I'm very much enjoying the latest round of wailing from landlords having to handle falling property prices and rising interest rates. Hopefully the government pushes even harder and forces them into bankruptcy so the properties are repossessed and sold to owner occupiers.
Have to say that's a courageous idea (as Sir Humphrey would say).
Are you advocating the end of both the public and private rental sectors or just the private? There's a clear demand in London (accepting it may be less elsewhere) for short-term accommodation for students and for workers on short-term contracts.
There's undeniably a problem with properties bought up by wealthy foreigners for investment and we know a lot of very wealthy areas of London are like ghost towns but at the lower end of the housing market rental fulfils a clear need.
The London rental market of the last couple of years shows what happens when you have an ever increasing pool of people looking to rent (i.e. young people, new immigrants, etc, lots of people either without the ability or desire to buy a house), chasing after an ever decreasing puddle of available rental properties.
I get down on my knees and thank the gods I was able to buy a crappy shoebox in London a decade ago, because rents are now so sky high that I'd have absolutely zero chance of saving for a deposit - even if house prices went significantly lower.
If you tax landlords to oblivion, all you get is the unedifying spectacle of some landlord property shifting to owner occupiers (relatively rich renters) while the left behind (poorer renters) are left to pay an ever increasing percentage of their monthly salary to secure the property that's left on the rental market.
Demand is rising year on year thanks to immigration, people moving back to the city post covid, etc. The answer is to increase supply to match demand by building more houses for both owner occupiers and renters. Interfering in the market to force landlords out only makes things worse for those who have no other choice than to rent.
You're not wrong and I've no visibility of this but the idea of the London rental market being made up of single properties (it's just the wife's old flat) owned by individual renters isn't accurate.
Renting is industrial - I know anecdotally of one local businessman who has 90 properties, many of them corner sites. The first thing he does when buying a house is split it into as many bedrooms as possible so your two-bedroom family home becomes a five or six bedroom site with each room available for rent and a communal kitchen/bathroom.
That's not the worst examples of the new slums - it's well documented there are examples of 20 or more living in three bedroom semis in the suburbs and I'll be blunt here, this is where an open market for cheap labour ends up.
It's also the place where your dreams of multicultural immigration go to die.
A good point.
Speaking from experience, ten years ago when I was saving for a deposit I lived in a not particularly leafy part of east london and paid £850 a month for a particularly grotty one bed flat - about 450sq feet. A quick look on zoopla shows a near identical flat on the same street now going for over £1500pcm.
The building I lived in was an old victorian terraced house subdivided into individual flats on each floor, and was owned by a single landlord. He owned 26 properties all in all. The flat above the one to me was an identical one bed and was occupied by four people - an immigrant family.
While I saved up and got out as soon as I could, a) I wouldn't be able to save any more with rents being what they are today and b) there's no chance the immigrant family above me would ever be able to buy a place of their own.
I don't think the answer is to squeeze landlords, as most will pass their costs on to those who have no choice but to rent - though as others have said downthread, it's the world's smallest violin for the ones who do go bust.
The answer is to build, build, build, so that supply matches demand.
Taxing landlords out of the market only allows a few lucky cash rich and high earning renters to buy - those without deposits or the ability to save for one, those on low incomes, those who are transitory and young and aren't looking to put down roots, will suffer in the form of higher rental prices. Which is exactly what we've seen across the UK in student towns and in London over the last couple of years.
The answer is to build, build, build, so that supply matches demand.
Oat milk is wonderful - better than milk. Almond milk has no substance. Soya milk mostly tastes of dissolved blackboard chalk.
And in large parts of the north, but not all of it, buying houses for couples in their twenties who are not wealthy is not a huge issue. I live in such a place.
I'm very much enjoying the latest round of wailing from landlords having to handle falling property prices and rising interest rates. Hopefully the government pushes even harder and forces them into bankruptcy so the properties are repossessed and sold to owner occupiers.
Have to say that's a courageous idea (as Sir Humphrey would say).
Are you advocating the end of both the public and private rental sectors or just the private? There's a clear demand in London (accepting it may be less elsewhere) for short-term accommodation for students and for workers on short-term contracts.
There's undeniably a problem with properties bought up by wealthy foreigners for investment and we know a lot of very wealthy areas of London are like ghost towns but at the lower end of the housing market rental fulfils a clear need.
The London rental market of the last couple of years shows what happens when you have an ever increasing pool of people looking to rent (i.e. young people, new immigrants, etc, lots of people either without the ability or desire to buy a house), chasing after an ever decreasing puddle of available rental properties.
I get down on my knees and thank the gods I was able to buy a crappy shoebox in London a decade ago, because rents are now so sky high that I'd have absolutely zero chance of saving for a deposit - even if house prices went significantly lower.
If you tax landlords to oblivion, all you get is the unedifying spectacle of some landlord property shifting to owner occupiers (relatively rich renters) while the left behind (poorer renters) are left to pay an ever increasing percentage of their monthly salary to secure the property that's left on the rental market.
Demand is rising year on year thanks to immigration, people moving back to the city post covid, etc. The answer is to increase supply to match demand by building more houses for both owner occupiers and renters. Interfering in the market to force landlords out only makes things worse for those who have no other choice than to rent.
You're not wrong and I've no visibility of this but the idea of the London rental market being made up of single properties (it's just the wife's old flat) owned by individual renters isn't accurate.
Renting is industrial - I know anecdotally of one local businessman who has 90 properties, many of them corner sites. The first thing he does when buying a house is split it into as many bedrooms as possible so your two-bedroom family home becomes a five or six bedroom site with each room available for rent and a communal kitchen/bathroom.
