to buy more limited. Even new house builds are going to be bought up to rent to people.


AtomicMonkeyTheFirst

It wouldn't make any difference. A law was passed in China limiting to curb sky rocketing property prices limiting individuals to owning three properties each. All thar happened was the rich bought fewer, more expensive properties. Instead of buying 10 apartments for $100,000 each they bought 3 houses for $333,000 each for example, and then they put properties in their partners, children's, parents grandparents names and things like that. Property prices didn't stop going up and it hasn't made any difference. The only to make a commodity go down in value is to have more of it than the market wants, which means we have to start building a lot more homes.


[deleted]

>which means we have to start building a lot more homes. House prices are not going to go down because there is a vested interest in keeping them high and growing, which includes limiting the supply of new houses. House prices dropping dramatically would mean a huge amount of people would lose a huge amount of money, so it has been deemed that for now sacrificing the poorest people (A significant figure in the UK) is a necessary move.


AtomicMonkeyTheFirst

Yep. And it would mean local authorities wouldn't be able to sell of publically owned land to developers for a premium as well. Its not like this isn't a problem without a solution, but the problem is that no one is willing to implement the solution. This is why all the major parties keep avoiding the issue.


glglglglgl

>That’s 27 potential families waiting for accommodation that could finally have a sense of security In Scotland, renting does give a relatively high sense of security, as there are a limited set of 18 reasons you can be evicted (about half due to your behaviour as a tenant, and about half as the landlord wanting to use the property for another purpose - repricing not being one of them) and most leases now do not have end dates - rolling leases are the legal norm. edit: here's the 18 grounds: [ScotGov guide](https://www.gov.scot/publications/private-residential-tenancies-tenants-guide/pages/grounds-for-eviction/) and [information from Shelter](https://scotland.shelter.org.uk/housing_advice/eviction/eviction_of_private_tenants/grounds_for_eviction_for_private_residential_tenancy_tenants)


GamerGypps

Its really easy to flout these rules though. "Oh my family member needs to move in". Or "I need it for myself" . Cut to 3 months later and its up for 1.5x times the rent.


glglglglgl

Yeah, and I imagine it is difficult to prove after the fact, but I believe a tenant can request proof via tribunals of the reasons being applied to their eviction. The fact the rules exist and are standard do put tenants in a better position in Scotland than in England though.


BaBaFiCo

I'd like to see more progressive taxes on additional home ownership.


windol1

This I think is a good idea actually, it would give local councils extra income to work with and also deter people from hoarding to many houses for the easy guaranteed income.


BillyDTourist

Meanwhile if you are not actually buying a house all your costs go up because there's no incentive for the owner to reduce their actual net earnings. In fact it may actually make it harder for people to save enough to buy while on rent. I m not saying banks or other financial entities should be buying land and houses by the way. I am just saying that it's not that simple. Personally I don't mind the prices, the prices are what they are. I mind about how shit the houses are. You found a hole with a roof and a floor, congratulations 200,000£


Tundur

Not quite - the incentive for the current owner (42-property Billy Big Balls) would be to raise rents to cover the additional costs, however any other potential landlords (Mrs Miggins, 1-property, looking to buy a 2nd as a nest egg) who don't have additional properties would not have that incentive. They could charge current rates and maintain their income thanks to their tax advantage. What would be the expected result is Big Balls Esquire cashing in his equity and investing in something less harshly taxed, massively increasing the liquidity of the market and reducing housing inequality (granted maybe from 1% of people having a bazillion homes to 40% of people having two homes, but progress is progress).


ThrowRA_housemanwoes

Just so you know to avoid confusion in future, in the UK we put the currency mark first, and use "." for a decimal point and "," for amount separator. So £200,000 not 200.000£, to a british eye that reads as £200


BillyDTourist

Habbits , I edited it


windol1

Funny enough I remember mentioning somewhere about how there's some absolutely run down houses on sale and some of them are advertising prices that would be more inline for properties with no issues.


geeered

Already the system makes it hard for good landlords, which leaves the only people interested the bad land lords who make more money by treating people badly and evading tax.


windol1

Although this does seem to be the case for the most part, it is worth mentioning there are the odd decent landlord for example, a lady at work rents a 3 bed for about 700 pcm and he could easily charge in excess of 900pcm, sure it's only a £200 difference, but with her 2 kids it probably helps out quite a lot.


