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Politics, politics, politics (so long and thanks for all the fish)

Their value will go down until they reach break even point for council house price levels, which is the design
But that would devalue everyone's property. And what would happen if the start of that was devalued rental properties is that people would just buy them off the landlords selling up to live in. And you'd just get a mass reduction in available rental properties.
 
Technically you wouldn't be, the banks would be. But even then they wouldn't be if you continue to service the loan.

High interest rates is what would fudge everything.....even the rise to 5-6% caused everyone to brick the bed.
If the banks are f*cked - everyone is f*cked.

And if there was a mass devaluing of property the banks would struggle even if people maintained the loan as banks would not be able to borrow against the value of their safest assets in order to meet liabilities.

It would grind the entire economy to a halt like what happened in the financial crash. Which was caused basically by a housing bubble popping in the US.
 
A few groups that had overstretched on mortgages might struggle if they needed to sell before they paid the mortgage off. But it would also fix the housing crises and improve lives for generations to come
A few groups that over stretched on mortgages? I.e. pretty much most people. Most people can't afford more than a 10-15% deposit and at a repayment term of over 20 years. So tonnes of people are sat there on over 80% LTV.

The other thing that will happen though is if the banks know the government's policy is to devalue property prices the max LTV they will lend at will reduce rapidly. If property prices are predicted to drop by 20% over 10 years, the maximum a bank will lend will be 70% of the current value of a property- so as I say you'd basically f*ck the entire system.

Yes, you'd return rental prices back to a post-war era, but you'd also return property ownership to largely being a preserve of the privileged.
 
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If the banks are f*cked - everyone is f*cked.

And if there was a mass devaluing of property the banks would struggle even if people maintained the loan as banks would not be able to borrow against the value of their safest assets in order to meet liabilities.

It would grind the entire economy to a halt like what happened in the financial crash. Which was caused basically by a housing bubble popping in the US.
Yes I know that.....and the banks very much let the powers that be know that as well. Even when the banks behave stupidly, the governments bend to their will. The government are their puppets now. (I think 2008 rubber stamped that)

I think Gutterboy is declaring what he sees as the end point. ie back to a fair balance of affordability and value.
Of course, what has happened through government policy and banking economic policy is for the situation to run away with itself (and much like other crises we face eg water), to such an extent that unwinding it is complicated and requires delicate skill as not to cause a number of related crises.
Property pretty much supported the 'feel good' vibes of the middle classes, thru BTL and MEW as prices just kept heading north supported by government schemes, artificially low interest rates and longer term mortgages.
The result of that is what we see now. Affordability problems and a non functioning property ladder/market

Roof over your head is ANOTHER essential. An essential that has been fudged around with for massive wealth gains. And as usual the massive wealth gainers only ever want to be on the winning side of the bet.
 
The point of rent caps is to make renting unprofitable for the private sector, so it reverts to the public sector. The 1920s one is what freed up much of the housing stock to enable the creation of council housing. The point now would be to engineer a similar thing, to stop it being an attractive investment
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Rent isn't about the value of the property though as the value of the property is ultimately what people are willing to pay for it or how much a bank values it as security for a loan. Lots of rental properties are in areas that are less desirable and so values are depressed but the maintenance of the property doesnt reduce and from my experience the maintenance costs for a rental property as a landlord are far higher than the maintenance costs of your own home.

For example:
- You have to get an annual gas safety check done.
- You have to have fire extinguishers and blankets and annual smoke alarm tests
- new safety regulations came in for rental properties that said hand rails had to be fitted to all stair cases so I had to get them fitted for cost of about £650
- Tenant complained about damp so had damp surveyor go out at cost of £300 for report. Turns out it was condensation caused by tenant taping over the trickle vents in all the windows and theyd also fired expandable foam into all the air bricks as they didn't want to use the central heating in winter and were trying to get of any draft.
- Cost me £500 to have the air bricks unblocked. They then disputed their bond not being returned and the tribunal ruled that I could only deduct the £500 repair cost from the bond and not the £300 survey fee...I was like HOW? If they hadn't done that I wouldnt have had to get the damp surveyor in the first place?
- Another tenant moved out and left a cracked window and claimed it cracked in the frost. Again tribunal said I couldnt deduct from bond.
So rent has to account for the maintenance of the property not the market value.

It's a great conversation. I've experienced most of those costs. I've had the situation where tenants won't open windows all year round and I've had to pay for someone to clean all the damp around the windows. Mould toxins are incredibly harmful and I took it as my duty of care to resolve even though it was the tenant creating the problem. I also had to find £800 at 24 hrs notice to have a new garage door fitted as another example. I had one devious tenant who closed the blinds because the littlun had been pulling them out the slats. When the family left, the professional inventory clerk that I have to pay for as a landlord missed this and other items. I made them pay for the repairs out of the deposit.