That's not the worst examples of the new slums - it's well documented there are examples of 20 or more living in three bedroom semis in the suburbs and I'll be blunt here, this is where an open market for cheap labour ends up.
It's also the place where your dreams of multicultural immigration go to die.
A few things to say on this topic. First I have to admit to being a landlord, though it's not my primary economic activity. And to getting somewhat irritated at therefore being considered scum or the equivalent. But anyway: 1) Not all landlords try to split places up to maximize income, though I'm sure some do. I wouldn't rent out any property that I wouldn't be happy to live in myself. 2) if you use a limited company, the tax changes around not being able to offset finance charges don't apply. It's a business and is taxed in the normal way. 3) rental yeilds in London are crap. You can't possibly get the same yeilds in London as in places like Manchester or Southampton. So I don't know who rents out places in London unless they got them 'avcidentally'. 4) the other legislative changes coming down the track, in terms of giving greater stability to tenants and improving energy efficiency etc all seem good to me. I like tenants that stay a long time. 5) I suspect that the people complaining they can't make money any longer have been buying properties with high levels of borrowing and without fixing. Pretty much the same problem as small energy suppliers not hedging. Shit business model can go wrong. What a surprise...
Thanks for that - a really useful perspective.
Given your insight, I wouldn't gainsay any of the points you raise. I wouldn't want to generalise about landlords - I'm sure you and many others are entirely reputable and want what's best for your tenant.
Unfortunately, it's the bad apples who ruin the orchard and in my part of the world (Newham) the local media is full of examples of appalling housing conditions in which families with young children are forced to live.
I know of a friend in the investment property business and he won't touch properties in London with any kind of bargepole. He goes for provincial urban sites where he claims the rental yields are still very good.
I don't think the answer is to squeeze landlords, as most will pass their costs on to those who have no choice but to rent - though as others have said downthread, it's the world's smallest violin for the ones who do go bust.
The answer is to build, build, build, so that supply matches demand.
Taxing landlords out of the market only allows a few lucky cash rich and high earning renters to buy - those without deposits or the ability to save for one, those on low incomes, those who are transitory and young and aren't looking to put down roots, will suffer in the form of higher rental prices. Which is exactly what we've seen across the UK in student towns and in London over the last couple of years.
The answer is to build, build, build, so that supply matches demand.
I'm very much enjoying the latest round of wailing from landlords having to handle falling property prices and rising interest rates. Hopefully the government pushes even harder and forces them into bankruptcy so the properties are repossessed and sold to owner occupiers.
Have to say that's a courageous idea (as Sir Humphrey would say).
Are you advocating the end of both the public and private rental sectors or just the private? There's a clear demand in London (accepting it may be less elsewhere) for short-term accommodation for students and for workers on short-term contracts.
There's undeniably a problem with properties bought up by wealthy foreigners for investment and we know a lot of very wealthy areas of London are like ghost towns but at the lower end of the housing market rental fulfils a clear need.
The London rental market of the last couple of years shows what happens when you have an ever increasing pool of people looking to rent (i.e. young people, new immigrants, etc, lots of people either without the ability or desire to buy a house), chasing after an ever decreasing puddle of available rental properties.
I get down on my knees and thank the gods I was able to buy a crappy shoebox in London a decade ago, because rents are now so sky high that I'd have absolutely zero chance of saving for a deposit - even if house prices went significantly lower.
If you tax landlords to oblivion, all you get is the unedifying spectacle of some landlord property shifting to owner occupiers (relatively rich renters) while the left behind (poorer renters) are left to pay an ever increasing percentage of their monthly salary to secure the property that's left on the rental market.
Demand is rising year on year thanks to immigration, people moving back to the city post covid, etc. The answer is to increase supply to match demand by building more houses for both owner occupiers and renters. Interfering in the market to force landlords out only makes things worse for those who have no other choice than to rent.
You're not wrong and I've no visibility of this but the idea of the London rental market being made up of single properties (it's just the wife's old flat) owned by individual renters isn't accurate.
Renting is industrial - I know anecdotally of one local businessman who has 90 properties, many of them corner sites. The first thing he does when buying a house is split it into as many bedrooms as possible so your two-bedroom family home becomes a five or six bedroom site with each room available for rent and a communal kitchen/bathroom.
That's not the worst examples of the new slums - it's well documented there are examples of 20 or more living in three bedroom semis in the suburbs and I'll be blunt here, this is where an open market for cheap labour ends up.
It's also the place where your dreams of multicultural immigration go to die.
A few things to say on this topic. First I have to admit to being a landlord, though it's not my primary economic activity. And to getting somewhat irritated at therefore being considered scum or the equivalent. But anyway: 1) Not all landlords try to split places up to maximize income, though I'm sure some do. I wouldn't rent out any property that I wouldn't be happy to live in myself. 2) if you use a limited company, the tax changes around not being able to offset finance charges don't apply. It's a business and is taxed in the normal way. 3) rental yeilds in London are crap. You can't possibly get the same yeilds in London as in places like Manchester or Southampton. So I don't know who rents out places in London unless they got them 'avcidentally'. 4) the other legislative changes coming down the track, in terms of giving greater stability to tenants and improving energy efficiency etc all seem good to me. I like tenants that stay a long time. 5) I suspect that the people complaining they can't make money any longer have been buying properties with high levels of borrowing and without fixing. Pretty much the same problem as small energy suppliers not hedging. Shit business model can go wrong. What a surprise...
Thanks for that - a really useful perspective.
Given your insight, I wouldn't gainsay any of the points you raise. I wouldn't want to generalise about landlords - I'm sure you and many others are entirely reputable and want what's best for your tenant.
