Cost of Living - How are you handling it?

In defence of the article, it identifies that one in 21 adults in the UK is a landlord, and a good way of improving our housing per head ratio would reducing the population by 5%

Grumpy David wrote:the article you linked is misinformation and easily proven as such

So you are saying that all of the points made in the article, and the accompanying statistics, are false?

The same grumpy fella wrote:The article you linked only offers the 2nd suggestion and denies the existence of the 1st as a meaningful issue.

And as we all know, linking to an article means your opinions align completely with the author on every point.

You seem particularly keen to defend landlords, David. What's your view?

Knoyleo wrote:In defence of the article, it identifies that one in 21 adults in the UK is a landlord, and a good way of improving our housing per head ratio would reducing the population by 5%

If we had a population cull, then I guarantee it won't be the landlords that get reduced.

Moggy wrote:

Knoyleo wrote:In defence of the article, it identifies that one in 21 adults in the UK is a landlord, and a good way of improving our housing per head ratio would reducing the population by 5%

If we had a population cull, then I guarantee it won't be the landlords that get reduced.

Think of how many people would become homeless if our lords and saviours the landlords suddenly disappeared overnight.

I've been saying it for years, but it's still getting worse: we're slipping back towards feudalism. Instead of landowners, property owners will gradually increase their holding, until the masses have to work for them in order to have somewhere to live.

Herdanos wrote:

Grumpy David wrote:the article you linked is misinformation and easily proven as such

So you are saying that all of the points made in the article, and the accompanying statistics, are false?

Grumpy David wrote:The article you linked only offers the 2nd suggestion and denies the existence of the 1st as a meaningful issue.

And as we all know, linking to an article means your opinions align completely with the author on every point.

You seem particularly keen to defend landlords, David. What's your view?

Did you read The Financial Times article or The New European article I linked in my previous post? I have to ask because your posts only make sense if you haven't done this?

You linked an article with no comment at all. I wasn't critical of you, I was critical of the article being deeply flawed.

I've no skin in the game (it seems like you're insinuating I'm a landlord?).

I'm not defending private landlords, I'm not a landlord and never will be (and have repeatedly argued it's a terrible investment choice even if you're in a position to buy a rental property).

It's just not true that abolishing private landlords will fix the actual issue - we've not built enough homes for almost half a century and we now have a deficit of 4 million+ homes needing to be built which widens every year since we don't even build enough to maintain just a deficit of 4 million.

I wish it was as simple as that article made out, abolishing landlords would be a much faster fix than actually building 4 million homes and all the necessary associated infrastructure alongside it. Any article that doesn't acknowledge the reason housing is so expensive is because we've not built enough is putting secondary factors ahead of the primary factor.

rinks wrote:I've been saying it for years, but it's still getting worse: we're slipping back towards feudalism. Instead of landowners, property owners will gradually increase their holding, until the masses have to work for them in order to have somewhere to live.

That's the way it's going, unless there's a revolution.

And I don't think there will be a revolution.

I did read both articles (though they linked via some archive website rather than the source, so much of the page was covered by ads for Wickes) as well as briefly looking up the authors.

If we build loads of homes, loads of them will be bought by landlords.

Our system is far too skewed towards encouraging landlordism ahead of home occupier ownership.

Property companies are always going to favour building larger, more expensive homes as the returns are greater and it's easier to make more profit.

Local authorities are too crippled with care costs to even consider building social housing. Housing associations struggle to compete.

We desperately need to disincentivise landlordism alongside building homes. Otherwise all we'll end up doing is creating more landlords.

Lots of smaller, private landlords are actually selling up at a higher rate over the last couple of years. A mixture of high interest rates affecting potential yields and uncertainty about future costly energy requirements.

Ironically though, they're the best kind of landlords for tenants typically - and they are the ones who are leaving the market.

And they're selling to the other kinds of landlords. The ones who are not best for tenants.

