TV – Landlord scare stories?

Lower cost properties for first time buyers would be a good thing.

I don’t think there’s a deliberate intention to free up property for bigger players but this would be a good move too. Many landlords are reaching retirement/end of life and tenants are being unfairly displaced so that landlords can sell up. The BTL ‘experiment’ is beginning to fail because it doesn’t deliver what the country needs. It did, of course, deliver higher house prices which successive governments have fed off due to the wealth effect.

Reply to the comment left by Easy rider at 19/12/2023 - 10:37
Clearly, you have no understanding of the challenges facing the PRS.

I don't think BTL was so much an experiment but part of the Conservative / Thatcher government's vote winning "right to buy" strategy to secure a majority of the electorate as a property owning cohort. BTL was bought in to replace the sold off council housing whilst the developers built more houses. But of course that did not happen.

Then good old Gorgon Brown raided peoples pensions so they invested in BTL as a replacement vehicle. This did produce an increase in house prices but also a plentiful supply of rental property. I used to have to compete on price and quality with about another eight landlords to let my one bed flats. In 2002 - £325 a month and up to about five years ago maybe £425. Now the same flats are £695 a month.

This worked well until, as you say, these BTL LLs, like myself got older. But - instead of keeping and holding over the assets for my family, the incessant attacks by the government in both taxation, vote winning rhetoric ( Tenants Good, Landlords Bad to paraphrase George Orwell), legislation, and bad mouthing by the likes of Generation Rant and Shelter led me to conclude it's not worth it anymore. And so I have sold eight out of thirteen. The remaining five will go by 2025.

Shelter and the rest portray tenants as being poor down trodden victims of grasping landlords. These type of programs show the flip side. As a PRS landlord you do run the risk of getting a bad tenant who can end up costing you thousands in lost rent and property damage while you sit by helplessly fretting, waiting for the legal process to run its slow course.
What’s always forgotten is that most PRS property has been bought by landlords with their own hard earned money. It is not unfair that they sell up it’s their money after all. Many landlords see a bleak future where just about the only sure way you will be able to get rid of a bad tenant is to sell while at the same time having a whole lot of costly regulations slapped on them.
I am one of the landlords Easy Rider refers to. It’s time to start selling up for an easy life. The bank won’t be phoning me to say their boiler has broken down or the drains are blocked or slates have fallen off the roof. As for the corporates taking over they only want rich tenants who can prove they can pay the rent and provide guarantors.

The big boys are not interested in modest older properties that many landlords own. They want new blocks of BTR flats.
This Government has been crass. They have fallen for ill-informed comments from the likes of Shelter. Trying to get landlords to be perfect has driven out many decent landlords. Professional landlords can just about cope with all the regulation but even they, if they are over-geared or if they get a bad tenant or tenants, will think twice about continuing.
Prospective new landlords should realise that it is a risky business largely thanks to (a) over-regulation and (b) a slow court system that means the involuntary creditor (AKA the landlord) may have to wait months to get his property back.

Spot-on! Also, the 'big boys' have been scaling back their BTR investments.

Reply to the comment left by NewYorkie at 19/12/2023 - 15:08
MPs are [mostly] only interested in votes and power

Landlords are [mostly] only interested in providing decent, safe, housing to renters, in return for a rent which covers their costs and provides a small profit to reflect their investment [which doesn't have to be in providing rented accommodation!], and is paid on time and in full. They don't need the constant vilfication, taxation, and regulatory changes.

Is that adult enough for you?

Whilst being a LL I’m at work so don’t see this daytime TV. Guess it is to show bad tenants what a nightmare they can cause and get away with.

Sounds like public service broadcasting to me. There are far to many "accidental" landlords in the market who don't know what theyre doing and don't realise the danger they're in.

Reply to the comment left by David at 20/12/2023 - 10:44
I was an 'accidental' landlord 25 years ago, but I take your point. Too many new investors who've been sold the BTL dream at a time of low interest rates, and are now suffering.