Unfortunately, it's the bad apples who ruin the orchard and in my part of the world (Newham) the local media is full of examples of appalling housing conditions in which families with young children are forced to live.
I know of a friend in the investment property business and he won't touch properties in London with any kind of bargepole. He goes for provincial urban sites where he claims the rental yields are still very good.
It's the classic - as the margins are squeezed, the reputable people exit the market. Those who remain are increasingly those who increase margins by various tricks and dodges. This ends with widespread illegality.
I'm very much enjoying the latest round of wailing from landlords having to handle falling property prices and rising interest rates. Hopefully the government pushes even harder and forces them into bankruptcy so the properties are repossessed and sold to owner occupiers.
Admittedly there's no violin small enough for the BTL landlords, but unfortunately I don't think a wave of fire sales is likely to end how you would like. Renting is so prevalent because the price of property is so outrageous that much of the population hasn't a hope in Hell of ever buying - and supply is so constricted that even a substantial wave of rental properties coming into the market as fire sales is unlikely to make enough of a difference to prices to change the situation sufficiently.
Instead, what we'll most likely get (and I believe that this is already happening) is a contraction in the number of available rentals on the market in the short term - so that renters end up being forced to pay scalper landlords even more for the remaining available homes - followed in the medium term by most of the rentals being bought up not by first time buyers, but by other landlords who have managed their finances better than the ones who've gone bust.
The net result is that few renters transition to owner-occupancy and all the remaining renters end up being fleeced for even more (because, having risen, rents ain't coming back down again.)
The only sustainable solutions to our woefully unbalanced, property speculation-based economy involve taxing incomes less and assets (especially houses) more, coupled with a vast program of building that will necessarily entail local communities, especially in the South East, having large housing estates and whole new towns forced upon them over the objections of existing homeowners. Or, to put it another way, an effective program of redistribution from the winners of the current system - broadly, the old and rich - to the losers - broadly, the young and poor. It goes without saying that the vast legions of wealthy asset holders who stand to lose out from reform (monied pensioners with big houses and nimbies, two groups that are fairly close to being a perfect circle on a Venn diagram) would scream with rage….
There is perhaps a way of squaring that circle.
Pick half a dozen or so ultra safe Conservative seats around London, and legislate to build new towns in them. 70% affordable housing.
WA 3rd Congressional District - Joe Kent Request Machine Recount LATEST RESULTS
Note that as per state law, only thing reviewed by election workers for requested MACHINE recounts, are UNDER-VOTES in the race at issue, which for WA03 = approx 4k
With six of seven counties having conducted & certified their portions of the machine recount in race for 3rd Dist. US House race:
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Democrat) original machine count = 160,314 machine recount so far = 160,321= change >> +7 votes (+6 in Clark Co and +1 in Cowlitz)
Joe Kent original machine count = 157,685 machine recount so far = 157.689 change >> +4 votes (+2 in Clark, +1 in Cowlitz and +1 in Thurston)
Write in votes original machine count = 1,760 machine recount so far = 1,766 change >> +6 votes (all in Clark)
Vote Margin MGP versus JK original machine count >> +2,929 machine recount so far >> +2,932 change >> net +3 votes
Last county standing is Skamania which will conduct then certify it's part of recount next Tuesday, Dec. 20; the number of under-votes they have to review = 122 or thereabouts.
There is really a county in the USA called Skamania.
Yes! Famous for its world-class windsurfing in the Columbia River Gorge.
Note that "ska" sound is common element in many Salish-language place names and features, for example the Skagit River, and thus Skagit County.
Further note that Salish-language is similar to Romance-language in that it is a family with many branches.
The seeming similarity between "Skamania" and any other mania, is only partially coincidental. It's a wonderful part of world with some wacky people . . . and visa versa . . .
Oat milk is wonderful - better than milk. Almond milk has no substance. Soya milk mostly tastes of dissolved blackboard chalk.
And in large parts of the north, but not all of it, buying houses for couples in their twenties who are not wealthy is not a huge issue. I live in such a place.
OK, I'll buy it. When and why did you dissolve blackboard chalk and drink it?
I'm very much enjoying the latest round of wailing from landlords having to handle falling property prices and rising interest rates. Hopefully the government pushes even harder and forces them into bankruptcy so the properties are repossessed and sold to owner occupiers.
Have to say that's a courageous idea (as Sir Humphrey would say).
Are you advocating the end of both the public and private rental sectors or just the private? There's a clear demand in London (accepting it may be less elsewhere) for short-term accommodation for students and for workers on short-term contracts.
There's undeniably a problem with properties bought up by wealthy foreigners for investment and we know a lot of very wealthy areas of London are like ghost towns but at the lower end of the housing market rental fulfils a clear need.
The London rental market of the last couple of years shows what happens when you have an ever increasing pool of people looking to rent (i.e. young people, new immigrants, etc, lots of people either without the ability or desire to buy a house), chasing after an ever decreasing puddle of available rental properties.
I get down on my knees and thank the gods I was able to buy a crappy shoebox in London a decade ago, because rents are now so sky high that I'd have absolutely zero chance of saving for a deposit - even if house prices went significantly lower.
If you tax landlords to oblivion, all you get is the unedifying spectacle of some landlord property shifting to owner occupiers (relatively rich renters) while the left behind (poorer renters) are left to pay an ever increasing percentage of their monthly salary to secure the property that's left on the rental market.
Demand is rising year on year thanks to immigration, people moving back to the city post covid, etc. The answer is to increase supply to match demand by building more houses for both owner occupiers and renters. Interfering in the market to force landlords out only makes things worse for those who have no other choice than to rent.