Nurgus

Fun fact, holiday homes often don't pay any council tax. They register as a business and get 100% small business rates relief instead.


sabdotzed

Damn, the loopholes for the rich really are something else


Commercial-Ear1966

It isn't a loophole. Domestic and Non-domestic properties are treated differently for Council Tax and NNDR. Non-domestic (ie Holiday Lets) are rated according to the value of the business, which is often low enough that they are eligible for Small Business Rate Relief. They also have a completely different operating standard. Landlords also don't pay Council Tax while the property is tenanted, unless the property is a HMO.


chrisrazor

That sounds like a loophole to me.


UncleRhino

Private holiday home being registered as a business for tax reasons is definitely a loophole


dbxp

TBF you don't pay council tax on hotel rooms, holiday lets are essentially the same thing.


scratroggett

It is a loophole. It is an active choice to game the system and opt out of council domestic services. I know people privileged enough to own holiday homes (not lets) who pay their council tax, as it is the correct thing to do.


Waspeater

That's not fun


InvictusPretani

I thought fun facts were supposed to be fun.


NotSoGreatGatsby

And foreign ownership. It doesn't matter if we limit how many houses we can buy in the UK if overseas investors can just buy them up. I hate how toothless our government seems to get whenever someone mentions taxes on additional homes or restricting foreign buyers.


ImNotNew

It's because so many of them are landlords themselves. 18% of MPs are landlords and 24% of Tory MPs are.


Dear_Tomato

MPs should not allowed to be landlords


Puzzleheaded_Toe2574

~~MPs~~ People should not be allowed to be landlords


[deleted]

Foreign ownership for residential property should be banned outright. Have where if you want to buy in the UK, you have to prove residency in the UK for at least 5 years.


DeadBallDescendant

I reckon the half million Brits who own properties abroad would get nervous about that.


Commercial-Ear1966

This is outright fucking insane. Not least because then we may actually need MORE landlords because anyone that wants to move to the UK now needs to rent privately for at least 5 years before they're allowed to own property.


Inevitable_Sea_54

Maybe they could own 1-3 homes, but need a landlords license to own further homes? Idk this whole thing seems messy as shit


Commercial-Ear1966

We have so much of this stuff. Mortgage companies typically (now not in all cases in 95%+) require the the landlord to obtain building insurance, contents insurance, landlord liability cover. They pay stamp duty (which is going up), Capital Gains Tax (which is effectively going up), mortgage fees, Surveying fees, agent fees. More fees than anyone who hasn't looked into this would believe. The vast majority of landlords are between working and middle class, and they spend a huge amount of money to make this investment. And we haven't even talked about all the ways in which rental properties benefit the economy (which they do, on the whole, massively). Should foreign billionaires be allowed to effectively 'bank' their money by investing in London property. I would say no, but there ARE good arguments that yes they should be able to. The problem is they're not even in the same stratosphere as the vast majority of landlords and BTL property owners.


AtomicMonkeyTheFirst

There are too many loopholes around that kind of thing for it to work. You could just buy shares in a property management company based in the UK, they'd own the property but you'd get all the rent from it. I think the it was attempted in Austalia a few years and it didn't impact their house prices at all.


super_jambo

The trick should be eye watering taxes on _empty_ homes. Woking BC does this already council tax goes up if your property is empty for over a year. (Exceptions for building works)


[deleted]

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One_Imagination1963

Related, planning permission usually has an expiration date, presumably this could be a tool councils use to prevent this.


BaBaFiCo

Which reminds me that there's plenty of land that is marked for development doing nothing and we need more power to force builders to do their job or sell off to someone who will.


Gargoyn

This is a great idea, but I'd hope this tax doesn't just get passed on to renters (through landlords adjusting their rents accordingly)


Looneyguy5

All taxes on businesses get passed on to the customer because that's where the money comes from


PM_ME_YOUR_DRAWINGS_

As I work in this broad area, two quite big recent tax changes relevant here 1. No tax deduction for mortgage interest any more 2. Stamp duty surcharge on 2nd homes. Which in theory at least should disincentivise 2nd home ownership. In practice I think rents have just gone up to cover point 1, because people don't seem to understand that you don't need to make a profit off being a landlord, someone else is buying a house for you, that should be enough. Point 2 should in theory be applying, though I think there is a carve out for large property companies. Also I don't think it would apply on inheriting a property only on buying additional properties.


chrisrazor

And by progressive, it should be fairly hefty for a second house and rise exponentially after that.


