As far as I’m concerned my properties are up for sale when I choose to sell and not when some Nazi communist inspired idiot tells me to. I’ve never heard such liberty taking crap
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You’re a perfect example of how the housing crisis has gone over the heads of so many people. Not being able to afford housing is nothing to do with the poor if you look at London - it’s to do with abysmal government policies for the last 30 years resulting in a housing market which is absolutely unobtainable for the vast majority of people. Housing prices have increased 100’s of percent since 2000. Salaries have not. Almost everyone here crying about this being a move to appeal to the poor couldn’t afford the houses they own if they had to buy one brand new today with their current salaries, let alone a second house.
I think the idea is completely absurd, but honestly, so many landlords and ladys are ignorant, arrogant, and wholly incompetent and have helped create this disaster of a housing market, so they deserve a smack back into reality.
The root issue is that not enough housing has been made since the 70’s and that Labour made it too easy for property owners to start creating property portfolios.
landlords have not helped create this disaster. Many years ago the goverment decided to sell off council houses to sitting tenants . thus no cheaper properties for rent. Now housing associations are under the same shadow. this would have helped to provide more affordable housing if kept under goverment control. Many more cheaper houses need to be built for rent, supply and demand rules in everything. Correct I could not afford my house now, glad I made sacrifices to buy it years ago. Incompetance, arrogance,ignorance are traits even non landlords can have as recent posts clearly show Some tenants also need a good smack Jealousy is also rampant
The sad thing also is that many are good tenants and pay rent regular but cant get a mortgage to buy even a modest home
Basically, Labour are going to be modern day ‘Robin’ Hoods and Steal ( quite blatantly, from the rich to give to the poor. ( Read, Feckless and lazy )
Basically, expropriation ( not that any of their supporters know what that word means. )
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Thing is, no-one likes the idea of their property being forcibly taken away. But you have to cast your mind back to the great injustice done when our huge stock of social housing - collectively financed, built and owned by the nation - was sold off to private tenants during the Thatcher years, with the aid of publicly financed discounts, which more or less bribed residents to take their homes out of public ownership. This dodgy operation was effectively paid for through taxpayer-dependent bungs. The result, 40 years down the line,is that roughly half of all the homes sold under Right to Buy, are now privately owned ‘buy to lets’. It is estimated that, as a result of private ownership, rents on these homes are sometimes three times greater than when they were owned by local authorities. Furthermore, the bill to the taxpayer for rent rebates has risen to a stupendous £25 billion. So the taxpayer, who originally funded the illicit bungs that encouraged tenants to buy their homes under ‘right to buy’, is now also footing the huge annual bill for rent rebates paid to landlords who own ‘buy to let’ properties.
In case you think I’m a communist, I also own a ‘buy to let’. But you need to be intelligent enough to realise that: A) our country has never recovered from the lies and spiverry of the Thatcher years, and B) it is only a couple of hundred years since the French Revolution, when people who owned property often ended up losing their heads (possibly a lot worse than losing your house). That is only eight generations ago, not very long at all. Whatever happens, we probably deserve it.
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My comments were not about affordability or the extremely high (and unsustainable) property prices - I could not agree with you more in respect of unsustainable house prices (and something will have to give in this regard at some point in the future). My comments were purely about politics and votes, and how political parties will suggest unworkable new policies to appeal to a group of voters (“Robin Hood” politics - classic Labour…they’ll never change!). The housing market is not going over my head at all. I have children who will need homes in the future. Even if I gave them a hundred grand each as a down-payment to buy the cheapest one bedroom home in my area, they would still have a £150,000 mortgage and the much higher purchasing costs involved. Personally, I think the market is due a fairly significant correction and, if it happens, those who are currently unable to buy may then be able to do so…and that will obviously be a good thing for those who buy…but a bad thing for people who then find themselves in negative equity. There are always winners and losers on a rising market…and there are winners and losers on a falling market!
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A lot of extreme talk here.(Just what they want)
not all landlords are wealthy people with folios of property in cities.
Like Chris, I own a property I let, and my tenants probably earn twice what I do. We made an outbuilding into a small house for ourselves and then rented our cottage as we needed a pension plan , not having one , as we are self employed trades people.
We are both getting towards the end of our working life ( knackered!) and our tenants are young and unsure about jobs, where they want to ultimately settle, and even if they will always be a couple.
Anyway, as stated, this is all just nonsense propaganda, and a huge mistake of McDonnells as it will not happen, but just provoke more extreme reaction.
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How many landlords label a box room as a single bedroom, or a single as a double, purely based on the fact that “if a mattress fits in the room, surely it’s a bedroom”? And the fact that people on this thread don’t even have an EPC rating of D is a disgrace. They’re keeping their investment in the property at a minimum while ensuring the tenants have to pay far more than is required in bills.