You're not wrong and I've no visibility of this but the idea of the London rental market being made up of single properties (it's just the wife's old flat) owned by individual renters isn't accurate.
Renting is industrial - I know anecdotally of one local businessman who has 90 properties, many of them corner sites. The first thing he does when buying a house is split it into as many bedrooms as possible so your two-bedroom family home becomes a five or six bedroom site with each room available for rent and a communal kitchen/bathroom.
That's not the worst examples of the new slums - it's well documented there are examples of 20 or more living in three bedroom semis in the suburbs and I'll be blunt here, this is where an open market for cheap labour ends up.
It's also the place where your dreams of multicultural immigration go to die.
A good point.
Speaking from experience, ten years ago when I was saving for a deposit I lived in a not particularly leafy part of east london and paid £850 a month for a particularly grotty one bed flat - about 450sq feet. A quick look on zoopla shows a near identical flat on the same street now going for over £1500pcm.
The building I lived in was an old victorian terraced house subdivided into individual flats on each floor, and was owned by a single landlord. He owned 26 properties all in all. The flat above the one to me was an identical one bed and was occupied by four people - an immigrant family.
While I saved up and got out as soon as I could, a) I wouldn't be able to save any more with rents being what they are today and b) there's no chance the immigrant family above me would ever be able to buy a place of their own.
I don't think the answer is to squeeze landlords, as most will pass their costs on to those who have no choice but to rent - though as others have said downthread, it's the world's smallest violin for the ones who do go bust.
The answer is to build, build, build, so that supply matches demand.
Taxing landlords out of the market only allows a few lucky cash rich and high earning renters to buy - those without deposits or the ability to save for one, those on low incomes, those who are transitory and young and aren't looking to put down roots, will suffer in the form of higher rental prices. Which is exactly what we've seen across the UK in student towns and in London over the last couple of years.
The answer is to build, build, build, so that supply matches demand.
Any other answer is avoidance bullshit.
I own 2 properties, by the way.
What is more, the lack of building means:
1 - we have just about the oldest average age of housing stock in Europe; and as a result 2 - have the least energy efficient housing stock
Governments have not dealt with the supply issue for decades - giving stamp duty cuts and buyer incentives if anything make it worse.
Oat milk is wonderful - better than milk. Almond milk has no substance. Soya milk mostly tastes of dissolved blackboard chalk.
And in large parts of the north, but not all of it, buying houses for couples in their twenties who are not wealthy is not a huge issue. I live in such a place.
OK, I'll buy it. When and why did you dissolve blackboard chalk and drink it?
You’d need a reasonably strong acid actually to dissolve chalk, so I would not recommend it.
Pick half a dozen or so ultra safe Conservative seats around London, and legislate to build new towns in them. 70% affordable housing.
We are currently planning to build 50 homes with mixed housing (market rates, co-purchase and social) on a car park (with a multi-storey to replace the flat car park) in central Godalming. The Conservative opposition say it's a terrible idea, and one Tory councillor sneers that 30% social will make it into a "council house ghetto". Sometimes I think that the only people still keen to fight a class war are the more hardline Tories.
I'm very much enjoying the latest round of wailing from landlords having to handle falling property prices and rising interest rates. Hopefully the government pushes even harder and forces them into bankruptcy so the properties are repossessed and sold to owner occupiers.
Have to say that's a courageous idea (as Sir Humphrey would say).
Are you advocating the end of both the public and private rental sectors or just the private? There's a clear demand in London (accepting it may be less elsewhere) for short-term accommodation for students and for workers on short-term contracts.
There's undeniably a problem with properties bought up by wealthy foreigners for investment and we know a lot of very wealthy areas of London are like ghost towns but at the lower end of the housing market rental fulfils a clear need.
The London rental market of the last couple of years shows what happens when you have an ever increasing pool of people looking to rent (i.e. young people, new immigrants, etc, lots of people either without the ability or desire to buy a house), chasing after an ever decreasing puddle of available rental properties.
I get down on my knees and thank the gods I was able to buy a crappy shoebox in London a decade ago, because rents are now so sky high that I'd have absolutely zero chance of saving for a deposit - even if house prices went significantly lower.
If you tax landlords to oblivion, all you get is the unedifying spectacle of some landlord property shifting to owner occupiers (relatively rich renters) while the left behind (poorer renters) are left to pay an ever increasing percentage of their monthly salary to secure the property that's left on the rental market.
Demand is rising year on year thanks to immigration, people moving back to the city post covid, etc. The answer is to increase supply to match demand by building more houses for both owner occupiers and renters. Interfering in the market to force landlords out only makes things worse for those who have no other choice than to rent.
You're not wrong and I've no visibility of this but the idea of the London rental market being made up of single properties (it's just the wife's old flat) owned by individual renters isn't accurate.
Renting is industrial - I know anecdotally of one local businessman who has 90 properties, many of them corner sites. The first thing he does when buying a house is split it into as many bedrooms as possible so your two-bedroom family home becomes a five or six bedroom site with each room available for rent and a communal kitchen/bathroom.
That's not the worst examples of the new slums - it's well documented there are examples of 20 or more living in three bedroom semis in the suburbs and I'll be blunt here, this is where an open market for cheap labour ends up.
It's also the place where your dreams of multicultural immigration go to die.
