UK Politics

I hate this kind of reply because blaming landlords and claiming that they are just milking renters is such a lazy response.

The way I see it is that there are 3 kinds of landlords, 1/ the big companies that have hundreds or thousands of properties and turnover millions of pounds annually, 2/ the medium sized landlords that have much fewer properties and run it as their main business and turnover a couple of hundred thousand pounds annually and 3/ the individual landlords that have 1 or 2 properties and do it as a side business to their main job.

Buying property and by extension selling property is such a drawn out, lengthy process. The prospective purchaser has to get a mortgage in principle or sell their existing property, find a property within their budget which gets smaller as time goes by, put in an offer, have it accepted, instruct a solicitor and carry out all the checks and eventually exchange and move in. Depending on property chain length this can take months to a year!!

The big companies (1) are definitely the ones exploiting renters and ensuring property prices are artificially inflated by being able to buy property when it is available with no time lag, i.e. they can pay "cash" for it and it's an easy sale for the seller/developer. They can also afford a rise in interest rates as probably not all the properties have a mortgage and overall wont impact their profits, but they will still increase rents. They also have a massive support infrastructure in place to maintain the properties and lawyers and enforcers to deal with problematic renters.

The medium sized landlords (2) are the ones at greatest risk to interest rate changes, their whole business model is based on a ensuring that rent received covers mortgages and running costs as well as paying them a wage. Sustained interest rate increases as we have seen over the last 14 months hit hard as most are interest only mortgages and are either trackers or fixed term ending and a massive increase coming. An interest only mortgage on £150k could have gone from ~£300 per month to over ~£900 per month overnight and there is no way that kind of increase can be passed on instantly, now multiply that by however many properties in their portfolio and these increases cost grow rapidly. On top of that they need to maintain the properties and deal with delinquent renters and lets not forget taxes!! A lot of people seem to think that charging ~£1000 per month and then only having to pay~£300 mortgage is a license to print money.

And finally the individual landlords (3) are in a very slightly better position than the medium sized landlords, they are able to offset a mortgage rise temporarily by using their main job, but they still have all the issues to deal with, i.e. maintenance and renters problems.

They way I like to look at it is like supermarkets and sole businesses. The supermarkets are squeezing sole businesses by undercutting them and being able to weather price rises but sole businesses can't and need to raise prices but we're not saying to them "god forbid if they have to pay some of their own costs"!!