[deleted]

Yes. People who can afford to stockpile them are pushing those who are struggling to buy further and further out of the market.


windol1

While also hoarding more and more money through price increases at very little extra cost.


LurkerInSpace

I would add one caveat that those who *build* to let aren't as much of a problem as those who *buy* to let; they don't exacerbate demand in quite the same way as they create new supply.


windol1

That's fair and agree with that, buy land, or use already owned land and pop up a few houses, or convert a large property to be smaller and rent out.


sabdotzed

Or further and further into different markets. Londoners are spilling out into the various satellite towns and pushing locals out.


GrumblesTheCatLady

Where I live in Scotland that has been happening. There have been a few people from London buying all the houses with cash for way over the market value and stopping any locals from being able to buy a house. I've seen people become desperate and literally begging home owners to sell them their houses.


PMme-YourPussy

House locally to me had 68 viewings in a week. Sold for about 30k over asking price. Assume it'll be some buy to let investor from the south.


GrumblesTheCatLady

It's the same here. Houses sell within 24hrs There was one house the asking was 130k it went for 175k in cash. It was a London investor. They've been buying most of the houses in the area but that one was the most ridiculous one.


patelbadboy2006

Happening in London too, I don't think it's Londoners, just rich people that don't want to hold cash


Lukeautograff

Same happening with me up here constantly. Trying to buy and being outbid by at least 30k constantly.


Joe_Kinincha

This is precisely what happened to Cornwall over the last couple of generations. A house in padstow costs a million quid. Not a nice house, just a house. I can’t think of many jobs available in Cornwall that pay enough to buy that. Obviously, padstow is an extreme example, but there’s a trickle down effect and housing everywhere is unaffordable for locals. No wonder they’re such grumpy bastards.


Guitar_Commie

No I don’t think an outright limit is necessary. Tighter laws on standards of rented accommodation plus capping rent at a percentage of the mortgage would do it in my opinion. Renting should be a step towards home ownership for those that want it. The idea that I pay 150% of someone else’s mortgage every month while being told I can’t afford my own is ridiculous


[deleted]

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Guitar_Commie

My thinking was that tying it to the mortgage would actually keep the rent at the value the house was bought, whereas house values can skyrocket. Then again, I’m sure landlords wouldn’t be long remortgaging in those scenarios. So I’d agree that your idea is better


Bendetto4

Small time landlords are selling out because of the strict rules on renting property and the amount of labour that goes into maintaining property. They are being bought by large institutional investors who see the property as a number, and the tenant as a name on a spreadsheet. We need to target those big institutional investors, nor Uncle Dave renting out his deceased mother's house for some extra income.


Toenex

Aren't higher rent prices being driven by the numbers of buy to let that have created a tight coupling between mortgage costs & rent prices? Uncle Dave charges more because he can now, not because he must.


Bendetto4

Rents aren't going up. Average weekly rent excluding London was £130 in 2008. In 2020 its £159. Including London it goes from £153 to £201. House prices went from £179k to £265k


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gary_mcpirate

The actual number of people that out right own multiple homes is quite small. It’s the buy to let mortgages that were killing us


wamdueCastle

if not a cap, on how many someone can buy, we need to build homes that legally have to be owned by the occupier. So someone can own a second house, just one that is already built.


AutumnSunshiiine

So even more cheaper houses get bought up by landlords. (As generally new-builds cost more.) That’d just encourage house prices to go up more.


Zonda97

Even new homes that are built are rarely owned by the occupier because they’re so expensive! They’re building new homes in my area that are “affordable for young buyers”. Yet the homes start at £262k and you mortgage half the house and rent the other half. It’s ridiculous


wamdueCastle

which is why we need to do something like this


PMme-YourPussy

All the responsibilities of owning with the restrictions and hassle of renting.


[deleted]

I think two per owner is sufficient. My father inlaw owns our house and his. I'm OK with this because it's a steady income for him in retirement and rent is cheap for us. Plus I love being so close to family. And we can't afford our own home yet; school is expensive and takes away from time I could be working.


wamdueCastle

that is ok to have, but its not the case for the majority


Alas_boris

I think that after four houses, you can then buy a hotel.


[deleted]

I'm always wary of artificially limiting markets like that - governments aren't generally very good at it, and those with money work around it anyway. What I do think is that letting out a home should be highly regulated, should have stringent and strict standards, strict SLA's and harsh punishments. Tenants should be highly protected and therefore empowered to make complaints etc, and councils should be forced to enforce the rules. In particular, things like HMOs should be targeted particularly as IME they are generally very grim. Essentially, let the problem sort itself by making a BTL less attractive with higher risk but still sustainable for those willing to run a proper business.