I do think GB is making good points though. The more I think about this, the more I believe that 25% mandatory deposits on buy-to-lets just isn't high enough. They should probably make it in the 50-75% region for new landlords, both private and public. That removes the requirement for a landlord to drive up the rents because they are trying to cover 75% debt at over 4% interest rates and recover all the setup and running costs like stamp duty and what we discussed above. Perhaps they should introduce a rule whereby you can only have a buy to let if your own mortgage is clear. That would put the cat amongst the pigeons.

Not sure I have the right answers, but I bet there are still dials the government can turn to drive change in this area. I hope they do. I was always supportive even when it was negatively impacting me. I just hope they find the quid-pro-quo though as in my case the landlord has been shat on because the system doesn't get supported when tenants are the problem. It is mostly that way round.
 
Yes I know that.....and the banks very much let the powers that be know that as well. Even when the banks behave stupidly, the governments bend to their will. The government are their puppets now. (I think 2008 rubber stamped that)

I think Gutterboy is declaring what he sees as the end point. ie back to a fair balance of affordability and value.
Of course, what has happened through government policy and banking economic policy is for the situation to run away with itself (and much like other crises we face eg water), to such an extent that unwinding it is complicated and requires delicate skill as not to cause a number of related crises.
Property pretty much supported the 'feel good' vibes of the middle classes, thru BTL and MEW as prices just kept heading north supported by government schemes, artificially low interest rates and longer term mortgages.
The result of that is what we see now. Affordability problems and a non functioning property ladder/market

Roof over your head is ANOTHER essential. An essential that has been fudged around with for massive wealth gains. And as usual the massive wealth gainers only ever want to be on the winning side of the bet.
Agree with much of this. On house prices it goes back to supply and demand though. There is a "housing shortage". The housing shortage is because of a number of factors (theres a housing shortage thats never been worse but the number of empty homes has never been higher), but the biggest factor is demand hugely outstripping supply.

The turn of the millennium was probably the last sort of time the UK and world felt vaguely positive, that things were on an upward trend. In 2000 the UK population was an estimated 58.89 million. In 1970 the population was 55.66 million. So an increase of circa 3 million in 30 years, or 1 million a decade average. This increase was largely due to increases in living standards and healthcare standards which drove the average life expectancy from 68.7 years (males) and 75 years (females) in 1970 to 78.7 years (males) and 82.6 years (females) in 2000.

Tony Blair admitted that he deliberately encouraged mass immigration. This is one of the most disastrous decisions taken by any leader and combined with the decision to go to war in Iraq and Afghanistan has led to many of the most significant issues the country now faces.

The population of the UK in 2025 is 69.5 million, an increase of more than 10 million in a 25 year period. FYI the 2020 projection was for the population to be 69.2 million in 2030.

So we are more than five years ahead of schedule of where we were projected to be population-wise by analysts.

The growth is overwhelmingly driven by net migration with the disparity in births v deaths being less than 100K a decade.

Net migration is currently outstripping government projections by circa 50% over a decade meaning at current rates it is impossible to create policy to cope.

The government's housing plan was to build 1.5 million houses over 5 years or 300,000 a year. This target is not going to be hit. Nobody gives it a prayer. Yet the target, despite being ridiculously stretching, is woefully inadequate to deal with demand.

And what kind of pressure is 1.5 million homes going to place on the water system? The capacity of the waste water system is widely discussed. What isn't being discussed is capacity in the fresh water system. We have just had one of the longest drought in England and reservoir levels are critical. Partly its driven by warming temperatures but an extra 400-900K people a year (current net migration figures from 2023 to 2024) requiring fresh water.

All the major crisis areas you can think of: NHS capacity, rail capacity, road capacity, housing capacity, sewerage capacity, water capacity, school capacity, you name it capacity - they are all being driven by population growth of mind blowing proportions. Inflation - its fundamentally supply being outstripped by demand. And inflation is the biggest killer of living standards there is.

The average wage and home ownership rates of the UK's established populations of white British, British-indian, British-pakistani, british-carribean are in marked contrast to other, newer demographic groups.

We have been importing poverty for 25 years and its starting to push down on living standards for everyone.

And years of kicking can down the road while trying to "educate the knuckle draggers that this is all good for them" have brought us to the crash point.

You can only artificially press down on house prices so much if supply is being outstripped by demand at the current rates.
 

On crack.

Take a moment to see why she went to prison after she pleased guilty. And she is being made in to a hero.

Hating Muslims is all you need to be a reform hero.
I actually thought she had called for all the asylum hotels to be burnt down. She actually doesn't. She said she wouldn't care if they were burnt down, along with all of our politicians inside.

Actually seeing the tweet i'm gobsmacked she got time for that.

And i can see why many people are disconcerted and alarmed that she did.
 
I actually thought she had called for all the asylum hotels to be burnt down. She actually doesn't. She said she wouldn't care if they were burnt down, along with all of our politicians inside.

Actually seeing the tweet i'm gobsmacked she got time for that.

And i can see why many people are disconcerted and alarmed that she did.
Splitting hairs. Given the context of what was happening at the time, it was effectively endorsing the burning down of hotels.
She deserved her sentence.
Stop trying to defend her.
 
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