And sixth time lucky. What’s the alternative? Someone cannot afford to buy, you want to shut down the rental market, what are you proposing instead? A sudden uptick in tent sales?

You are describing the problem – house prices need to fall. To do this the BTL sector needs to shrink and at the same time the quality of rental properties needs to increase. This means people will make less money from property, horrifying I know.

If the farmer was renting me a chicken for £1, while selling to others for 25p, yeah I would have a problem with it.

Food is a highly competitive market with lots of choice for any budget, I can also grow my own food and use a food bank if I really need it … not sure what comparison you are trying to make.

Owning your own house is not a “basic human right.”

Perhaps not the best use of that term, but I do believe everyone who is employed full time should be able to have the option to own their own home – why can we not aim for that? It’s just a reallocation of credit.

Do you have access to credit? Why not make some money yourself?

Yes, now I do – but I don’t tend to exploit people to make my money.

which is all well and good, but now we have the situation where some people can do absolutely nothing and make money from simply having access to credit.

We spent £800 on a survey, gave us a very clear idea of what needed doing and used it to get 2k off the asking price to pay for damp proofing.

^ exactly and the rental market is held up by small subset of the population being given btl mortgages. Easily fixed, but some people would have to lose some (pretty much unearned) money to do so.

ah yes, renters are scum was waiting for this. – is it possible you are only seeing the worse cases as this is your job?

The new changes outlined by 5lab are very welcome, but rents still raise year on year.

Why would you give stamp duty tax breaks at a time like this, while ignoring 3 million people that were not covered by any furlough scheme. We are getting towards the tipping point where the majority of people will be renting – things will change then

The only valid gripe seems to be an objection to capitalism.

Nonsense, it’s an objection to a warped version of predatory capitalism applied to a basic human right.

Ooh, I know, you could move to Burnley and become a landlord. (-:

This problem is heading your way, then will you be suggesting moving out the country ?

Brilliant, move away so we can carry on profiteering from people trying to access the most basic amenitie.

Or how about the landlord takes a little less profit – outrageous I know. Look at @5lab numbers if you are unsure if this is possible.

Those numbers are obscene for the amount of work you put in.

The solution is to make BTL less appealing and ultimately introduce a universal basic income.

No one is complaining about any of those things.

We want good quality rentals and a realistic route to owning a house.

It might be mainly a South east problem now, but it is coming your way soon.

So where do you draw the line? What house price makes it fair to the poor?

The truly poor should be housed by the council, house prices should be roughly 3 x income – if you did this I would expect a huge surge in productivity and economic growth.

Possibly, possibly not. My mortgage is due to be paid by the time I reach retirement age but I fully expect to be able to overpay in the final few years when our girls have grown up and left home and we have much more disposable income

Not going to help them onto the housing ladder then?

sorry, yes but they won’t have that crucial gap where they are still earning, but not paying the mortgage.

Why should the poor have to make this choice?

It not just the poor, unless you are given a very large amount of money for a deposit, a couple can have above average incomes and still have next to no chance of owning a house.

More and more people will find themselves in this situation, especially as everyone taking out 30-40 year mortgages in their 30s will not have the equity to pass down to their children.

Now I am part of the home owner club I was able to remortgage for less money, despite my girlfriend losing her job, and myself having no provable income as I went self employed this year. Made me feel sick to be honest.

ha! yeah.. I actually wanted to do this a few years ago, girlfriend was not keen.

Fun game, I can get one boat:

https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/find.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E470&minBedrooms=3&maxPrice=130000&propertyTypes=&includeSSTC=false&mustHave=&dontShow=&furnishTypes=&keywords=

Why not move somewhere where you can afford to do that? Or have bigger aspirations (as you put it) to earn more money to be able to afford it in an area where you want to live?

Pesky things like jobs and childcare.

When I talk about aspiration I am not talking about personal wealth acquisition. It’s the (hardly lofty) aspiration to live and work in the same town. There is enough houses (hence you can rent) this is not the problem. Again, we could afford the mortgages payments – this is a choice being made with 5.5 million BTL landlords profiteering from a rigged market.

Who says they are? We are very fortunate that we could, if we wanted to, mortgage ourselves up to £1m+, personally I can’t think of anything worse than a noose like that around my neck. Therefore we have a mortgage that’s a fraction of it. To do so, we moved from the South East to the English/Welsh border.

So the solution once again is to move hundreds of miles away.

Maybe, if having high aspirations is owning a £1.5m house in Winchester & all the trappings of that ‘lifestyle’, they are low.

Ha! as if that is the conundrum. How about the aspiration to own a 3 bed semi detached house that used to be owned by the local authority.

@hob nob but why are your aspirations so low?

Why should a family with two incomes have to struggle so much to afford a house. We had two kids in our bedroom for 2 years to help save, this is completely unnecessary as we could afford the mortgage payments on a much bigger house.