A few things to say on this topic. First I have to admit to being a landlord, though it's not my primary economic activity. And to getting somewhat irritated at therefore being considered scum or the equivalent. But anyway: 1) Not all landlords try to split places up to maximize income, though I'm sure some do. I wouldn't rent out any property that I wouldn't be happy to live in myself. 2) if you use a limited company, the tax changes around not being able to offset finance charges don't apply. It's a business and is taxed in the normal way. 3) rental yeilds in London are crap. You can't possibly get the same yeilds in London as in places like Manchester or Southampton. So I don't know who rents out places in London unless they got them 'avcidentally'. 4) the other legislative changes coming down the track, in terms of giving greater stability to tenants and improving energy efficiency etc all seem good to me. I like tenants that stay a long time. 5) I suspect that the people complaining they can't make money any longer have been buying properties with high levels of borrowing and without fixing. Pretty much the same problem as small energy suppliers not hedging. Shit business model can go wrong. What a surprise...
Thanks for that - a really useful perspective.
Given your insight, I wouldn't gainsay any of the points you raise. I wouldn't want to generalise about landlords - I'm sure you and many others are entirely reputable and want what's best for your tenant.
Unfortunately, it's the bad apples who ruin the orchard and in my part of the world (Newham) the local media is full of examples of appalling housing conditions in which families with young children are forced to live.
I know of a friend in the investment property business and he won't touch properties in London with any kind of bargepole. He goes for provincial urban sites where he claims the rental yields are still very good.
It's the classic - as the margins are squeezed, the reputable people exit the market. Those who remain are increasingly those who increase margins by various tricks and dodges. This ends with widespread illegality.
I'm not sure why margins are being squeezed. If you have a fixed rate mortgage with a reasonable duration, and rents are rising strongly, margins are getting wider, not narrower. You have more of a problem if you need to remortgage, but if you are coming off a 5 year fix, then you have 5 years of rent increase and good capital value rise to cushion the blow. If you took out a variable rate mortgage and maxed out on what you could borrow, then it's a lot harder. Not sure why it's the tenants problem, and you can only put the rent up once a year anyway.
I guess the issue might be if the less desirable landlords pay higher prices and drive out the reputable ones. But I've not seen much evidence of it when buying properties.
My experience is that outside London you can get 5% to 7% rental yeild after agent fees. So a 60% LTV mortgage at 6%, and this is easy to get, leaves between 1.4% and 3.4% if you use a limited company. Not a lot but another 4-5%pa capital growth helps over time. Though it doesn't work without the company.
As for oat milk flat whites (which I enjoy as much as the next person), the sign of us retaining our economic clout as a country will be when most local coffee shops have it all made by a machine rather than a human barista.
Perfectly technically possible now, but the fact it doesn’t happen shows that wages in the service sector are too low. Same as hand car washes.
Not that I’d particularly enjoy being served by a machine: the coffee would doubtless taste just as good and the queues would be shorter, but it wouldn’t feel as personal. But, rather like cheap taxis signifying a poor or unequal society and expensive ones showing the opposite, automated coffee vending is a sign of a country with healthily high pay.
I think this is a bad take, or at least a bad example. If you remove the (albeit limited) artisan aspect of coffee shops, you destroy most of the value proposition.
Yes, there’s definitely a point here. People like the artisan feel. But 98% of the artisan vs industrial decision is in the growing, drying and roasting of the coffee. If wages get properly high the price will rise much further, or it’ll become automated.
Having a barista serve coffee is like having someone behind the bar pull a pint. Now the most expensive beers in a lot of bars are bottled or in 330ml cans.
Sometimes of course there’s less of a trade off between customer experience and headcount reduction. I’ve noticed a trend towards the chef / owner serving food in restaurants in rural France. It’s nice - personal touch for the diner. But also more cost effective than employing front of house staff.
I'm very much enjoying the latest round of wailing from landlords having to handle falling property prices and rising interest rates. Hopefully the government pushes even harder and forces them into bankruptcy so the properties are repossessed and sold to owner occupiers.
Have to say that's a courageous idea (as Sir Humphrey would say).
Are you advocating the end of both the public and private rental sectors or just the private? There's a clear demand in London (accepting it may be less elsewhere) for short-term accommodation for students and for workers on short-term contracts.
There's undeniably a problem with properties bought up by wealthy foreigners for investment and we know a lot of very wealthy areas of London are like ghost towns but at the lower end of the housing market rental fulfils a clear need.
The London rental market of the last couple of years shows what happens when you have an ever increasing pool of people looking to rent (i.e. young people, new immigrants, etc, lots of people either without the ability or desire to buy a house), chasing after an ever decreasing puddle of available rental properties.
I get down on my knees and thank the gods I was able to buy a crappy shoebox in London a decade ago, because rents are now so sky high that I'd have absolutely zero chance of saving for a deposit - even if house prices went significantly lower.
If you tax landlords to oblivion, all you get is the unedifying spectacle of some landlord property shifting to owner occupiers (relatively rich renters) while the left behind (poorer renters) are left to pay an ever increasing percentage of their monthly salary to secure the property that's left on the rental market.
Demand is rising year on year thanks to immigration, people moving back to the city post covid, etc. The answer is to increase supply to match demand by building more houses for both owner occupiers and renters. Interfering in the market to force landlords out only makes things worse for those who have no other choice than to rent.
You're not wrong and I've no visibility of this but the idea of the London rental market being made up of single properties (it's just the wife's old flat) owned by individual renters isn't accurate.
Renting is industrial - I know anecdotally of one local businessman who has 90 properties, many of them corner sites. The first thing he does when buying a house is split it into as many bedrooms as possible so your two-bedroom family home becomes a five or six bedroom site with each room available for rent and a communal kitchen/bathroom.
That's not the worst examples of the new slums - it's well documented there are examples of 20 or more living in three bedroom semis in the suburbs and I'll be blunt here, this is where an open market for cheap labour ends up.
It's also the place where your dreams of multicultural immigration go to die.
