Buying a house (and renting)

Skarjo wrote:I live in HK and want to set something up back in the UK in case things go tits up or I retire. I’ve got enough to put down a deposit on a place, so I’d buy somewhere I wouldn’t mind living like Yorkshire, rent it out until I want to come back and then move in.

It’s not an investment to make money per se, just somewhere to stick spare cash for a couple of decades.

All jokes aside, if you can afford to do that then it's not too evil an idea. Just don't be a banana split to the tenants.

Moggy can play with my houses.

I don't see the problem with investing in more properties, it's a shrewd investment for retirement. If I had a second home for making another income from, ideally I'd want the kind where you'd have a family move in indefinitely, then when I want to sell, offer them first dibs on buying it before putting it on the market.

Skarjo wrote:Moggy can play with my houses.

Ahhh now it's "houses".

You're a monster.

Moggy wrote:

Skarjo wrote:Moggy can play with my houses.

Ahhh now it's "houses".

You're a monster.

It’s been such a long day at work that when I glanced at that I saw the bolding and assumed I’d made a grammar error.

So for just a split second I wondered whether the plural of ‘house’ might actually be ‘hice’.

Victor Mildew wrote:I don't see the problem with investing in more properties, it's a shrewd investment for retirement. If I had a second home for making another income from, ideally I'd want the kind where you'd have a family move in indefinitely, then when I want to sell, offer them first dibs on buying it before putting it on the market.

Landlords snapping up properties helps drive house prices up making it a lot more difficult for our generation and subsequent generations to buy a home. Bigger demand against limited supply means a hugely inflated house market which has increased exponentially against inflation over the past few decades.

Having said that, there is clearly a huge difference between someone investing in a few properties for their retirement like you are talking about and your Robbie Fowler super landlord types with huge investment portfolies that snap up hundreds of properties and make it that much more difficult for poor people to pull themselves up onto their housing ladder.

In my mind, there is a certainly a place for rentals-for example, young professionals living in city flats who dont want the long term commitment of buying a propertg there benefit from good landlords, but the banana splits buying all the family homes they can get their hands on are just keeping the poor at the bottom so they can profit off them.

Skarjo wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Skarjo wrote:Moggy can play with my houses.

Ahhh now it's "houses".

You're a monster.

It’s been such a long day at work that when I glanced at that I saw the bolding and assumed I’d made a grammar error.

So for just a split second I wondered whether the plural of ‘house’ might actually be ‘hice’.

Btw, if you are looking to build up a property portfolio, then I know of a flat in Bristol you can buy.....

Tomous wrote:

Victor Mildew wrote:I don't see the problem with investing in more properties, it's a shrewd investment for retirement. If I had a second home for making another income from, ideally I'd want the kind where you'd have a family move in indefinitely, then when I want to sell, offer them first dibs on buying it before putting it on the market.

Landlords snapping up properties helps drive house prices up making it a lot more difficult for our generation and subsequent generations to buy a home. Bigger demand against limited supply means a hugely inflated house market which has increased exponentially against inflation over the past few decades.

Having said that, there is clearly a huge difference between someone investing in a few properties for their retirement like you are talking about and your Robbie Fowler super landlord types with huge investment portfolies that snap up hundreds of properties and make it that much more difficult for poor people to pull themselves up onto their housing ladder.

In my mind, there is a certainly a place for rentals-for example, young professionals living in city flats who dont want the long term commitment of buying a propertg there benefit from good landlords, but the banana splits buying all the family homes they can get their hands on are just keeping the poor at the bottom so they can profit off them.

You're right, there is a difference: those with only a few properties just haven't yet built up enough wealth in order to purchase more of them.

There is certainly a place for a rental market, but not for private individuals/companies to make a profit from it.

Here comes Ecno with his conversation pits... I want one of those now .

This reminds me of when I first moved into the place I'm renting at the moment, where the woman who showed us around the property says she looks after it as the owner is in the US and has the place as an investment for his retirement, which sounded fair enough.

On our second viewing she mentioned he owns a few of the flats in the block, so sounded like quite a big retirement investment. Then later on after we asked a few questions about what we would need to do if repairs etc were needed she mentioned he has 30 flats in the area so has good connections with plumbers/electricians etc...

When we found out his name we looked him up and he is an exec at some hedge fund company in the US So I'm glad the £30,000 a month (assuming most of the flats are rent at about £1k a month) will help them retire comfortably.

If a landlord plans on evicting the tenants to move in themselves at a later date I think that should be made very clear to any prospective tenants because being evicted sucks.

I also don't like renting through an agency (as I do now) as opposed to privately directly with the landlord (as I have before). Privately it feels like the landlord is doing some work to justify their profit - they deal directly with maintenance and any issues, they can organise paying bills, and anything else - whereas through an agency all the work is contracted out and the landlord does nothing but watch the profit roll in.

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:

Tomous wrote:

Victor Mildew wrote:I don't see the problem with investing in more properties, it's a shrewd investment for retirement. If I had a second home for making another income from, ideally I'd want the kind where you'd have a family move in indefinitely, then when I want to sell, offer them first dibs on buying it before putting it on the market.

