I'm pleased. The threat of pointless changes to bring in rent control and an automatic 3 year tenancy are no more.
Estimated 1.6 million landlords
There are an estimated 1.6 million landlords now in the UK so we are a significant minority. More importantly, landlords are not as the Labour party likes to caricature of loaded and lazy property owners fleecing their tenants. I know of two female landlords, one a former teacher, the other a NHS employee. Both had limited pensions because their careers were shortened as they brought up their young families. These 'hard working' people now depend on their one investment property to give them a decent but by no means a luxurious retirement. This is part of the reality of being a landlord in the UK today. We too are what Labour constantly refer to as 'hard working' people with families and our voice through the ballot box has been heard.
It's great that we are now free for another 5 years to get on with our lives and letting our properties rather than worrying about what an over baring administration thinks will look good to 'generation rent'.
Landlords may or may not have won the election for the Tories in reality, but hey it makes a great headline. Relax & enjoy!
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Yes, landlords are free of the extra burdens that Labour proposed, but for those landlords (like myself) who predominantly let to people who rely on Housing Benefit (that includes low income workers), it is perhaps a mixed blessing, as the Tories propose further cuts to the welfare benefit budget and this will almost certainly mean further cuts to Housing Benefit.
ReplyDeleteBeing a landlord does not mean you are a automatically a Torie voter and automatically want less rent regulation. Personally I offer 3 year tenancy to any tenant who have children so they have the comfort of knowing there child will stay in the same school. All the churn in the rental market is a very bad thing for many reason's and seeing your tenant's only as £ sign's is just wrong. I am all for profit, but that does not
ReplyDeletemean max' profit regardless. I want a fair profit in a fair society, we make money out of the society / system our business operate within. There is far to many bad landlord's giving all landlord's a bad name. There has been a thirty year under supply of housing that's why we our making good returns. Any landlord who thinks they are some great business person is disillusion. Any fool with the capital in there pocket can make a good return out of a 30 year under supply in house market. I believe we need more regulation to combat the large section of bad landlords treating there tenants badly because they can get away with it.
Hi Mark, the pertinent points are compulsion and quality of regulation. You choose to let to tenants with a 3 year tenancy because it works for you and your tenants (great!). It may not work for all landlords. Looking at the Labour party proposal on rent control it just really wouldn't have brought down rents in the long-term but it would have made life a hell of lot more complicated for both landlords and tenants. It would have also created a whole lot of pointless bureaucracy that would have to be paid for by somebody. That is what I'm against.
ReplyDeleteI personally agree with you and others that there is a need for a new type of tenancy agreement that is longer term and sits between a short-term AST but doesn't go as far as an Assured Tenancy (with security of tenure). Now this Assured Tenancy (light) to me would be a useful bit of legislation / regulation as long as landlords and tenants have the choice to enter into the agreement freely.
Yes, I'll sit back and relax while I watch the Tories systematically dismantle the NHS and the entire Welfare State.
ReplyDeleteWhat minor gains landlords may have made from avoiding 3 year tenancies will be more than wiped out for all but the very richest by the Tories ideologically based agenda of unnecessary cuts.
I am a landlord, and as Mark points out, there are plenty of us who did not vote Tory, along with the vast majority of people in the UK who didn't vote for them either.
We have a rotten, rigged electoral system that allows a party with only 27% of the vote to gain more than 50% of the seats. Along with many millions of people in this country, the party that I support is massively under-represented in Parliament, while a dangerous party with a minority of the vote is given a mandate to push through policies that the majority of people in the UK do not support (see www.voteforpolicies.org).
So YOUR voice might have been heard through the ballot box, mate, but MINE certainly wasn't.