A few things to say on this topic. First I have to admit to being a landlord, though it's not my primary economic activity. And to getting somewhat irritated at therefore being considered scum or the equivalent. But anyway: 1) Not all landlords try to split places up to maximize income, though I'm sure some do. I wouldn't rent out any property that I wouldn't be happy to live in myself. 2) if you use a limited company, the tax changes around not being able to offset finance charges don't apply. It's a business and is taxed in the normal way. 3) rental yeilds in London are crap. You can't possibly get the same yeilds in London as in places like Manchester or Southampton. So I don't know who rents out places in London unless they got them 'avcidentally'. 4) the other legislative changes coming down the track, in terms of giving greater stability to tenants and improving energy efficiency etc all seem good to me. I like tenants that stay a long time. 5) I suspect that the people complaining they can't make money any longer have been buying properties with high levels of borrowing and without fixing. Pretty much the same problem as small energy suppliers not hedging. Shit business model can go wrong. What a surprise...
Thanks for that - a really useful perspective.
Given your insight, I wouldn't gainsay any of the points you raise. I wouldn't want to generalise about landlords - I'm sure you and many others are entirely reputable and want what's best for your tenant.
Unfortunately, it's the bad apples who ruin the orchard and in my part of the world (Newham) the local media is full of examples of appalling housing conditions in which families with young children are forced to live.
I know of a friend in the investment property business and he won't touch properties in London with any kind of bargepole. He goes for provincial urban sites where he claims the rental yields are still very good.
It's the classic - as the margins are squeezed, the reputable people exit the market. Those who remain are increasingly those who increase margins by various tricks and dodges. This ends with widespread illegality.
I'm not sure why margins are being squeezed. If you have a fixed rate mortgage with a reasonable duration, and rents are rising strongly, margins are getting wider, not narrower. You have more of a problem if you need to remortgage, but if you are coming off a 5 year fix, then you have 5 years of rent increase and good capital value rise to cushion the blow. If you took out a variable rate mortgage and maxed out on what you could borrow, then it's a lot harder. Not sure why it's the tenants problem, and you can only put the rent up once a year anyway.
I guess the issue might be if the less desirable landlords pay higher prices and drive out the reputable ones. But I've not seen much evidence of it when buying properties.
My experience is that outside London you can get 5% to 7% rental yeild after agent fees. So a 60% LTV mortgage at 6%, and this is easy to get, leaves between 1.4% and 3.4% if you use a limited company. Not a lot but another 4-5%pa capital growth helps over time. Though it doesn't work without the company.
Sadly, you are assuming a somewhat spherical landlord.
Consider the following, common situation -
- Couple married who had bought flats, years ago. - They kept one or both, rented them out. - Extracted lots of value to buy a joint property. - Kept extracting value to keep life rolling through other expenses.
I'm very much enjoying the latest round of wailing from landlords having to handle falling property prices and rising interest rates. Hopefully the government pushes even harder and forces them into bankruptcy so the properties are repossessed and sold to owner occupiers.
Have to say that's a courageous idea (as Sir Humphrey would say).
Are you advocating the end of both the public and private rental sectors or just the private? There's a clear demand in London (accepting it may be less elsewhere) for short-term accommodation for students and for workers on short-term contracts.
There's undeniably a problem with properties bought up by wealthy foreigners for investment and we know a lot of very wealthy areas of London are like ghost towns but at the lower end of the housing market rental fulfils a clear need.
The London rental market of the last couple of years shows what happens when you have an ever increasing pool of people looking to rent (i.e. young people, new immigrants, etc, lots of people either without the ability or desire to buy a house), chasing after an ever decreasing puddle of available rental properties.
I get down on my knees and thank the gods I was able to buy a crappy shoebox in London a decade ago, because rents are now so sky high that I'd have absolutely zero chance of saving for a deposit - even if house prices went significantly lower.
If you tax landlords to oblivion, all you get is the unedifying spectacle of some landlord property shifting to owner occupiers (relatively rich renters) while the left behind (poorer renters) are left to pay an ever increasing percentage of their monthly salary to secure the property that's left on the rental market.
Demand is rising year on year thanks to immigration, people moving back to the city post covid, etc. The answer is to increase supply to match demand by building more houses for both owner occupiers and renters. Interfering in the market to force landlords out only makes things worse for those who have no other choice than to rent.
You're not wrong and I've no visibility of this but the idea of the London rental market being made up of single properties (it's just the wife's old flat) owned by individual renters isn't accurate.
Renting is industrial - I know anecdotally of one local businessman who has 90 properties, many of them corner sites. The first thing he does when buying a house is split it into as many bedrooms as possible so your two-bedroom family home becomes a five or six bedroom site with each room available for rent and a communal kitchen/bathroom.
That's not the worst examples of the new slums - it's well documented there are examples of 20 or more living in three bedroom semis in the suburbs and I'll be blunt here, this is where an open market for cheap labour ends up.
It's also the place where your dreams of multicultural immigration go to die.
A good point.
Speaking from experience, ten years ago when I was saving for a deposit I lived in a not particularly leafy part of east london and paid £850 a month for a particularly grotty one bed flat - about 450sq feet. A quick look on zoopla shows a near identical flat on the same street now going for over £1500pcm.
The building I lived in was an old victorian terraced house subdivided into individual flats on each floor, and was owned by a single landlord. He owned 26 properties all in all. The flat above the one to me was an identical one bed and was occupied by four people - an immigrant family.
While I saved up and got out as soon as I could, a) I wouldn't be able to save any more with rents being what they are today and b) there's no chance the immigrant family above me would ever be able to buy a place of their own.