Why should we pay so much more to get better educated when this was never the case before? Uni debt is now charged at 6% interest, what’s your mortgage rate?

Oh come on! Of course it’s different. The deposit is much larger, the mortgage many more times income, the mortgage term 30, even 40 years instead of 20 or 25. The average first time buyer age is much higher. The time to get a family home much much later. You need two incomes now FFS. Good luck trying to sort childcare.

Add the other obstacles thrown at them e.g uni debt it’s no wonder people give up and dare to enjoy an occasional avocado.

Yes just look at what is happening in places like Manchester – lots of new housing sold to investors, locals priced out.

The market needs to be taken out of it. There is a gap opening up, my friends in their 40s tend to have multiple homes, those under 40, probably will never own now. These are the people that will ultimately force a change -hopefully peacefully.

@matt_outandabout you must be aware a 3 bed house at 130k is highly unusual. I could got not get studio flat within 50 miles of where I live. Sure I could pack up and move – but there are no jobs or family (childcare).

Your housing market is working, reasonable rent, small profit for the landlord, can buy a house after a few years saving – we are not talking about the same thing.

Sure let’s just shut up and accept that’s things are they way they are, fine I guess as you are profiteering, but why do people not care about their children?

The pull yourself up by your bootstraps brigade are the same people that did not have to do this.

For the record I saved a 80k deposit over 12 years, working through uni, living with parents, stressing over every last penny etc What a waste of my 20s.

When we had kids we rented damp, undersized properties, being no fault evicted 3 times in 5 years. The house we brought for all that effort is 3 bed semi ex council house. We were bidding against BTL every time. It’s now even more unaffordable.

I do not feel proud that I was able to save the money, I feel robbed and truly sad for the next young family after us that will have to struggle even more.

There will be a point when enough people will have gone through similar experiences to cause a fundamental change. I don’t think many people realize how much anger is brewing.

You are missing the point, I would have been able to buy the house if BTL was not driving the market up and my savings were not going on over inflated rents.

I find this blindspot incredible, but many just simply have not had the same experiences.

How is this hard to grasp. I like many many people now, could not borrow enough to buy, but could afford to rent at a higher rate then the mortgage – it’s a rigged game.

What would you have done if that rental property hadn’t been available?

I would have bought the property.

People who can not afford to buy a house are often not ‘poor’ my last rent was £250 more than my first mortgage, which is now £340 cheaper.

There is absolutely is a ‘gun to their head’ but I think you have to live this reality to understand it.

There are lots of things we can choose to do, just because opportunity exists does not mean we have to take it.

So you invested your profit back into the appreciating asset your own. Great.

Not sure why you are so keen to be seen to be altruistic using BTL, many better ways to help people. Sorry if I come across as harsh, but you can do all the mental gymnastics you like, you are not helping anyone.

Like the housing trust who rent out in the same town, taking quite a large public money subsidy and still charging what I do?

But you are not making a profit, so sounds like this is working correctly. They are also employing people.

That profit is paying mortgage interest only.

Not sure how you managed such a poor ROI, but must be nice regardless to get a 0% loan.

Obviously a small rental market is needed, but it should be provided by heavily regulated professional companies.

@matt_outandabout the bit you are missing out is the part where you get a house paid by someone else.

By that argument there’s no justification for people like Richard Branson to own multinational corporations

A roof over your head is a basic human right. Not sure how this equivalent to the right to own a business designed to generate profit.

Rich people get to use their money in a way that siphons money away from poorer people

It’s not even their money! They just have been granted access to credit, because …!?

Sorry I disagree, you might be (a rare) good landlord, but if you and people like you were not in BTL, that family could love that house, but own it. This means not being evicted because you ‘have a change of plans’ this means their monthly payments going down over time not up. This means they can provide a secure foundation for their kids.

We are storing up so many social and economic problems in this country due to the ever rising cost of basic living.

Of course the problem is buy to let FFS. There is no justification for people who just happened to be born at the right time and are deemed credit worthy (despite having the same earnings as someone younger) ‘owning’ two or three properties. It pure greed that has been allowed to go on far too long. If property developing is not your full time job, then you are simply profiteering from the misery of others.

There are enough houses, that’s not the problem! The problem is a generation trapped by sky high rents and monstrous deposits + all the other shit (tuition feea, zero hour contracts, laughable pensions etc) thrown on them by people who just simply do not care.

Does anyone remember when you could go to uni for free, park in a hospital for free, get pescriptions for free, have a dental checkup for free, save money while renting, buy a house in your 20s, have unlimited water for next to nothing, heat your home in line with wholesale prices, pay off a mortgage before you retire?

The cost of living is the problem, we have sold our country to private companies and created a generation of amateur landlords that profit of the misery of youth.

which is why we need a) rent controls b) kill the buy to let market so only professional rent out homes.