Should missed mortgage payments be a criminal offence?

@Recardo @Don @John - my point is not who takes risk, it is that landlords and tenants should be equally accountable for making payments on time.

THANK YOU mr. banker/ or trader/whatever you are.

The problem is it is only landlords that get the kicking. from councils, legislation, the banks and the tenants.

tenants do not get some council official telling them how to live but we do
tenants do not get legislation forcing them to fill in reams of paperwork, to account for every nut and bolt of their actions but we do.

landlords are accountable. tenants are not.

so ....what do you trade in....cabbages on the market....bullion in the UAE....or just insults to landlords ??!!

if you think you can better our lot...work with us. could be to your advantage.

CONSULT IS BETTER THAN INSULT

I have a small hotel/guest house in Loughborough, and when a guest breaks a thing ( whatever it is ) we can charge him for it and get the money straight away. but as a landlord trying to get compensation for any damage by a tenant is dogged with so many problems, I often just give up.

I would like to see the same with my let properties.

Mr -anker, being a trader is even worse.
You are just a gambler who is good at gambling.
People like you have been bailed out by the taxpayer.
Gamblers who have lost have had their losses socialised by the taxpayer.
To me that is a one way bet, if you can never lose as someone will always bail you out.
Gambling under the guise of a bank is as Adair Turner stated 'socially useless'
Why should the taxpayer stand as the the last chance saloon for 'socially useless' activities'.
Clearly you may have read my circumstances; pray tell why do you pity my tenants.
At no time have ANY of my tenants had ANY complaints about the service I proivide.
In fact the opposite is the case.
This despite being ripped off extensively by wrongun tenants.
Do you have pity for wrongun tenants, if so you have a peculiar attitude.
I provide an excellent responsive service for which I require the contractually agreed rent to be paid when due.
I don't see anything here for qa tenant of mine to be pitied for.
surely I do and require what all or most LL require.
I think you have arrived at a fortunate position in life and therefore fail to appreciate how ideals cannot be achieved.
Everyone runs on tight margins.
If the PRS followed your suggested methodology the homeless would be in their millions.
It is a simple fact of life and I agree it is not ideal that PRS rental property isd deliverd on very tight margins.
That is how most small business operates in the UK.
Non-payment of rent can decimate a small LL; why should a tenant be legally allowed to remain in a property if they haven't paid the rent and consequently cause so much potential financial damage to the LL.
With regards to capital adequacy have you a rule of thumb amount you think would or should be required before a LL may purchase and rent a property out.
I appreciate you may not know exactly the rental market so perhaps a generalisation would still be useful as to the amount of capital adequacy.
I believe that your ideal requirements would be devastating to LL, tenants and the lenders.
Which is why I don't think your ideals will ever be introduced.
Capitalism is always on a knife edge; LL are no different from any other small business.
Lack of bank lending is causing further effect on what capital adequacy small businesses have presently.
Indeed such restricted lending is destroying business on a daily basis.
Even the big boys are suffering; Travelodge etc.
Your suggestions therefore whilst I agre are ideal; they are I am afraid away with the fairies!!

1:10 cash to value ratio would be fine, Mark Alexander's 20% liquidity rule even better.

If landlords didn't own 4 million properties would there be 4 million less properties or would all properties be worth less?

Your small businesses analogy is a good one. Do they always get paid for the services they provide or do they sometimes not get paid and go bust? If a small business doesn't get paid for services they have the same recourse through the legal system as landlords to recover money. If businesses trade with people who can't afford to pay them then more fool them and as you say landlords are small businesses too.

PS - I don't work for a bank, I didn't choose the pseudonym given to me by the forum owner, he did!

Presumably the Banker would also like to bring back capital punnishment for felonious embezlement by a bankrupt.

I suggest the Banker reads Adams Smith's "The Wealth of Nations" as he does not seem to grasp the nature of capitalism. Financiers provide funding for interest, and entrepreneurs manage the business and keep any profits after the interest is paid. Therefore the great er risk is with the entrepreneur.

A bank is not a living thing in itself - it is a collection of shareholders with limited liabilitiy themselves. The worse that could happen for them is that the share holders have losses relating to part of their portfolio. However, the landlords risk losing all their posessions.

thank you Kevyn.
so is he a trader of insults then ?.

Hello to all, as with mark and the Mr.Banker i can see the points they make and agree you can't say one without having the other ie criminal offence for 2 rent payments missed etc. Yet it wont happen so end of chat.
As the banker is a trader he will know as i do (i am not a trader but worked in banking and am now in property full time) that in his business it is very much a results business worked in a hierarchy of trading ie well know funds do not want to know traders who can not realise the required returns. Yet the culture of banking and other FTSE100 companies are of favour swopping at the very top level. For example kids at LSE, Oxford or Cambridge are swopped with daddys ceo friend for accelerated career path etc etc. So people in positions that directly influence the performance of these companies and our economy are in these positions not through proving themselves but through who they are.
I think it is this culture that needs to change to ensure we as a country and economy prosper to the levels to which our politicians reguarly speak of us getting to. Enjoy your weekend people, remember tommorrow is never promised to anyone but no matter what it can always be worse.

No other business allow use of it's services for free until evicted.
This is the point cosmo makes and I agree.
Can you name a business which allows legally an occupier to remain until the useless court system wends it's weary way to getting rid of that occupier to be replaced with a tenant who would pay for the service.
I fully accept that if a LL did not have a tenant and went bust then yes that is fair enough.
But when a LL has more than enough tenant applicants to pay for his service, but can't let his property due to a non-rent paying tenant legally occupying the property until evicted, that is not a very sound business model.
We as LL have presently to tolerate this unacceptable state of afffairs.
As for property prices, do you think that the banks would lend without large deposits.
So it matters not what HP are tenants could still not afford them.
Now if we returned to 95% LTV then that might be achievable.
Banks will NOT be returning to that criteria in the very near future.
Also IO only has effectively been banned so no chance of buying a more expensive property.
You just have to realise that there is no more money, which is why there will be a continuing demand for rental property.
All we as LL want is a level playing field with normal small business.
This we do not have and it is compromising LL to an enormous extent.
The govt could solve the problem by a statutory instrument that meant 2 months of non-rent payment you become a squatter and can be removed by the police.
It could be so simple but govt is so far up it's -rse it hasn't got the imagination to introduce a measure such as this which would to a large extent protect LL from wrongun non-rent paying tenants.
We only ask to be paid for the service we provide and for the non-rent payer to be removed in timely fashion if they fail to pay.
How can that be wrong!?
The capital adequacy ideals you state are fair enough.
The economic reality is that very few small businesses have such resources.
That is why they are still small businesses!
To state that you cannot be a LL unless you have enough CA is madness.
There would not be enough rental property for tenants.
We would have a homeless problem like nothing you have ever imagined.
This is why I stated you wish for a Utopian outcome, it is simply not possible and will not be for as long as you and I live!!

Yes we get to keep 100% of appreciation...we also got to keep 100% of the fall in value in 1989 and 2009 and the bank got to keep 100% of the debt thus not losing out at all.

all of what you have stated here is not quite accurate.
when a bank goes after a bad creditor the courts will side with the bank.
when a landlord goes after a bad tenant, the courts, police, CAB, LHA, will all side with the tenant.

in short landlords have all the responsibility and no rights, but tenants have all the rights and no responsibility.

all I'm after is a level playing field. I call it equality.