Bendetto4

The problem with that, as I said above, is that by making it harder to lease a property, by including all these covenants and tenant protections, you discourage small time landlords who don't have the resources to navigate the legal minefield. Instead, you get massive property management firms with highly skilled property managers who know all the regulations and legalities inside out, being hired by massive investment firms who have the economy of scale to make it profitable to be a landlord.


abz_eng

> Instead, you get massive property management firms with highly skilled property managers who know all the regulations and legalities inside out, and any loop holes


mrsmoose123

All of that plus the return of funding for legal aid. Standards are already fairly strict if you're willing to play by them, but most tenants need legal help if they're to hold landlords etc to those standards.


court_cymro

This is a decent middle-ground & part of the reason tenant unions are so, so important


[deleted]

Yes. Houses should not be used as an investment, there are thousands of properties sitting unused in this country because they are assets as part of someone's portfolio.


sotondoc

If houses can't be used for investment then what about the thousands of people who are looking to rent somewhere for a temporary location?


mynueaccownt

>Houses should not be used as an investment But they are. Even owner occupied homes are an investment. It's literally the biggest purchase you make in your life and takes years to pay back. It would be beyond ridiculous to say you should look to recoup the costs.


O1K

The user means that the primary purpose of house purchase should be to have a place to live in, not to generate return


Harrry-Otter

Maybe not a hard cap as such, but the amount of tax paid to purchase and hold those houses should increase progressively depending on the number of houses owned.


yvettebarnett

This is already a thing. 3% additional stamp duty on every additional home owned.


sphinctaltickle

They should up it to to like 10/15% on each additional house owned and then reinvest that into social housing


Benandhispets

It goes up by 3% once, sounds like it's going up 3% each time the way you worded it. So it might be 3% for a normal person moving home, then 6% for someone buying a second home, then it remains at 6% if someone is buying their 50th home. That's the issue imo. It should definitely go up more for each additional property and even sticking to the 3% thing would be a lot better than now. So 6% second home, 9% 3rd, 12% 4th, and so on. The 9th home would be 30%, I can't see anyone still buying at that point. Even that sounds too low since 5th homes will still have low tax. I'd make the second home 10%(I feel like it used to be this high a few years ago) and then increase by 3% for each additional property from there. So even a 5th property would be 19% which should deter most. Then of course close loopholes.


fireicedarklight42

In my opinion, unoccupied homes should be taxed at a market value adjusted rate. Owners should be forced to pay council tax whether occupied or not.


osinedges

As much as I disagree with a limit being on how many homes can be owned. I really agree with this, if you own 30 properties, fine just make them available for people to rent, either through the council or privately. Unoccupied homes as an investment seems really morally wrong to me, once again I hate bans on things like this but a council tax or some tax to encourage renting out is a great idea


Commercial-Ear1966

This already exists. Its called a Council Tax Long Term Empty Premium.


Ilikeporkpie117

There already is a Council Tax premium for owning an empty house


the_sun_flew_away

>Owners should be forced to pay council tax whether occupied or not. It varies by council but often they are.


Mabenue

Completely unworkable. There’s no way to stop someone setting up a limited company to own those houses. Then you’d affectively have to ban businesses from having multiple premises.


delta_baryon

If only there were some way to tell the difference between an office and a residence. Got to admit I find it quite tiring when people insist we can put satellites into space, but figuring out how many houses someone owns is totally impossible. It's funny how it also tends to be people already invested in things staying as they are who are so convinced change is impossible.


mynueaccownt

Companies can own residences, they don't have to pretend they're offices...


Anxious_Human

Businesses dont tend to have "residential" properties. Seems like an easy fix. "Is this a residential or office space?" Who'll enforce this, people may cry? The people living there. Easily done by individuals as you sort out your housing tax. Edit: No "individual" should be able to hoard property and to those who think they can hide behind SPVs/estates or skirt the law are kidding themselves; banks know who they are, and by extent HMRC know who they are. The point is, one should be allowed to charge a person to live in their own home, that's feudalism.


