
Amount spent by private renters is approaching parity with mortgage payments - pmoriarty
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rentquake-private-housing-crises-shelter-report-a8401131.html
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J-dawg
The UK has a problem with housing supply, which will take time to fix.

But what needs to happen urgently (and could happen virtually overnight if
politicians wanted it to) is that renting needs to be made slightly less
awful.

Renting a home is no longer something that people do for a few years while
they're young. Many will be doing it for life, and the rules need to change
accordingly.

Some ideas:

\- A total ban on any agent's fees being charged to the tenant (already
happened in Scotland, and been promised to the rest of the UK for months now).

\- A year's notice before you can evict someone from a home. (unless they are
not paying rent / trashing the place)

\- A year's notice before increasing the rent.

\- Some sort of government body that forces landlords to conduct repairs to a
high standard, and obliges them to pay for alternative accommodation if the
property isn't fixed.

~~~
CalRobert
Eh, for what it's worth it seems like making life terrible for landlords is a
good way to convince the there's no point bothering with tenants, and thereby
reduce the housing supply.

We've tried that in Ireland - I'm the beneficiary of Rent Pressure Zones in
Dublin and I think they're incredibly dumb; if you want more housing don't try
your hardest to convince all the people thinking "hmm, should we rent
Grandma's unit that's been vacant in Rialto since she died 10 years ago" that
it's a terrible idea!

~~~
philjohn
Houses don't suddenly cease to exist when they are withdrawn from rental
stock. For small and large landlords they would want to dispose of the asset
as it's costing them money.

It's the inverse of the problem the BTL revolution had - small landlords
buying up housing stock and driving prices up.

So, house no longer for rent - it'll go on sale, which means more houses
available on the market, which would depress prices. The problem is that's
unpalateable to the large Tory donors, so the only way out is to build build
build (and maybe see if it's possible to forbid purchase by anyone but owner-
occupiers).

------
gambiting
Approaching? I could already save about 1/3 of my monthly payments by getting
a mortgage instead. The only issue is the deposit to get the mortgage, it's
hard to save up enough money as it is.

~~~
turblety
But the deposit is a massive issue. If you put that deposit into stocks and
shares (a diversified portfolio) you could (will probably) find that
outperform the cost of your mortgage and maintenance together. If they could
get rid of the deposit you might break even with a stocks and shares
investment plan.

[https://www.thebalance.com/real-estate-vs-stocks-which-is-
th...](https://www.thebalance.com/real-estate-vs-stocks-which-is-the-better-
investment-357992)

~~~
cdolan
Are you advocating for zero money down mortgages?

That’s what causes market crashes.

~~~
shoo
it's likely suggested as an obvious thought experiment to help define a lower
bound / upper bound versus alternative, not a policy recommendation.

------
abtinf
In a free market, rent will always be higher than cost of a property. If it
were less, the property is an unprofitable investment and should be divested.

This article drops critical context. 10 years ago, one of the earliest and
most potent warning signs of the coming collapse was the extreme disparity
between rents and mortgages. Home prices skyrocketed while rents remained
relatively flat. And just a couple years before that, there were weekly
newspaper articles about the unprecedented reversal of the rent-to-mortgage
ratio.

~~~
alex_duf
> In a free market, rent will always be higher than cost of a property. If it
> were less, the property is an unprofitable investment and should be
> divested.

That's assuming you finance your property with debt and let someone else pay
for your debt. If you either happen to own a property you don't use, or own
the property you live in, it makes perfect sense.

You're describing everything that's wrong about the property market: owner
expecting properties to magically create money out of someone else's labour.

~~~
brightball
I’m not sure that’s anything other than math.

If I have a property and I decide to rent it, why would I rent it for anything
less than the sum of my expenses plus a profit margin that will cover
maintenance or repairs?

Why would anyone else? A rental property is just like any other business.