While landlords didn’t create the legal framework that allowed for the housing crisis to begin, they ensured it would only become worse by hiking up prices and trying to cram as many people into a property as possible at inflated prices.
My concern is that a market correction will never happen unless something truly radical or apocalyptic happens to the housing market e.g. war, plague, McDonnell. With a housing shortage that spans back to the 70’s, and a market that makes it easier for current homeowners to buy new property than first time buyers, I think the most the market will naturally reach is a plateau in pricing as it hits a point where people literally can no longer afford housing, something that seems to be occurring in London already.
If Labour did implement this policy which I don’t think they ever will, especially if they has any control over the price, and more so if they forced a discount.
I would sell my properties and use the capital to buy stocks and live off the dividends.
No way I would be putting effort into a property business if a tenant can just come a long and I am forced to sell it to them.
I’ll leave it to the government and tenants I will have no involvement with that nonesense.
This country criticises communist countries so much, it seems like Labour wants to become one.
If all the lazy people in a society are rewarded and all the hard workers are ‘punished’ in the end most people will realise life is just easier to be a lazy ass, and what a great society it would turn into.
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Everyone in the country has the right to buy a property already. Just look on one of the property listing sites, there are thousands of properties up for sale to suit all pockets.
The main obstacle to people buying a property is lack of a deposit or inability to get a mortgage due to insufficient income or a poor track record in financial matters. Forcing landlords to sell to tenants doesn’t solve those problems.
My wife and I own 3 flats which give us a small income in retirement. Those flats represent 40 years of hard work, self denial and saving. We don’t smoke, drink or have expensive holidays. In my experience, tenants usually do those things. Labour just can’t stand the fact that some people are born stupid and/or irresponsible. All the loony-left policies in the world won’t change that.
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For this to work at all, there would have to be very fair regulations in place.
To make a landlord sell a property with all the legal fees and hassle that incurs, followed by having to buy another property with the excessively high extra stamp duty plus more legal fees would be totally unreasonable.
Landlords would be selling their properties wholesale, causing a housing crisis for renters and huge drop in house values as these ex rentals flooded the market.
I also think there would have to be a tenancy time clause. Tenants would have to be in that property for a decent period of time before they were given any sort of right to buy.
having said that I can see that if a tenant had been in a property for 10 or more years and had been an excellent tenant throughout, it would be fair to allow them to buy that property, but only at a decent price and without financial detriment, in any way, to the landlord, but not sure how this could be achieved.
As someone has already mentioned, surely if they could afford a deposit and a mortgage they would already be buying not renting.
I expect this is really only another scatterbrained unthought through, political vote catcher.
how can it possibly be fair to tell an indiidual to sell his private property !! What next"I have borrowed your lawnmower for ten years its now mine"
Oh Colin, if you’d borrowed my lawnmower for 10 years, you may as well have it! as it would be worn out and I would have forgotten that you’d borrowed it!!!
I’m not saying it’s very fair, but after 10 years, tenants would have made it into their own home, it is a house/rental property for the landlord and others are available to buy, but tenants can only buy a house not a home. I hope this explains my reasoning.
in 10 years you would have upgraded your lawnmower and have an improved one. just as my properties have been upgraded in the last 10 years with electrics, insulation and heating. . I would rather wreck them than sell at a discount. I was not able to buy at a discount. It was me that put 1000 s of hours into improvements (as a builder). not any tenant. Are you a landlord or a tenant?
I’m a landlord and I have upgraded my properties. New shower in bathroom. New boiler etc. I think I did say the tenant should only be allowed to buy the property at the correct price, not a discounted price.
Is the Labour Party going to be renamed the British Communist Party as all the polices they seen to be mentioning effects all working type people who strive to make the U.K. the best place to live and work. I would happily sell my house at market value but what about your children who you are saving the house for? Labour need a massive rethink and move from the extreme Left of British politics
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Hi all and greetings from California!
If such an idiotic Labour policy actually happened or even looked like it was going happen, I would simply invest in another country. Why waste and lose money in communist UK?
The main purpose of my letting business is to provide high quality accommodation to relocating professionals from London to Southwest England. They mostly want mid term let’s of a very high standard until they decide to buy a property suitable for their requirements. It works great thanks to OpenRent!
However, under this short sighted Labour policy I would be forced to close my 100% full occupancy happy tenanted business. It is most definitely and confiscation of personal assets, a theft by the state. The consequences would be zero investment in the UK, because the question would remain: What else would Labour confiscate? Shares? Funds? ISA’s? Pensions?
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