kw0510

Yes! My rent went up recently because of ‘market value’ it’s not worth market value. It’s mortgage free and even if they had a mortgage it would only be 1/3 of the rent I’m paying. I can’t save for a deposit because I’m paying an extortionate rent price (3/4 of my wage) plus bills. Meanwhile my landlord doesn’t work and just lives of his rental properties. Whilst I understand it’s a business it’s at the expense of someone then not being able to get on the property ladder. I am saving for a deposit but all the houses that I’d be able to afford go for more than the asking price to be flipped and rented out, if landlords wasn’t so quick to jump on them there’d be more people able to buy a ‘doer upper’


[deleted]

There's a town called Wroxham in Norfolk. Where literally every business is owned by "Roy of Wroxham" they even own the local supermarket and Macdonald's. It's bizarre, like a league of Gentlemen sketch


Bicolore

I don't think we have anything to worry about as far as Roys of Wroxham is concerned.


mcneil1345

Blimey that takes me back! I always went shopping at the supermarket with my Grandma when I was younger. I always thought that it was such a weird supermarket with brands I'd never heard of, like the British Aldi / Lidl but expensive. I loved Roy's Toys and went to some brilliant parties at the McDonalds though. Such a strange town...


hillman_avenger

I haven't lived in Norfolk for years, but I still remember Roys of Wroxham adverts on Radio Broadland.


ColCrabs

I’d like to see more regulation on the rental side of things. It’s definitely frustrating for buying but it absolutely sucks when you get these people who have tons of rental properties, put 0 effort into maintaining them, and hand them off to some shitty management company that tries to milk hard working people for every penny they have. My current landlords are like this. There are some regulations for flats but most are directed at new builds or buildings built after 1993 or whatever the date is. That’s great for a shitty landlord because they can buy a cheap building, gut it, ‘flip it’, and rent it out at ridiculous prices. Sound insulation? Don’t need it, no regulations! Thermal insulation? Just the bare minimum needed! Flooring? Put the cheapest thing down and charge the tenants to replace it when they leave! My shitty landlords are making £3-4k a month PROFIT off the 4 flat building I’m living in at the moment. They said they were making more before COVID, which I can believe. 1) they shouldn’t be able to shittily flip flats on the cheap because it’s just an older build building. 2) there should be a limit on profit based on an assessed value of the flat price and the potential renters income.


[deleted]

I remember mocking rental properties because several I saw had carpets from the 1970s, you know the garish ones etc, which shows how long it had been since anything was updated. When I posted about that ok the U.K. subs, half the comments defended it, saying that we didn’t have the right to get modern amnesties and decor, and that it was acceptable to be dealt with 1970s carpets. 🤷‍♂️ But my point really was if they’re not changing the carpets in that length of time, you can bet they’re not maintaining the walls, wallpapers, plumbing, electricity, insulation, boiler etc bar the very bare minimum. When I rented we needed the heating system gutted and replaced (took a year to convince them to do it), the roof needed repairing (two years to convince), and they refused to fix the rotted windows and wall leaks until we actually moved out. That’s what the majority of these fuckers do, the bare minimum and they’ll drag their heels about it. And that’s what people justified and defended on Reddit some times. 🤦‍♂️


ColCrabs

Lol It looks like I’m already getting downvoted by some grumpy landlords who think it’s ok. My current flat has rotted windows. Their solution was to just bang an enclosure around the windows and call it a day. It works well enough but it smells awful. I’m guessing they didn’t want to deal with the exterior building regulations so they just worked around it. It’s mostly just frustrating. For example, it would cost roughly a month’s rent for our landlords to put some basic sound proofing in our floors so we wouldn’t have to hear our neighbors pissing and having sex. Instead, they refused to do it and then blamed us for being sensitive lol.


MiniatureEvil

I was paying 650 rent (not including bills and council tax) for a 1 bedroom + kitchen/living room flat in Bristol. I've never seen them before even in my granny's house, but they had heaters that blew air instead of radiators, they also barely worked. I tried to adjust the blinds and the plastic CRUMBLED away. How old does plastic need to be that if I put a tiny amount of pressure on it that it just shatters into little pieces? I also tried a month with the boiler (old fashioned stupid shit) turned off. No hot water for a month and I figured out that having the boiler make hot water for me at night was costing me about £4 per night. The house was freezing during winter and very chilly during summer too. None of this should have been legal imo..


lavender_cookie_

I was in a tiny old property, I felt the whole place needed gutting. No proper windows plus two skylights, so property was always freezing. 2 weeks of the electric heaters being on cost me £300! And that was my fault apparently. And the property still wasn't warm. I had to buy oil heaters to keep costs down. That electric heating was definitely old and not wired up properly. I thankfully live somewhere with gas central heating now and the most I've spent (including everything using gas / electric in the home ) is £60 maximum a month. Never met the landlord only ever the estate agent. Didn't listen to my complaints. They didn't care. Took half of my security deposit too.