I don't think the answer is to squeeze landlords, as most will pass their costs on to those who have no choice but to rent - though as others have said downthread, it's the world's smallest violin for the ones who do go bust.
The answer is to build, build, build, so that supply matches demand.
Taxing landlords out of the market only allows a few lucky cash rich and high earning renters to buy - those without deposits or the ability to save for one, those on low incomes, those who are transitory and young and aren't looking to put down roots, will suffer in the form of higher rental prices. Which is exactly what we've seen across the UK in student towns and in London over the last couple of years.
One bedroom flat next to mine currently has 3 families living in it. Landlord was disqualified and now his brother is 'the landlord' even though the same dude turns up to collect the rent (in cash, obv.) Same dude was also screaming at the tenants a few weeks ago "WE TOLD YOU WE WOULD NOT FIX THE DOOR" because the door to their flat doesn't actually close so is just propped closed by a broom handle or the like.
*Something* needs doing about the scummy end of the private rental market. But given the cuts to everything I'm not sure how it'll ever be enforced.
Pick half a dozen or so ultra safe Conservative seats around London, and legislate to build new towns in them. 70% affordable housing.
We are currently planning to build 50 homes with mixed housing (market rates, co-purchase and social) on a car park (with a multi-storey to replace the flat car park) in central Godalming. The Conservative opposition say it's a terrible idea, and one Tory councillor sneers that 30% social will make it into a "council house ghetto". Sometimes I think that the only people still keen to fight a class war are the more hardline Tories.
It is one thing that a Labour government with a parliamentary majority could do which would both be popular with most of the country, and could make a massive difference to the housing market at lower cost than a pretty well any other measure.
A minority would hate it, but (IMO) tough.
I might even vote for a Labour party that had that in their manifesto.
I'm very much enjoying the latest round of wailing from landlords having to handle falling property prices and rising interest rates. Hopefully the government pushes even harder and forces them into bankruptcy so the properties are repossessed and sold to owner occupiers.
Have to say that's a courageous idea (as Sir Humphrey would say).
Are you advocating the end of both the public and private rental sectors or just the private? There's a clear demand in London (accepting it may be less elsewhere) for short-term accommodation for students and for workers on short-term contracts.
There's undeniably a problem with properties bought up by wealthy foreigners for investment and we know a lot of very wealthy areas of London are like ghost towns but at the lower end of the housing market rental fulfils a clear need.
The London rental market of the last couple of years shows what happens when you have an ever increasing pool of people looking to rent (i.e. young people, new immigrants, etc, lots of people either without the ability or desire to buy a house), chasing after an ever decreasing puddle of available rental properties.
I get down on my knees and thank the gods I was able to buy a crappy shoebox in London a decade ago, because rents are now so sky high that I'd have absolutely zero chance of saving for a deposit - even if house prices went significantly lower.
If you tax landlords to oblivion, all you get is the unedifying spectacle of some landlord property shifting to owner occupiers (relatively rich renters) while the left behind (poorer renters) are left to pay an ever increasing percentage of their monthly salary to secure the property that's left on the rental market.
Demand is rising year on year thanks to immigration, people moving back to the city post covid, etc. The answer is to increase supply to match demand by building more houses for both owner occupiers and renters. Interfering in the market to force landlords out only makes things worse for those who have no other choice than to rent.
You're not wrong and I've no visibility of this but the idea of the London rental market being made up of single properties (it's just the wife's old flat) owned by individual renters isn't accurate.
Renting is industrial - I know anecdotally of one local businessman who has 90 properties, many of them corner sites. The first thing he does when buying a house is split it into as many bedrooms as possible so your two-bedroom family home becomes a five or six bedroom site with each room available for rent and a communal kitchen/bathroom.
That's not the worst examples of the new slums - it's well documented there are examples of 20 or more living in three bedroom semis in the suburbs and I'll be blunt here, this is where an open market for cheap labour ends up.
It's also the place where your dreams of multicultural immigration go to die.
A good point.
Speaking from experience, ten years ago when I was saving for a deposit I lived in a not particularly leafy part of east london and paid £850 a month for a particularly grotty one bed flat - about 450sq feet. A quick look on zoopla shows a near identical flat on the same street now going for over £1500pcm.
The building I lived in was an old victorian terraced house subdivided into individual flats on each floor, and was owned by a single landlord. He owned 26 properties all in all. The flat above the one to me was an identical one bed and was occupied by four people - an immigrant family.
While I saved up and got out as soon as I could, a) I wouldn't be able to save any more with rents being what they are today and b) there's no chance the immigrant family above me would ever be able to buy a place of their own.
I don't think the answer is to squeeze landlords, as most will pass their costs on to those who have no choice but to rent - though as others have said downthread, it's the world's smallest violin for the ones who do go bust.
The answer is to build, build, build, so that supply matches demand.
Taxing landlords out of the market only allows a few lucky cash rich and high earning renters to buy - those without deposits or the ability to save for one, those on low incomes, those who are transitory and young and aren't looking to put down roots, will suffer in the form of higher rental prices. Which is exactly what we've seen across the UK in student towns and in London over the last couple of years.
The answer is to build, build, build, so that supply matches demand.
Any other answer is avoidance bullshit.
I own 2 properties, by the way.
What is more, the lack of building means:
1 - we have just about the oldest average age of housing stock in Europe; and as a result 2 - have the least energy efficient housing stock
Governments have not dealt with the supply issue for decades - giving stamp duty cuts and buyer incentives if anything make it worse.
We spend so much time arguing about where and how to build, and over marginal policy changes to that effect, that the core of the problem is missed. Deliberately so.
