The rise of the middle age renter.

[Ken L]

There are solutions but they're not very palatable for a lot of people.
The first is don't go to university to study some silly vanity degree that is not going to be used in a profession. A 40k debt and the loss of three years potential income is not the way to get on the property ladder.
NOBODY is impressed with your degree in the history of art, gender studies or African history!

The second is a public policy shift: Get rid of housing benefits! All they do is funnel money from taxpayers to rich landlords via the poor. They encourage the accumulation of large property portfolios by landlords with little personal risk and therefore drive up property prices.
"Free rents" also acts as a magnate for migrants, further reducing the housing supply and further driving up house prices - meanwhile, the resulting flood of cheap migrant labour drives down wages and makes it even harder for working families to afford a home.

 

[airymary]

Basically, the housing market is broke, and needs fixing. Singling-out private landlords won't do that. There just ain't enough homes being built, or in existence.

My (controversial) view is that the balance between urban expansion and green belt needs to be revised. We became a mainly urban society fairly early in the 19thC. Do we want to be homeless in a form of museum paying homage to a distant, rural past, or do we accept that most of us live in urban centres, which need to expand?

 

[Ken L]

Basically, the housing market is broke, and needs fixing. Singling-out private landlords won't do that. There just ain't enough homes being built, or in existence.

My (controversial) view is that the balance between urban expansion and green belt needs to be revised. We became a mainly urban society fairly early in the 19thC. Do we want to be homeless in a form of museum paying homage to a distant, rural past, or do we accept that most of us live in urban centres, which need to expand?

Why expand the number of houses when it makes more sense to contract the number of people?

 

[airymary]

Get rid of housing benefits! All they do is funnel money from taxpayers to rich landlords

Not a great idea. Housing benefits enable households on low incomes to meet current rent levels. They're how successive governments which have failed to address the housing supply crisis deal with a major effect of that crisis. Abolish housing benefits and you consign those households to homelessness.

 

[airymary]

Why expand the number of houses when it makes more sense to contract the number of people?

What kind of extermination programme did you have in mind?

 

[MyQul]

Why expand the number of houses when it makes more sense to contract the number of people?

Euthanasia for the over 60's?

 

[airymary]

Euthanasia for the over 60's?

I don't think we'd vote for it (although it would free-up a lot of homes).

 

[Ken L]

Not a great idea. Housing benefits enable households on low incomes to meet current rent levels. They're how successive governments which have failed to address the housing supply crisis deal with a major effect of that crisis. Abolish housing benefits and you consign those households to homelessness.

Wouldn't it be better to simply reduce their income tax?
Or do you mean "handouts" rather than "income"?
"Abolish housing benefits and you consign those households to homelessness".
Yes. What better incentive to get the long term feckless into work?

 

[Ken L]

What kind of extermination programme did you have in mind?

The birth rate among British natives is already below the level needed to sustain the population at current levels.

 

[Ciaran12s]

I agree with the daft uni courses. If you're parents can afford it and are willing to pay for you to do these daft courses fair enough. If you're own your own after that to get your life sorted then tough ****.

There are lots of problems with the housing market at the minute. There isn't one policy shift that's going to fix it all.

I've been on the blunt end of a landlord treating my home as a personal possession with which they can do what they like. Acting within the law yes, is it right? In my opinion, very much no.

I've rented other properties from landlords who had built and bought the properties for the purpose of using up cash to minimise tax bills, solely for renting out. I believe I would have been able to live there for an indefinite period as they were proper big boys, in the game all the way. Also decent human beings who would have been devastated if for some reason or other they had to evict a family from one of their places.

Thankfully I do have some cash building up and will hopefully buy my own place in the future. I have said, way before this debacle, that if ever I was getting in to the buy to let game, those properties would never go to the kids so long as there was someone there. I couldn't remove a good tenant unless I had some sort of financial breakdown meaning I had to sell up or whatever.
I also have no intention of buying houses for my kids should I ever have the means to do so. Help with a deposit or such to an extent certainly, but getting something like that handed to you on a plate doesn't make for a good, decent, well rounded individual in my opinion.

 

[mickthetrick]

the government needs to build a vast amount of public housing. private landlords are just capitalising on the lack of council housing.
if you rent a house privately you must understand you have no security. the sad fact is its not your property.
sad the way people get treated but that the way it is.

 

[airymary]

Wouldn't it be better to simply reduce their income tax?
Or do you mean "handouts" rather than "income"?
"Abolish housing benefits and you consign those households to homelessness".
Yes. What better incentive to get the long term feckless into work?

Income is a generic term - it's agnostic regarding source. What about the elderly, disabled and those genuinely unable to work? Or should they all be included in the 'sub-class' of permanently homeless you want to create?

As this thread has now become absurd, I will leave - I want to watch Netflix anyway!

 

[Ciaran12s]

The birth rate among British natives is already below the level needed to sustain the population at current levels.

Is it a factor that people want to get themselves set up with a house before settling down to have kids. By the time they've bought a place they're in their mid 30's and have decided that they are too old to have kids?
Plus the years of saving to get that house, the mortgage has settled down and they are seeing a few quid spare again every month. Get pregnant and that's a big cash commitment as well as everything else.

 

[BarnBrian]

Euthanasia for the over 60's?

Come off it MyQul, there'd be no one left on the forum.:no:

 

[Ken L]

Income is a generic term - it's agnostic regarding source. What about the elderly, disabled and those genuinely unable to work? Or should they all be included in the 'sub-class' of permanently homeless you want to create?

As this thread has now become absurd, I will leave - I want to watch Netflix anyway!

What about the predictable flailing around looking to hitch your horse to a waggon that can't be attacked?
All of those groups already have income souses other than housing benefit that could be tweaked.

 

[Saisonator]

I like the idea of individuals not being able to own more than one house each.
Property should not be used as a means for others to pay for your pension.
Take most of the private landlords out of the equation and demand would decrease and prices would go down.
As for building on the green belt, I prefer a decreasing population than a load more Sloughs.

 

[marshbrewer]

If you take private landlords out of the equation, demand for houses to buy would change slightly as, presumably prices would drop ( or more accurately there would be a higher demand at this lower price), but supply of rental property would tank and prices sky rocket.

It's all very simple, but unpalatable to most. We need to stop artificially restricting supply while inflating demand.

 

[Saisonator]

If you take private landlords out of the equation, demand for houses to buy would change slightly as, presumably prices would drop ( or more accurately there would be a higher demand at this lower price), but supply of rental property would tank and prices sky rocket.

It's all very simple, but unpalatable to most. We need to stop artificially restricting supply while inflating demand.

I think the increased numbers of people able to buy at the lower prices would take ownership of houses/pension pots that the landlords would not be buying or giving up.
Maybe putting a stop to buy to let mortgages could be a possibility?

 

[marshbrewer]

I agree that the lower prices would transfer some people from reluctant renters to happy buyers, but that would be a tiny percentage of those who make use of the rental market for various reasons. Indeed, they would be the relatively well off in the present rental group. The less well off, unable to buy still, would be screwed. It would be a tinkering policy that doesn't get to grips with the basic causes of our housing issues.

 

[Saisonator]

Plenty of people round this way that pay higher rents than the mortgage repayments. So they would be able to pay a mortgage on the house, if the bank would lend to them.
I think people choosing to rent is a small minority, why would most people want to throw all that money into someone else’s nest egg?