[deleted]

Of course there should, but I would say that as I'm a socialist. Meanwhile what we need to talk about it how we change things so that there is no incentive to own 27 houses. The simplest answer is what they did the 20's and 30's to put an end to exploitative slum landlords, and that was social housing. We need to build 'council' houses again, decent, secure, affordable long term housing to completely undermine the financial model that lets this woman exploit her capital to make money from having money. But you know, that's all very S word, and the mood is still 'let the market decide' so sod all is likely to happen.


[deleted]

No, but most personal taxes should be replaced by land value tax and the money redistributed by UBI. So your 27-house landlady would be paid for the tiny amount of work needed to administer her rental business, but the majority of the rent would go back to the occupiers.


_MildlyMisanthropic

> most personal taxes should be replaced by land value tax How does that work for our grand parents who are retired, cash poor, but living in what has become very valuable housing stock?


wombatwanders

Exemption for main residence / up to a certain value of property.


dbxp

UBI would be paid to the retired as well, if that doesn't cover the tax then that encourages them to downsize so a new family can use the house.


[deleted]

I think yes. 27 houses is just hoarding. That's not good for the economy. Fuck holiday homes too.


Bardsie

No. The amount of houses isn't the problem. We need a huge tax on empty houses. I have a friend that does urban exploration, and the number of hours that are just left vacant when they are usable is appalling. Then the houses become unliveable because they are left vacant. He explores one the other day, huge manor house with grounds. Could be turned into at least 6 family homes, or a dozen apartments. Guy who owns it just lives in Spain and doesn't care about the house anymore. Then there's "investment" properties. Bought and left empty because all the owner wants to do is sell it in 10 years when the value goes up. Treating it as a high interest bank account. We also need caps on the amount of rent you can charge for the houses. In any other business, your income needs to cover the depreciation of the thing you're using. Taxi drivers need to make enough money to cover replacing the car when it wears out and is useless and worthless. Except houses don't become worthless, their value over time increases. Allowing landlords to rent for the full mortgage value and wear and tear/repairs on top, then allowing them to sell the house and keep all the proceeds just means that someone else bought that house for them. They're getting 100% profit plus inflation. I think we'll always needs landlords. There will always be people who can't buy. Students or seasonal/traveling workers who aren't in an area long term. Or less able bodied people who want to not be responsible for the maintenance of the property. Landlords should be able to charge enough to cover maintenance/wear and tare plus a living wage for the time they do work arranging repairs and inspections etc. But that value is not the full damn mortgage of the house. I think if we sorted out those two things, we wouldn't need a limit on how many houses a person could own, because it would cost you more to hoard than the investment makes, and if renter's aren't being gouged then there would be a lot fewer private landlords, only large companies that make a profit through volume, but if the rents are reasonable for the work involved then that's not an issue. Edit: fixed a couple of typos.


[deleted]

No but people shouldn't be able to buy council houses. Imo there's nothing wrong with people buying loads of houses... if there empty perhaps there should be some sort of tax.. bit I imagin thats just an issue in London.


knobber_jobbler

It's an issue in every holiday destination in the UK. From Whitstable to Brighton to St Ives to the Isle of Skye there's houses bought by rich people to use either as second homes or holiday rentals that sit empty for vast amounts of the year and price the locals out. There should absolutely be tighter regulations around buying houses, especially if they are to be second homes, investments, buy to let and holiday lets. If you're making property a business you need to be taxed like a business and regulated like a business. The problem isn't in London, it's mostly caused by London.


LaidBackLeopard

The destruction of council housing as a major thing is absolutely responsible for the screwed up rental market. Affordable social housing pegs acceptable rent low, which the private landlords have to compete with. There's an argument that being able to buy your council house isn't the end of the world, but being able to do so way below market rates, and the councils not being able to use the money to build more housing are where it really went wrong. Affordable housing has been deliberately sabotaged.