Do we have the full Opinium figures? The article says Reform is on 8, just behind the LibDems, but doesn't give the full results.
Cruddas, and I don't say this sort of thing lightly, is a complete maniac. His mental breakdown over the Boris ousting, and the nonsense he came out with and threatened about it, was astonishing.
What a deeply penetrating pleasure it is being back in the UK after a month in southern India - except for the freezing conditions, exacerbated by our boiler losing pressure! But it's been re-filled and working OK since last night.
Thought the football would be on at 7pm instead, but only noticed it was on because of @DecrepiterJohnL
I’m thinking of taking in South India on my next jaunt. Any recommendations?
Sure. The most historical places are Mysore, Madurai, Cochin and Mahabalipuram. Also, a little off the beaten track, check out the Portuguese fort at Kannur (dating from as early as 1502), and the British one at Tellicherry (1708).
The Leaning Tower and the surrounding Piazza dei Miracoli should be on everyone's bucket list.
It's worthwhile to stay a night or two. All the tourist coaches depart, and it's quite pleasant, and good value. Also you can walk to the airport. Fly into Florence, train to Pisa, fly back from Pisa is a nice short break, especially out of season.
Flying to Pisa instead of Florence is an excellent idea. Pisa is a nicer smaller airport. And almost walkable from downtown Pisa
Did that way back in 2000 on a conference visit. Stansted to Pisa, then the train to Florence. Though we did actually take a day trip by train from Florence to Pisa to check out the eponymous tower!
Wonder whether the expectation of a general election is indicative more of a desire for a general election. I think there will be many people frustrated at having to wait.
Do we have the full Opinium figures? The article says Reform is on 8, just behind the LibDems, but doesn't give the full results.
Cruddas, and I don't say this sort of thing lightly, is a complete maniac. His mental breakdown over the Boris ousting, and the nonsense he came out with and threatened about it, was astonishing.
In order to be the sort of maniac that Cruddas is, you need to have a lot of money to threaten you won't donate unless .... The problem for Cruddas is that threats from him won't woo either those who are cool with the rightwing insurgents or those who are happy with a party they take to be "centre right". Not that his mania will abate.
Comments
Any other answer is avoidance bullshit.
I own 2 properties, by the way.
It's a Sicilian Fiano, it's quite dry and it tastes of apricots
It's delicious, especially so at £10.50 a bottle
https://www.thewinesociety.com/product/fiano-mandrarossa-sicilia-2021-organic
And in large parts of the north, but not all of it, buying houses for couples in their twenties who are not wealthy is not a huge issue. I live in such a place.
Given your insight, I wouldn't gainsay any of the points you raise. I wouldn't want to generalise about landlords - I'm sure you and many others are entirely reputable and want what's best for your tenant.
Unfortunately, it's the bad apples who ruin the orchard and in my part of the world (Newham) the local media is full of examples of appalling housing conditions in which families with young children are forced to live.
I know of a friend in the investment property business and he won't touch properties in London with any kind of bargepole. He goes for provincial urban sites where he claims the rental yields are still very good.
Surely it all tastes the same to that old soak given how much he chugs.
He’s usually shitfaced by early afternoon.
Pick half a dozen or so ultra safe Conservative seats around London, and legislate to build new towns in them. 70% affordable housing.
Note that "ska" sound is common element in many Salish-language place names and features, for example the Skagit River, and thus Skagit County.
Further note that Salish-language is similar to Romance-language in that it is a family with many branches.
The seeming similarity between "Skamania" and any other mania, is only partially coincidental. It's a wonderful part of world with some wacky people . . . and visa versa . . .
1 - we have just about the oldest average age of housing stock in Europe; and as a result
2 - have the least energy efficient housing stock
Governments have not dealt with the supply issue for decades - giving stamp duty cuts and buyer incentives if anything make it worse.
A colloidal suspension might be an option.
https://twitter.com/bungdan/status/1604140836874133506
I guess the issue might be if the less desirable landlords pay higher prices and drive out the reputable ones. But I've not seen much evidence of it when buying properties.
My experience is that outside London you can get 5% to 7% rental yeild after agent fees. So a 60% LTV mortgage at 6%, and this is easy to get, leaves between 1.4% and 3.4% if you use a limited company. Not a lot but another 4-5%pa capital growth helps over time. Though it doesn't work without the company.
Having a barista serve coffee is like having someone behind the bar pull a pint. Now the most expensive beers in a lot of bars are
bottled or in 330ml cans.
Sometimes of course there’s less of a trade off between customer experience and headcount reduction. I’ve noticed a trend towards the chef / owner serving food in
restaurants in rural France. It’s nice - personal touch for the diner. But also more cost effective than employing front of house staff.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/17/tories-at-risk-from-rightwing-insurgency-warns-donor-lord-cruddas
Do we have the full Opinium figures? The article says Reform is on 8, just behind the LibDems, but doesn't give the full results.
🚨LATEST @OpiniumResearch/@ObserverUK poll🚨
Labour lead remains consistent at 14 points over the Conservatives.
Con 29% (nc)
Lab 44% (+1)
Lib Dems 9% (+1)
Green 5% (-1)
Reform UK 8% (+2)
https://twitter.com/OpiniumResearch/status/1604204786957529089
Consider the following, common situation -
- Couple married who had bought flats, years ago.
- They kept one or both, rented them out.
- Extracted lots of value to buy a joint property.
- Kept extracting value to keep life rolling through other expenses.
And so it goes.....
*Something* needs doing about the scummy end of the private rental market. But given the cuts to everything I'm not sure how it'll ever be enforced.
A minority would hate it, but (IMO) tough.
I might even vote for a Labour party that had that in their manifesto.