Landlords snapping up properties helps drive house prices up making it a lot more difficult for our generation and subsequent generations to buy a home. Bigger demand against limited supply means a hugely inflated house market which has increased exponentially against inflation over the past few decades.

Having said that, there is clearly a huge difference between someone investing in a few properties for their retirement like you are talking about and your Robbie Fowler super landlord types with huge investment portfolies that snap up hundreds of properties and make it that much more difficult for poor people to pull themselves up onto their housing ladder.

In my mind, there is a certainly a place for rentals-for example, young professionals living in city flats who dont want the long term commitment of buying a propertg there benefit from good landlords, but the banana splits buying all the family homes they can get their hands on are just keeping the poor at the bottom so they can profit off them.

You're right, there is a difference: those with only a few properties just haven't yet built up enough wealth in order to purchase more of them.

There is certainly a place for a rental market, but not for private individuals/companies to make a profit from it.

Here comes Ecno with his conversation pits... I want one of those now .

I've decided the amount of conversation pits required can only be achieved by diktat.

OrangeRKN wrote:I also don't like renting through an agency (as I do now) as opposed to privately directly with the landlord (as I have before). Privately it feels like the landlord is doing some work to justify their profit - they deal directly with maintenance and any issues, they can organise paying bills, and anything else - whereas through an agency all the work is contracted out and the landlord does nothing but watch the profit roll in.

But the letting agent fees for the landlord are often between 15 - 20% of the rent. The landlord will get to watch far more profit roll in if they manage the property themselves - plus there's only so much stuff that needs to be organised each month once the tenant is settled in, there's not really much to it.

It's only out of convenience and practicality that landlords use letting agents. Like if they live long distance, or work full time, or have lots of properties. Part-time or retired landlords who manage individual properties themselves come off the best, profit-wise I think.

Imrahil's got it right here.

My last landlord, before I got onto the ladder myself, had it just right. He moved to Almeria with his wife and dumped the "management" of the property onto his son.

Of course they make less profit going through a letting agents, but the difference is still doing some work versus not doing any work. The majority of the time being a landlord might be an easy job, but at least if you're managing the property yourself you're doing something to earn the money you make. Passing all the work off to a letting agents just lays bare the capitalist lie that wealth is deserved as those who earn more work harder. It's not true and it's obviously unfair - those renting lose out as money they need to save to buy a house of their own is instead being given to the landlord in return for... nothing. It's possibly the most direct example you can get of how wealth disparity grows.

tl;dr if you're a landlord profiting from an agent managed property, should you feel bad? Yes, probably. It's feudalism under another guise.

The letting agent of my flat also does the maintenance, and I much prefer them to my girlfriend's landlord who is an individual who only owns this one house.

It's a lot less hassle whilst every time my girlfriend needs something done it's like pulling teeth and it's done my what ever person the landlord has recently met who can do it.

I appreciate these might not be representative.

All landlords should feel bad about choosing to use their financial resources to purchase state-violence-enforced ownership of a shelter they aren't using, then profiting from the basic need of other humans to sleep in that shelter rather than freezing to death on the ground. They should simply invest in something else.

I imagine at the end of the day it will always vary on a case by case basis. Some landlords will be great at being hands-on where others aren't and some letting agencies are going to be better than others as well.

In my experience I had a far better time when renting when I was dealing with a landlord directly but I was definitely lucky with the people I was renting from as they were decent folk.

Ecno wrote:The letting agent of my flat also does the maintenance, and I much prefer them to my girlfriend's landlord who is an individual who only owns this one house.

It's a lot less hassle whilst every time my girlfriend needs something done it's like pulling teeth and it's done my what ever person the landlord has recently met who can do it.

I appreciate these might not be representative.

Sounds like you guys should pool your wealth and escape the rental market.

Moggy wrote:

Skarjo wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Skarjo wrote:Moggy can play with my houses.

Ahhh now it's "houses".

You're a monster.

It’s been such a long day at work that when I glanced at that I saw the bolding and assumed I’d made a grammar error.

So for just a split second I wondered whether the plural of ‘house’ might actually be ‘hice’.

Btw, if you are looking to build up a property portfolio, then I know of a flat in Bristol you can buy.....

Searchusername="Moggy"

Searchterm="Landlord"

Skarjo wrote:I live in HK and want to set something up back in the UK in case things go tits up or I retire. I’ve got enough to put down a deposit on a place, so I’d buy somewhere I wouldn’t mind living like Yorkshire, rent it out until I want to come back and then move in.

It’s not an investment to make money per se, just somewhere to stick spare cash for a couple of decades.

A first time buyer wanting a BTL whilst living in the UK is difficult enough (regardless of income or deposit, for most lenders it's a flat out no). Add in the difficulty of needing an Ex Pat lender and you're best off speaking to an Ex Pat brokerage.

Probably looking at a crazy interest rate too, wouldn't be surprised if it was a good bit over 5%.