~~~
alex_duf
That's absolutely correct, my point was that once you've done the math - and
assuming you are still paying a mortgage - it should give you a rent high
enough such that no-one would agree to take it, unless you are willing to keep
paying for part of it. It would therefore push the owner to either sell or
stay in their property.

That's my blue-sky-point-of-view of the property market which doesn't reflect
the reality, but I believe with enough people treating property as an
investment rather than a personal need you end up in our current situation.

My personal view is that tax systems should compensate by being more expensive
to own more properties than you need. (where to put a limit, I'm not sure)

~~~
brightball
The rent is higher but people will still take it for a lot of reasons.
Inability to get approved for a mortgage, not wanting to deal with the sales
process if you expect to move around a lot, etc.

I tried to sell my old house and despite being priced low just to get it sold,
it sat on the market after we had already moved. We ended up deciding to see
if we could rent it but weren’t sure how the process would go. In our area we
didn’t see any home rentals listed except for a couple that were excessive
(double what a mortgage would cost).

After months of not selling, we listed it for rent at a price I thought nobody
would pay and it rented in 1 day, sight unseen. The renters insisted on paying
a deposit as soon as possible because they didn’t want to lose the property.

For a first dip into the home rental market, I was shocked at how high the
demand was.

------
nigelcleland
What isn't mentioned in this article is any commentary regarding the falling
rates of home ownership in various countries compounded with rapid price
increases (driven by low rates and zoning policies). This is particularly
acute as it appears to be driven predominately by a generational gap as
opposed to a socio-economic gap. Pitting the young against the old is never a
good thing.

What is also missed completely is the rise of the professional share house.
How many professional people on high incomes are now forced into multi-person
rental accommodation due to affordability concerns.

~~~
majewsky
That's assuming that people rent because they cannot afford a house. I rent
because _I don 't want a house_. Owning a house is a ton of additional
responsibility for what would be very little to no gain for me. I don't have
space requirements (no children and don't plan to have any, no spacious hobby
that would require a workshop, no car that would need to be parked in a
garage). I'm not saying that everyone is like me, but I'm pretty confident
there are more people like me than there used to be.

~~~
nigelcleland
I am in complete agreement with you, I rent for very similar reasons.

What I was attempting to flag was that for many this was no longer about it
being a choice. The dramatic rise in house prices has meant that saving a
deposit is now a lengthy endeavour in many areas, one that is driving a much
larger renter culture. It is to be expected that lifestyle norms will change
around this as well.

------
vertex-four
The problem is that people who are renting often don’t have the option of
getting a mortgage in the U.K. People often rent much nicer flats than they
could get a mortgage for - especially within cities. Alternatively, they’re
renting flats that are non-mortgageable, and anything that the banks will
provide a mortgage on is out of their affordability.

Basically - people who are renting are, in practice, stuck renting, and I
suspect a lot of people can be pushed a lot harder than they are now - we’ve
only seen the start of young adults continuing to live with their parents
while working due to the cost of renting.

------
quailman8
I think the only escape from going back to generational landlords (feudalism)
is to have all rentals become rent to own: you live there for 5 (3?) years and
can purchase that part of the building (ala condo) or duplex. You'd have to
pay your share of taxes, but you would no longer be renting and would have
your own property. If you go to sell it, the landlord gets first call on
buying it.

------
woodpanel
The proposals laid out by politicians in the article, bear no sense of the
hidden costs of zoning :-(

Anecdotal: Visited a friend in London a while ago, she bought her terrace
"house" (2 stories, a width of 5 meters) for 500k GBP in Wimbledon. The
condition of that thing screamed "landmarked" and "dump" at the same time,
while all I heard was "artificial scarcity"...

~~~
gambiting
Tbf, 500k for a house in Wimbledon sounds like an absolute bargain, even if
the place needed another 100k in repairs. London is super crazy for property
prices.

~~~
woodpanel
Correct, I should've added: she bought the house 15-20 yrs. ago.

