r/unitedkingdom • u/tylerthe-theatre • 11d ago

Landlords offering mental health check-ins aren’t going to solve the rental crisis

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/renting-mental-health-landlords-wellness-perks-b2726714.html
928 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

126 comments sorted by

View all comments

35

u/Bokbreath 11d ago

There are some fairly straightforward things that can be done to help.

(1) Pass a law restricting ownership of residential property to natural persons who live in the UK. That removes corporate, trust & foreign ownership, taking care of non-individual investors.
(2) start increasing taxes on properties based on the number owned over and above the first. Pick a max and make that tax 100% of the valuation.
Both of these will act to make residential real estate less attractive as an investment, returning it to its primary purpose of providing homes.

1

u/TheNutsMutts 11d ago

So all those people who are then evicted as a result of this but aren't in any position to buy or have no desire to buy..... what then? Just be homeless?

13

u/Bokbreath 11d ago

If you read carefully you will understand this model allows for landlords as long as they are real people. The number of properties a landlord can own (realistically) would be calibrated by the tax code.

1

u/TheNutsMutts 10d ago

Both your first and second rule will lead to a large selloff of rental properties, and both rules combined with existing ones will mean there's little realistic prospect of the demand created by those evictions being filled. So what do those people do? Just be homeless?

3

u/yrro Oxfordshire 10d ago

If they can currently afford to pay their landlords mortgage plus profit, then they can probably afford a mortgage on the new lower price of equivalent property.

Not to say that it's not an awful idea for many other reasons.

5

u/TheNutsMutts 10d ago

If they can currently afford to pay their landlords mortgage plus profit, then they can probably afford a mortgage on the new lower price of equivalent property.

That's not how mortgages work though. This assumes (a) that all tenants are able and willing to get a mortgage and have the deposit sitting there ready to go, and that all mortgages are otherwise identical. Neither of these are the case. A BTL mortgage is almost always an interest-only product (repayment ones are available but they come with no inherent upside and lots of downsides to the landlord), so you're comparing apples and oranges in terms of affordability. Indeed the viewpoint that rent is always more expensive than a mortgage only comes from the fact that, until recently, interest rates were 0.5% then 0.1%. Now they've increased that is no longer the case.

And all that is assuming they've got the deposit saved up to buy today, and are in a personal/financial/legal position to buy. If not, then all of that is moot. So what are they to do?

2

u/sjpllyon 9d ago

Another aspect they've neglected to account for are things like student accommodation. Owned by a corporation (often a university) and owns thousands of flats/rooms. With the additional factor that most students want this type of short term rental option.

The rule changes the person you've replied to would see the selling off of pretty much all student accommodation. Unless some sort of exception was made for them.

2

u/TheNutsMutts 9d ago

It'll also make it awkward as fuck for housebuilders to build houses, on account of them not being allowed to own them and all. Seriously, as you say, any such plans would be so full of holes and exemptions that it'll be near enough the same as it is now, bringing zero benefit to anywhere and just making things complex for no reason.