Herdanos wrote:
If we build loads of homes, loads of them will be bought by landlords.

That's true, but they want to make a profit on those homes. If renters have a choice of loads of homes and there's no supply problems, then the landlords will have to reduce their rents or face having empty and profitless homes.

But that's not the way I think we should do it. In a situation where a government actually wants to help people, then you'd build lots of council homes. If the government isn't wanting to be that helpful, then build the homes while also placing restrictions and/or sky high tax on anybody trying to become a landlord.

But I don't see either main party doing anything to actually help.

Herdanos wrote:I did read both articles (though they linked via some archive website rather than the source, so much of the page was covered by ads for Wickes) as well as briefly looking up the authors.

If we build loads of homes, loads of them will be bought by landlords.

Our system is far too skewed towards encouraging landlordism ahead of home occupier ownership.

Property companies are always going to favour building larger, more expensive homes as the returns are greater and it's easier to make more profit.

Local authorities are too crippled with care costs to even consider building social housing. Housing associations struggle to compete.

We desperately need to disincentivise landlordism alongside building homes. Otherwise all we'll end up doing is creating more landlords.

They could set up a system of having a covenant attached to a chunk of new-build homes, whereby the property could only ever be for individual usage of the home owner(s). Which could at least siphon off a part of the property market for young home buyers - although they'd need to build enough of them to start edging the prices down.

There will always need to be homes for renting though. Even if prices fall, there are still millions at certain points in their lives who are nowhere near being in a position to own a property, or would want to own a property, regardless of the cost. So there would always be a limit on how much disincentivisation you can realistically apply to landlords. For as long as people need to rent, property owners will need some incentives to facilitate that.

Basically there needs to be a sweet spot where a landlord can make a little bit more than they would investing the money elsewhere, but not too much more. Perhaps they need to bring in a rental evaluation system, whereby they would need to break down their costs and rent charged for each property and justify the profit percentage beyond a certain point.

It would be profit percentage based on the mortgage (plus costs) or profit percentage VS Average Investment Returns (+ small increase) for landlords who own properties which are paid in full.

But you'll never stop landlords making some profit. You can't have properties to rent without that, and vice versa. In theory, it shouldn't be a major problem, it's just the market in the UK is grossly insufficient for the population and the rents are too high due to lack of competition.

Imrahil wrote:But you'll never stop landlords making some profit. You can't have properties to rent without that,

We did for decades when people could actually get council houses.

Moggy wrote:

Imrahil wrote:But you'll never stop landlords making some profit. You can't have properties to rent without that,

We did for decades when people could actually get council houses.

Some people. But the practicalities of getting a council house market going again seem pretty insurmountable to me.

Imrahil wrote:

Moggy wrote:

Imrahil wrote:But you'll never stop landlords making some profit. You can't have properties to rent without that,

We did for decades when people could actually get council houses.

Some people. But the practicalities of getting a council house market going again seem pretty insurmountable to me.

Some? You mean lots.

It's certainly very possible if the political will is there.

Can we execute the NIMBYs as well as the landlords? Every time there's anything about building houses near my area, local groups get together to oppose the plans, and then everyone seems to treat it as a great success when they stop the houses from being built.

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:Can we execute the NIMBYs as well as the landlords? Every time there's anything about building houses near my area, local groups get together to oppose the plans, and then everyone seems to treat it as a great success when they stop the houses from being built.

While they sit around tutting that their kids/grandkids have to move out of the area because it's too expensive for them?

Hmm, I wonder what the problem is.

Moggy wrote:

Oblomov Boblomov wrote:Can we execute the NIMBYs as well as the landlords? Every time there's anything about building houses near my area, local groups get together to oppose the plans, and then everyone seems to treat it as a great success when they stop the houses from being built.

While they sit around tutting that their kids/grandkids have to move out of the area because it's too expensive for them?

Well if they cancelled Netflix and stopped buying Starbucks they'd be able to afford to stay in the area!