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See, sometimes you speak sense Kermy.
200% council tax on second homes
and removing that bloody domicile law that enables people like abramovich to stay in uk for 180 days a year and pay near 0 tax because he doesnt sleep here (which is what counts as a domicile day) or the scientologists who paid around £8000 tax last year only
So we "moved in" on July 1st, by which I mean started paying rent as one of us was in Norwich, the other in Reading and I stayed a day and then went to Nepal for five weeks. My flatmate returned around mid August, I was back early August and another in late August. Around mid September we found out our sink was blocked with fat...
Now just to tell people, two of us are vegatarians (so it can't have been animal fat), we're all very health conscious and don't fry a great deal of food, nor do we pour oil down there.
Needless to say we got charged for it. :grump: He told us that he had got a new sink put in and it was our fault. Wtf???
He also threatened (nicely) to kick us out for not clearing up because he just walked around after the sink was fixed looking about. But the thing is, the place wasn't a mess, it wasn't spotless, but it wasn't filthy.
JimV took it from another thread.
Not all landlords are fatcats buying up the properties.
I would be interested in buying a property and renting it out as an investment.. not at the current prices but when they take the next dip, if I am in the position too then I will...it will be an investment in my sons future.
A lot of landlords provide good, long term accomodation those who don't want or can't buy.. what's the problem with that?
Haha I was so confused
I hope what I said isn't being taken out of proportion! (which of course would never happen on this site :razz: )
I personally think landlords are just like anyone else. Some are lovely, genuine people and some are assholes who are out to take whatever they can get
my experience with landlords has been mixed but mostly good, to be fair i wasn't the ideal tenant in my student days either...i don't think you can point the finger at landlords for pricing people out of the market, they have made the problem worse for sure but they're not the cause, blame the banks for easy credit and lax lending practices.....and the suckers who keep drowning themselves in more debt because of the "house prices only ever go up" mentality keeps the madness going, i wouldn't worry too much because you can't have boom without bust, and there will be a lot of BTLers up shit creek without a paddle in the near future.
Not so.
Supply and huge wodges of cash.
Let's see. I can afford to pay "3120k for a house. The Duke of Westminster can afrford to pay double that. Who do you think that the owner would sell it to - even though DoW owns a huge number of houses already. He then "offers" to rent me the house at the same price per month as my mortgage would be, plus 5% for his letting agent.
As an example.
This is what it is like to live in a University town/The Lakes. Locals are priced out of the market. Do you think that is a good thing?
They may not be fatcats (many actually buy on 95% mortgages now) but the simple fact of the matter is that the buy-to-let market is what has caused property prices to double in little over five years, taking it way beyond the reach of what most people can afford. People have exploited the boom in prices to raise deposits for second and third homes.
Even in London there are enough houses and flats for the amount of people who need them (the Birmingham analogy is stupid), the reason why a 3-bedroom semi costs £300,000 is because of the way BTL landlords have driven prices higher and higher.
I'm sure many landlords are decent and honest people, but the reason why my two-bedroom mid-terrace costs four times as much as it did ten years ago is because of the way landlords have bought up all the properties in the more central areas of the city, driving up prices. The first-time buyers, people like me, have been driven out of the city, and now prices are getting driven up in this area too (the value of my house has gone up by about 10% in the year I've owned it).
It isn't "supply and demand"- there is enough supply to meet the demand if everyone only bought one house. That's why there are always empty flats in London- the problem is the "investors" who buy up all the property, artificially inflating prices and ensuring that the poor (and even the middle classes) cannot afford to buy.
The fact that I cannot afford to buy a house within 30 miles of where my wife was born and brought up is exactly why society is crumbling- drive families apart because of property speculation and the rise in anti-social behaviour is what happens.
It nicely illustrates the problem with free markets, doesn't it? Namely that they do not provide for human need.
Imagine 10,000 cheap houses were suddenly built. I bet the speculators would jump on them and snap them all up, just creating more rental property. Because the bigger the portfolio the better, right?
Having said that, I'm not completely blameless. Mum is possibly going to buy a house to let to me and friends whilst I'm at uni.
and those are countries where the majority rent not buy.
while housing production peaked at 165k in 2001.
This is quite clearly a supply problem.
A lot have no jobs/poor credit history/no deposit etc etc.
Are you saying someone like me shouldn't buy two just because someone else can't afford to buy one? Please..
To blame this whole housing blow out on BTL is foolish, BTL has been going on for YEARS. And in the past BTL was a lot more attractive, you could have a £70/month mortgage and rent it out for £250-£300!
Now it's hard to rent for the price of the monthly mortgage unless you placed a hefty deposit!
Of course I don't think it's a 'good' thing. However, I don't construe that people have some automatic right to be able to afford to buy a house in the same town as their parents. If someone is brought up in Kensington and ends up a poorly paid journalist should the State be subsidising a flat in South Kensington so they don't have to leave their local area? I don't think so.
This means you have less disposable income, whilst the investors have more. Thus creating income inequality. Which is bad. Unequitable. It is normally the policy of the government to try to adjust the market or 'nudge' it to make it fairer on everyone. Especially as we apparently have a 'labour' government (clue is in the name: supposed to be supporting the working masses, my arse).
The beauty of a free market is that it will just find a natural course, but you need government intervention to prevent exploitation. Building more houses is simply a narrowminded short term solution that wont work. It's the same attitude with congestion - surely if we build more roads then it will stop congestion? Unfortunately in areas like central london and the south east, the congestion is caused because of the sheer volume of traffic and it's not going to ease up, you need to stop the people using cars, or at least sharing them, so there are less cars on the road full stop.
Hence road / fuel tax and congestion charges.
Why haven't they done the same with housing? In many ways it's a similar problem, there is an excess demand for property which is driving prices up, but the demand is coming from areas it shouldn't be (just like people who drive to work who could walk or bus or cycle). This means that people who need it (people who need a first home to live in ffs, or with the road analogy; space on the road for ambulances, or the PM, arguably ) will be able to get it.
A little talk of an alleged free market at the tail end of this thread, but no evidence is given of this mythical beast/beauty.("Beauty" is my suspicion)
I haven`t encountered a free market in any housing industry.
Could someone give me the benefit of their experiences ?
What's your point?
The lack of social housing (which is a secured tenancy, none of this assured shorthold crap) is a serious issue in most areas too. But we're not talking about that.
But we're not talking about those people. We're talking about nurses, doctors, teachers, firemen, who can't afford to buy anywhere near where they are expected to work. That's a huge social problem.
But in the south-east even people on excellent wages cannot afford to buy. I have a friend who's reasonably high in a major bank, and she can't afford to buy. That's fucking stupid.
Trapping huge numbers of people in assured shorthold agreements is very bad socially- there is absolutely no security or continuity.
That's exactly what I am saying.
"Investment" in property is what is trapping so many people in insecure tenancies on extortionate rents.
Glad to see that you're full of the milk of human kindness.
That's exactly what the Government should be doing- providing enough social housing for all those who need it. And in the current climate, most people need social housing, because the property speculators have priced them out of everything else.
Changes should be made to either provide enough social housing for those who cannot afford to buy in an area, or to bring property prices back down so that they can afford to buy. Short-term tenancies are not good enough for most people- and yes, whilst most people in Europe do rent, they don't have tenancy agreements that mean the landlord can boot them out with one month's notice.
Which the University should be providing.
Universities don't even have enough halls for their freshers anymore. If people don't want to live in uni accomodation that's different, but universities shouldn't be creaming off money and expecting the local community to just lump it.