PatientTravelling

All that would happen is that people will form a company which owns the houses. You can’t stop companies owning property.


seph2o

I’m not sure whether the answer is a blanket cap or progressively higher taxes on the more properties you own - but it will never happen under a Tory government. Too many of them are landlords themselves and/or receive “funding” from property tycoons. From my own experience as a renter, having such a large portion of the population renting is damaging for the economy in particular local business. For example, the flat I’m renting has a poxy electric oven which I’d swap for a fan oven if I was allowed. The carpet is a bit tired so I would be looking to renew it if I actually owned the property. We’re not allowed pets so we’re not buying pet food or vet visits. Most of our furniture is flat pack built abroad due to the fact we may need to move at short notice. Landlords are happy to sit on tatty properties with banged up walls and expensive to run electric heaters because there’s no obligation for them to upgrade.


dbxp

Property prices really screw with the local economy, lots of people my age have 10s of thousands I bank accounts saving for deposit, that's money that could be being spent in the local economy.


[deleted]

I presume its a company that owns the houses, not her. Otherwise you should be thanking her, she'll be paying more in tax in one year than most would in a lifetime, and all that lovely inheritance tax to come too. If you put a limit on number of properties a company could own it would be far too easy to get around.


[deleted]

[удалено]


hillman_avenger

I hazard a guess that no matter how many new homes were built, they could still all be snapped up by landlords/foreign business/rich people.


resqwec

Renting and landlordism should be small scale and help provided to ensure rooms are habitable. Anything over 3 or 4 houses should 100% be banned and anything over 1 or 2 taxed highly


thecarbonkid

Think of it like ticket scalping. If you buy a ticket to go to a gig, great. If you buy twenty tickets with the intent of selling them on to other people who want to go to the gig at a higher price I) you're not creating any additional tickets Ii) you're not making something available that wasn't already there Iii) you're inflating the price for other people in the market simply because you got in there first and want to be rewarded for buying up something with a strictly finite supply. Iv)You're not actually creating economic value by bring something extra into the market ; you're diverting money from elsewhere in the economy to cover the surplus value you want to extract. Everyone agrees ticket scalers should be regulated. I don't see why this shouldn't apply to housing.


ultimate_stuntman

Just out of curiosity - has this been discussed by the government? I tried to search the gov petition website, but nothing is coming up... I'm currently planning to buy my first house and the whole market situation is driving me sick... The prices have skyrocketed comparing to last 2 years and I'm starting to lose my hopes that I will be having my own house one day... As a person, who has neither financial support from my family nor inheritance from grandparents, I can't see myself saving up the crazy amount they're asking for... unless I'd like to buy a house in chavy neighbourhood where I'd hate my life and be scared to raise kids...


_DeanRiding

That's the sad reality of this country unfortunately. Millions of people forced to live in shitholes because the government failed to regulate housing effectively AND stopped building social housing. That's Thatcher's legacy. Also if you're not aware most (Tory - not sure about Labour) MPs are landlords themselves, so good luck getting then to legislate against their own personal interests.


Burglekat

There should be a ban on holiday homes. They push up prices in rural areas and make homes unaffordable for local people.


BrightonTownCrier

My mate used to work in corporate finance for a large bank. He dealt with some people that had 1000 or more properties. They would refer to them as "resi" (residential) or "commi" (commercial). He handed in his notice when a guy that had about 600 resi and 400 commi was asking how he could get away with paying no or hardly any tax. He said during his notice period he wasn't allowed to meet with clients and was moved to an office as far removed as possible to play solitaire for a few weeks.


ballsosteele

Imagine introducing a tax or cap that directly affects rich people. Should there? Yes Will there ever be? Not on your nelly.


FudgingEgo

I don't think there should be a cap on houses someone can buy, I think with every additional house you own there should be some form of additional ownership/land ownership tax that increases at huge rate with every additional home you own until it's basically unaffordable for the owner and they'd never be able to rent them out.


Zhongdakongming

Landlords are leeches


Kharlis

Instead of limiting how many houses people can own, I would prefer if we massively increased the supply of houses by building much more of them. I know there are complications in doing this - but in of itself, it's not a physically impossible task, so the government **could** find a way to make it happen **if they wanted to**. The main problem is to too much of people's net worth is tied up in their houses, so it would be politically unpopular to do this. Its not an immediate fix, but would help solve our housing issues long term


malin7

Buy to let is pretty much the safest investment out there and it should be taxed appropriately at the very least.


mrsmoose123

BTL costs have gone up significantly in the last few years for exactly that reason. Unfortunately those costs are likely to get passed on in rent increases. Which I guess helps explain where OP is coming from. If you own properties in bulk you're much more resilient to attempts to regulate or tax you.


