Cost of Living Crisis

[Brother Blades]

3 hours ago, Left Back said:

How do you figure this out?  The national housing shortage is there because not enough homes are being built to cater for both a growing population and a changing demographic.  Whoever owns the existing homes doesn't create a shortage (although it does drive prices up).  If you nationalised all private rented homes (which we all know is fantasy land stuff) there would still be a housing shortage because people are already living in those houses.  Changing ownership does not magically create more homes for people that want them.

The shortage was created during Right to Buy back in the 80's and stopping councils building new houses.  Successive governments have done nothing to rectify that.

Whilst I agree that right to buy was a huge contributor to the current crisis, the main problem is private landlords & inaction by government to build (in areas where homes are needed). 
I looked at the number of homes owned by private landlords in the UK & was absolutely shocked by the the amount. According to the source I saw, 1/3 of all homes are private rental - 8.7 million!  Also, the number of residents who own their house has gone DOWN since right to buy was introduced in 1981!! 
There are also huge numbers of houses ( in areas where they are needed, centres of employment like London & SE also Edinburgh) which are now Air BnB. It’s a shocking state of affairs & income from second home should be taxed at 75% in my opinion. 

[Clown Job]

46 minutes ago, Left Back said:

You’re describing price growth.  Not the creation of a property shortage.  

I’ll say it again.  BTL is bad for other reasons but is not causing a shortage of houses.  That is caused by not enough houses being built over a period of decades.

If you owned 40 houses and rented 39 of them out if they were nationalised the council would still rent those 39 houses to the people that were already in them.  You haven’t changed a thing regarding number of available homes.

They got them at a hefty discount, which would help with a mortgage 

You also had a number of kids buying the elderly parents discounted property, so when they shuffled off this moral coil they could make themselves a tidy profit selling it off or renting it out 

[Left Back]

2 minutes ago, Brother Blades said:

Whilst I agree that right to buy was a huge contributor to the current crisis, the main problem is private landlords & inaction by government to build (in areas where homes are needed). 
I looked at the number of homes owned by private landlords in the UK & was absolutely shocked by the the amount. According to the source I saw, 1/3 of all homes are private rental - 8.7 million!  Also, the number of residents who own their house has gone DOWN since right to buy was introduced in 1981!! 
There are also huge numbers of houses ( in areas where they are needed, centres of employment like London & SE also Edinburgh) which are now Air BnB. It’s a shocking state of affairs & income from second home should be taxed at 75% in my opinion. 

You make a valid point about short-term lets.  I have no idea how many of them there are in the UK but every  single one of them is a home that someone could be living in.  A far bigger issue than private landlords and up there with second homes.

[Clown Job]

Don’t be greedy and ask for a wage rise to help with the cost of living 

 

 

Edit: Don’t forget the subsidised bar also 

Edited June 21, 2022 by Clown Job

[Brother Blades]

40 minutes ago, Left Back said:

You make a valid point about short-term lets.  I have no idea how many of them there are in the UK but every  single one of them is a home that someone could be living in.  A far bigger issue than private landlords and up there with second homes.

Why don’t you think private landlords is a problem?

Rents in the public sector are way below what private landlords are charging, yes,  the lack of public housing is a problem, but blatant profiteering by private landlords is an absolute travesty & tragedy. 

[Left Back]

10 minutes ago, Brother Blades said:

Why don’t you think private landlords is a problem?

Rents in the public sector are way below what private landlords are charging, yes,  the lack of public housing is a problem, but blatant profiteering by private landlords is an absolute travesty & tragedy. 

I never said it wasn’t a problem.  If you look back I’ve said it is, and it drives up rents.

I’ve also said that private landlords aren’t causing a shortage of houses as was claimed.  They’re nothing like as bad as second home owners or short term let owners who are removing homes from stock, hence are “a far bigger issue”.

Removing second homes and short-term lets would put a far bigger dent in resolving the housing crisis than nationalising all private landlords.

[strichener]

2 hours ago, Left Back said:

You’re describing price growth.  Not the creation of a property shortage.  

I’ll say it again.  BTL is bad for other reasons but is not causing a shortage of houses.  That is caused by not enough houses being built over a period of decades.

If you owned 40 houses and rented 39 of them out if they were nationalised the council would still rent those 39 houses to the people that were already in them.  You haven’t changed a thing regarding number of available homes.

I agree mostly with this with one exception.  BTL creates issues around occupancy.  Most people that own thier homes tend to stay in them longer than renters.  When a renter moves, the time take to re-let a property is a property that is empty.

Holiday home owners and AirBnB have a far greater impact than BtL on property availability.

[BFTD]

2 hours ago, Clown Job said:

Don’t be greedy and ask for a wage rise to help with the cost of living 

 

 

Edit: Don’t forget the subsidised bar also 

Been a while since we've had anyone vehemently insisting that we need to pay MPs more in order to attract quality, to stop them feeling the need to take on other "jobs", and to curb corruption.

Anyone still believe that, even if we paid them all £10m per annum, they wouldn't still use their position to grasp for every last bawbee possible and set themselves up in cushy advisory roles thereafter?

