CRUSADER: Was the Budget the death knell for the PRS?

Is this a crazy idea ?

We have a HUGE social housing crisis - right ? Instead of government pushing landlords out of the market - creating a bigger housing problem - why don't they work with landlords and make them part of the solution? Hear me out ...

Encourage landlords to collaborate with authorities to provide their homes for families . Ok the rents may be slightly lower than current values but the authorities take on the annual safety checks etc. The payback for the landlord is the benefit of a reduced tax band on income received due to be being part of the Collaborative Private Landlord Social Support Government Housing Scheme - (just made that up ) .

Whilst this could work for long term landlords, may be not so for the short term landlord. That said there is NO shortage of private tenants looking. Supply will continue to diminish and rents will continue to rise.

The only way to stabilise rents is to balance supply.

The only way to solve the housing crisis is to balance supply.

Just my thoughts.......

As Mark Twain didn't quite say: "The reports of the death of the PRS are exaggerated." Yes, the Budget is bad and things are going to get worse for landlords and also for tenants. No, section 21 is not the cause of homelessness but its abolition will likely lead to more homelessness. The 2% hike in SDLT will put up the price for investors but that will feed through into higher rents. Crusader is right that "it’s always tenants that pay."
As a professional landlord, I intend staying in the market. There will always be a demand for rental property and landlords will be there to fill it.
One little-discussed problem is the difficulty of selling residential property with a tenant in situ. With commercial property (I am a solicitor specialising in that area) it is normal to buy and sell a tenanted property and having a reliable income stream is valuable. The law provides a balance between the rights of tenants and landlords. With resi, the risks are much greater and all the legislation has been skewed in tenants' favour for the past 10 years. (So much for levelling the playing field. The law is tilted heavily in tenants' favour.)

If you are unfortunate to take on someone else's dodgy tenant, you are stuck for months, face financial ruin and kick yourself for not buying with vacant possession and choosing your own tenant. Wanting to sell to an investor is not a ground for eviction. Whether we will see more buyers willing to take on someone else's tenants remains to be seen. On the other side of the coin, no landlord will have more than two months guaranteed income as tenants can leave on a whim.
Paradoxically, if Labour want to help tenants, they should reduce the SDLT where a property is sold subject to a lease to an occupational tenant and also protect landlords from massive arrears. Unfortunately, for ideological reasons they are doing the opposite.
I expect to have higher costs but higher rents and some capital growth as Labour fail to hit their target of 1.5 million new homes.

"Do we carry on and hope this absolute shower of chancers, fantasists and commies get voted out at the earliest opportunity? Or do we join the masses leaving?"

That really is the question, isn't it.

I think there was some distant hope in the minds of landlords that Labour would heed the warnings, and the facts, and not make the situation any worse for renters than it currently is. But, they remain blinded by their ideological hatred of money-grabbing landlords or, they simply needed some more red meat to throw at the left of the Party, along with school fees and non-doms, both of which will actually cost them money.

Well, hope is not a strategy, and strategy is what landlords now need.

Yes, larger portfolio landlords will look to ride out the storm. But for how long; 5 years, more, less? They have such a majority, it could be 10! But the majority of renters rely on smaller landlords, and they are most vulnerable.

We don't need to do this [I'll be out next year], and even if we do believe there is a future for the PRS [which there is], it doesn't have to be in BTL. I've already started diversifying my investments, and my initial BTR punt is up 15% plus a 4% interim dividend over a few months. But if BTR no longer suits me, I can simply press a button and I'm out! Yes, I will now pay 18% CGT, but no more 'renters rights', no arrears while I wait a year for a court date, no EPC nonsense, no S24, no repairs and maintenance, no agents fees, no service charges and ground rents, no accountants fees, no extra 5% if I want to buy more... Nothing. Just passive investment while we visit the Galapagos next year.

That's the choice landlords have. Renters have no choice, and Labour has just made that choice worse.

Renters need to know the Party they've just voted for has made their lives so much worse. But never mind, they've got rid of the Tories. Power to the people!

with you (more or less) all the way and just about to share to social media hoping tenants would read - until the last 4 sentences

Reply to the comment left by Denise G at 01/11/2024 - 11:25
What's wrong with the last 4 sentences?

The tenant fee ban was supposed to make things fairer for tenants - that back fired.

As a letting agent we had to increase our fees to our landlords to cover our costs otherwise we may have well just closed our doors. Our landlords were happy with this on the basis we increased the rents to cover their extra outgoing. So tenants in the long term have ended up paying more !

Has any of the 14+ housing ministers in recent years - actually been a landlord? I would guess not.

Reply to the comment left by Caroline Newman at 01/11/2024 - 11:49
Angela Rayner. Oops, she was just letting her brother look after the place during the odd occasion she visited her family at a differ home; not her main one, of course.

Reply to the comment left by NewYorkie at 01/11/2024 - 11:21
Who's your BTR investment with?
Big firm?

The housing crisis boils down to supply and demand.

Labour have stifled supply or PRS homes with their hideous hike to additional property SDLT. This seriously impacts any hope of building (and selling) 1.5 million homes during this term.

Labour have done nothing to stifle the supply of new tenants. They seem to have given up on controlling net migration other than encouraging the seriously wealthy to move abroad. These people are the wealth creators and the largest contributors to the Treasury.

Can't any of these idiots see that forcing out private landlords to make way for massive build to rent companies is not helping tenants. Is the future of renting really going to be glorified student accommodation which is considerably more expensive than the housing offered in the PRS? I can't speak for the rest of the country, but in south London it is easily 50% more.