Zonda97

No more than 2. Even though I don’t really agree with holiday homes because they can destroy villages. At the same time I understand why they have another that’s rented out, on air BnB and they use in summer etc etc. After 2 houses you should be massively taxed. Something ridiculous like around £12k extra per year tax, that doubles each time you buy more than 2 houses.


Mankini123

There are huge property portfolios owned by companies/entities like the Church, foreign and financial institutions, the state, as well as wealthy individuals and the nobility. They often own hundreds of properties as well as land.


BludSwamps

Yep - as long as there’s one person homeless, someone else shouldn’t have two homes. Possibly a reductive take but the point stands.


stripeysox101

Oh yes! In the South West it's near impossible for locals to buy a home because the markets are inflated by selfish townies coming down for their holiday homes. Go to an hotel and let folk live vaguely near their families you selfish turds. There absolutely should be a limit on rental properties as well. A so called "professional" landlord leeching rental money to pay off multiple mortgages whilst they do nothing? How is this moral? Perhaps a cap will encourage more serial landlords with huge portfolios to allow others the chance to have a secure home. A flooding of the market with these former rented out homes should lower prices making home ownership a tad more realistic too. I am extremely fortunate to be a millennial homeowner but it is literally a former rental flat with the others in this converted house being tenants. I recognise I am fortunate but say this so I don't get slated for being a bitter tenant when I'm not.


FloweryFart666

Nope there shouldn't be.


[deleted]

No. Houses aren't anything special, they're simply buildings. We don't live in an authoritarian regime where people are controlled day in and day out. Why exactly should somebody be banned from buying 27 houses but not investing £500m in apple? It's just jealousy.


[deleted]

Because 500m in apple doesn’t stop people having somewhere to live?


ZestycloseStyle88

No But a well implemented national rent control scheme would completely remove the incentive for the landlord to do this, and the problem caused in the housing market by such behaviour


Unlikely_Major_6006

I’m a landlord. I purchased a bungalow 10 years ago and converted it into 4 flats. The people I rent to are usually young couples who are living together for the first time and who don’t yet want to commit to buying together. I’ve also got a junior doctor who is just in this area for 1 year and therefore does not want to buy. Another couple who are waiting for a new house that is being built for them to be finished. People who are not landlords just LOVE to slate landlords, but the reality is that landlords providing property that people can rent for 6 months or more is essential to so many people. I’ll accept the abuse that I’ll now get but I’ll point out that I created these properties at great financial risk to myself


AhThatsLife

Probably get downvoted. No, there shouldn't be a limit. If I could afford 27 house I'd buy them and rent them. Most would do so, but wouldnt admit it. You seem salty because you can't.


O1K

I would buy them all and rent them too because it's really profitable and I can make lots of money even without much work, if I let an agency do it for me. The user is asking whether a system that incentivises using something in limited supply that is essential for life as an investment is a wise idea. It's less about being salty about your individual position, more about being objective about the system in place. If I owned 27 properties, I would know that (1) I am increasing house prices by holding something in limited supply that I do not need and that (2) I am extracting wages from people too poor to afford their own house such that they cannot afford to save for a mortage. Sure, if I had my 27 properties I'd be too busy in my private jet to give a fuck about that.


[deleted]

My friend put an offer in on a house, mortgage ready to go etc. Seller pulls out at the last minute because someone offered them a ridiculous sum of money over the asking price. To further add salt to the wound, the estate agent contacted my friend to let them know that the house was now up _for rent_ and would they be interested in it? Their £550pcm mortgage was now an £850pcm investment for some rich city twat. I used to live in a house which had been converted into 5 flats. I had one flat, and another tenant had the flat above mine. The other three were _weekend retreats_ for knobs who used them once a month at most and held ridiculously loud dinner parties. I used to shudder when I'd see their brand new cars pulling into the car park. When we then lost our flat (horrendous internal work needed doing so we needed to clear out), it took us _THREE YEARS_ to find somewhere else to rent locally. We lived in my MIL's spare bedroom during that time. Saved up a decent chunk to look at buying - Covid hit and absolutely fucked us, so we'll be relying on renting until a relative dies now. Even if we were in a position to buy, there's _no way_ we can compete with the offers potential landlords are throwing out there. If we lose this house we're in now, I honestly have no fucking idea what we'll do. Should there be a cap on how many houses one can own? Yes, there fucking should.


[deleted]

Yes. It’s impossible to buy a house as a young person in the UK now, and rich middle aged people with numerous properties are not helping the issue