[Left Back]

1 hour ago, strichener said:

I agree mostly with this with one exception.  BTL creates issues around occupancy.  Most people that own thier homes tend to stay in them longer than renters.  When a renter moves, the time take to re-let a property is a property that is empty.

Holiday home owners and AirBnB have a far greater impact than BtL on property availability.

This is another perfectly reasonable point but I would counter it slightly.  

I think it’s only this week the law changed in England to stop landlords booting you out of your rented house.  Think that’s been the case in Scotland for a while.  If the tenant decides to move on then of course that isn’t the landlords “fault”

Assured tenancy might reduce the churn on people moving between rented properties and bring private landlords more in line with social housing in that regard (i.e. thinking of somewhere as home rather than a temporary rental).  Far too early to tell in England.  No idea if it’s made any difference up here.

[Left Back]

13 minutes ago, BFTD said:

Been a while since we've had anyone vehemently insisting that we need to pay MPs more in order to attract quality, to stop them feeling the need to take on other "jobs", and to curb corruption.

Anyone still believe that, even if we paid them all £10m per annum, they wouldn't still use their position to grasp for every last bawbee possible and set themselves up in cushy advisory roles thereafter?

That’s working out well eh?

[BFTD]

1 minute ago, Left Back said:

That’s working out well eh?

I've never understood what people mean by "quality" when that argument is made.

I think it's supposed to refer to top people in industry...who would then concentrate on loosening regulations and siphoning money off to their colleagues, like what we've already got but likely even more effective at doing so. So I'm not sure if they realise what the job of an MP is actually supposed to be.

[strichener]

4 minutes ago, Left Back said:

This is another perfectly reasonable point but I would counter it slightly.  

I think it’s only this week the law changed in England to stop landlords booting you out of your rented house.  Think that’s been the case in Scotland for a while.  If the tenant decides to move on then of course that isn’t the landlords “fault”

Assured tenancy might reduce the churn on people moving between rented properties and bring private landlords more in line with social housing in that regard (i.e. thinking of somewhere as home rather than a temporary rental).  Far too early to tell in England.  No idea if it’s made any difference up here.

The Section 21 no fault eviction is still in place down south.  It was only the White Paper that was published last week.  It'll take a fair amount of time before we see it's effect.  Of course unscrupulous landlords will continue to ignore new laws just as they do with the existing ones.

[Left Back]

16 minutes ago, strichener said:

The Section 21 no fault eviction is still in place down south.  It was only the White Paper that was published last week.  It'll take a fair amount of time before we see it's effect.  Of course unscrupulous landlords will continue to ignore new laws just as they do with the existing ones.

Cheers.  Must have mis-read the news.  Thought that had actually been binned down south.

[Billy Jean King]

Empty "unused" houses are a huge issue. It wasn't a kick off 50k in Scotland at the last count despite every LA having empty homes officers whose purpose is to try to engage with owners (often deciphering ownership is the main issue) to get these properties back into occupied use. It's incredible that a house just lies unoccupied and in most cases unmaintained when we have a housing crisis.

[BigDoddyKane]

If we are taking sustainability seriously using as many as those empty houses makes far more send than building new ones

 

what are the main reasons houses lie empty for some time?

[BFTD]

7 minutes ago, BigDoddyKane said:

If we are taking sustainability seriously using as many as those empty houses makes far more send than building new ones

what are the main reasons houses lie empty for some time?

Someone once told me that you can be considered exempt from council tax on a property after it's been empty for a certain amount of time, but that's obviously not true - they can charge you up to four times as much if it's vacant for long enough.

Although it does look like, if you don't want to sell/let a property for some reason, it's in your interests to allow it to become uninhabitable. But that still raises the question of "why?"

[BigDoddyKane]

Just now, BFTD said:

Someone once told me that you can be considered exempt from council tax on a property after it's been empty for a certain amount of time, but that's obviously not true - they can charge you up to four times as much if it's vacant for long enough.

Although it does look like, if you don't want to sell/let a property for some reason, it's in your interests to allow it to become uninhabitable. But that still raises the question of "why?"

Yeah ive never understood why you would hold onto a property for a long time and not use it. I can understand you get a few cases where its maybe been a family home and theres some thought of moving into it at some later point. The majority of cases must be some other reason though.

 

I think in London its just to hold cash in a lot of cases but the rest of uk  or Scotland ive never worked out why

[DA Baracus]

House prices won't be coming down anytime soon, probably ever.

[BFTD]

3 minutes ago, BigDoddyKane said:

Yeah ive never understood why you would hold onto a property for a long time and not use it. I can understand you get a few cases where its maybe been a family home and theres some thought of moving into it at some later point. The majority of cases must be some other reason though.

I think in London its just to hold cash in a lot of cases but the rest of uk  or Scotland ive never worked out why

Bit Irrelevant to this conversation, but some people just shouldn't be landlords. Long time ago, we rented a house from a family whose mother owned it, but they'd put her into a home. On moving day, we discovered that all her stuff was still in the house - the letting agency told us to just move it all into the garage, which we'd been told was off-limits, and the family was not pleased. They then insisted on monthly inspections, which they used to complaint to us about issues with the property that they hadn't checked before renting it out ("why didn't you tell us there was no sealant around the bath?")

In the end, they were such a pain in the hole that the letting agency offered to move us to another property.

[Clown Job]