Is Government approach to housing short sighted?

Reply to the comment left by Mark Alexander at 16/09/2017 - 19:01
My response to that was ...

"Interesting statements, although they are not necessarily linked. I agree there has probably been less growth in home-ownership than in private renting in the period 2000 to 2017 but there are all sorts of reasons for that, such as job mobility, more youngsters going to university, more single families and the desire not to put down roots etc., all of which are reliant on a heathy rental sector, be it private or social.

To a certain extent I can accept that landlords and first time buyers will compete for some properties. However, because they are financed differently, are generally at different stages in life and have different agendas I think you would be shocked at how rarely this happens. For example, how many first time-buyers want to buy a commercial building such as a pub and convert it into a block of flats or an HMO? How many first time buyers have the means to be able to buy an uninhabitable property and invest time and money into bringing it back into use? There will be some, but they will be very few and far between."

Dorkins also said ...

"Landlords have a choice about which kind of business to go into. If they think a different type of business would be more profitable because of the tax structure, they are free to put their capital there.

People have no choice about needing to consume housing, it is essential for life. If they try to buy a house they are forced into competition with landlords who have a tax advantage over them, and when they lose out in the competition to buy a house they are then forced to rent from the very BTL landlords who outcompeted them. "

Reply to the comment left by Mark Alexander at 16/09/2017 - 19:04
My response to that was ....

"There is overwhelming evidence that landlords add to the net supply of housing by bringing unusable housing stock back into use and facilitating new build developments which funds additional social housing. There is very little evidence of landlords competing with first time buyers, because landlords look to buy cheap and add value. Something which very few first time buyers are able to do.

Your support of taxing landlords into oblivion will place stress on many tenants for whom home ownership is either impossible or impractical given their circumstances. Their rents will rise or their properties will be sold. Displacing these tenants from their homes is unfair. De-stabilising the housing market affects homeowners too, which also isn’t fair. And all for what, so a few more properties might become available for first time buyers to purchase? It doesn’t make any sense."

I popped into my local estate agents today and in passing asked whether they ever saw landlords and first time buyers competing for the same properties. They looked completely bemused and said: 'We get very few first time buyers and not many landlords,' they replied, 'it's mostly families who already own looking to move.' So, it's not happening where I am! I tell this anecdote as a Labour MP told an anecdote in Parliament a year or so ago saying that a daughter of a friend of hers had once tried to purchase and found herself up against a landlord... and she wanted to use her one anecdote as evidence which would shape policy against landlords.

Reply to the comment left by Dr Rosalind Beck at 15/09/2017 - 18:55
There's talk of minimum room sizes being introduced for single BTLs too which would make it untenable in my area. Of the 211 three bedroom properties on my spreadsheet, only 78 of them have a 3rd bedroom of 6.5m2 or more. 133 don't. To pay for a 3 bed house only to be told later that you can only rent two bedrooms would bankrupt many LLs and/or force out many tenants who can't afford to pay higher rents to cover the shortfall (if you could find any who could).

This, sadly, is surely an unintended consequence of an appalling legislation. If somebody is happily living in the room the state will tell them they are not allowed to be happy in that room and furthermore they will don't be allowed to live there. Therefore they will have to spend more to rent a larger room in the same area or perhaps less further away. So lots of currently happily occupied rooms will need to remain permanently empty. Paul at a time when we are short of housing

Reply to the comment left by Ross Tulloch at 20/09/2017 - 14:57and the irony of that is that many of those 3rd bedrooms which are under the minimum size are - as in my case - very probably in ex Local Authority or council houses (built and rented out as family homes of course), which are now being rented out by BTL Landlords - and I won't even mention or question the sizes of 3rd bedrooms in any current and/or new build social housing provision (such as it is)

Certainly an issue in London, is the buying "off plan" (i.e. before they've even been built) by overseas investors, with no intention of occupying/renting them out. The Contractor gets his money up front and then skimps on the quality/finishing for extra profit. Additionally, the contractors have been allowed to defer their social housing commitments and then when they've accumulated too many, decides they're changing their business plan to office/retail development and thus avoid those "losses"