UK Politics: Mone, Mone, Mone. It's not funny. It's a rich toff's world.

[Spockydog]

Buy-to-rent mortgages should be banned.

[The Anti-Targ]

That's an option. Though I would say banning buy-to-AirBnB mortgages would be enough. But if the best solution is for the state to own all rental properties, with a view to selling those properties to the current occupiers after a minimum period of occupancy that is something that could be considered.

[Gaston de Foix]

19 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Buy-to-rent mortgages should be banned.

I would prefer a right to buy that converts some portion of rent paid to principal.  Less drastic, and the state can help further with tax exemptions and subsidies.  

[Pebble thats Stubby]

18 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Why would capped rents be needed though? Capping the % of a low income person's income that is paid in rent and the govt covering the rest is not a rent cap. It's up to the landlord to negotiate with the govt on the rental amount, which would be at least somewhat based on objective criteria, such as the assessed property value for any land or local body taxation purposes, market rents for similar houses in the same area, or similar neighbourhoods in other parts of the country, current mortgage interest rates etc.

It ends up, possibly being cheaper for the govt to cover rentals in the private sector than to build social housing. It's likely that govt might need to get into the house / apartment building game where there is an absolute housing shortage and the private sector is simply not building the right kind of homes in the right locations. But also, if the only rentals available in reasonable proximity to where a low income person works are 5 bedroom high priced homes then perhaps it's not such a bad thing for low income families to move into those areas where they pay a fixed % of their income and the govt picks up the rest of the rent bill. Doing that would tend to help avoid creating slums where poor people are herded into undesirable parts of town and forced to live in shitty conditions.

The govt pays one way or another for poor people's living situation, whether it's through increased use of the health service because people living in shitty conditions get sick more, or its through having to deal with poverty and deprivation led crime. So why not pay in a way that gives people the opportunities and benefits that come with a decent standard of living rather than pay for the inevitable consequences of having a poor standard of living?

I like your optimism.

 

in a way we already have this system when it comes to care homes.  If you have below a certain level of money the government will pay for your care.  however what to government will pay is normal often considerably less than what it actually costs meaning the private care resident in the same care home are not only paying more for their care but picking up a share of the extra costs of the state sponsored care resident.   Obviously with the rental market the private renters won't be subsiding the social housing renters.  But if a landlord can get £500 a week via the government backed social housing rent  or £700 to private renters who do you think they are going to let their property to?

 

And yes buy to let mortgages are evil.  But you will never get rid of them entirely as they are in the financial interest of our lawmakers.  It might be easier to reform them so that no property can be let out if there is less than 40% equity in the property.

 

I am not trying to defend Landlords or the rental markets here,  there is just not an easy fix that is also realistic.

[The Anti-Targ]

What optimism? I'm not sure an equitable solution to housing for low income people will really materialise in my lifetime. I'm just speculating on what might work to put low income people into decent housing if there was the political will to do so.

3 minutes ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

 

And yes buy to let mortgages are evil.  But you will never get rid of them entirely as they are in the financial interest of our lawmakers. 

 

To whit

Australia, but I imagine a lot of this is relatable in many countries.

[BigFatCoward]

Not all landlords are scumbags. My flat is currently 200 quid a below market value as I have good tenants.  And the letting agents has my authority to fix and resolve any issue immediately without coming to me for approval, I had a boiler replaced in 48 hours recently. 

[Derfel Cadarn]

2 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Not all landlords are scumbags. My flat is currently 200 quid a below market value as I have good tenants.  And the letting agents has my authority to fix and resolve any issue immediately without coming to me for approval, I had a boiler replaced in 48 hours recently. 

My former boss’ mother never/rarely raised the rent on a flat she rented out, as she liked the longterm tennant who always paid on time and kept it immaculate.

[mormont]

I'm not sure people are saying that all landlords are scumbags, so much as they're saying that the system that allows those with access to capital to financially benefit by providing housing that their tenants are effectively paying for is broken. 

If I was given my druthers, I'd also ban buy-to-let and in fact almost all private letting. It's another example of how capitalism is deeply fucked up. That said, I do not condemn anyone for taking personal advantage of that fucked up system. We live in a capitalist society and we all have mouths to feed. At least we can do it ethically. 

[Heartofice]

Its nice that there are some decent landlords still about, but I suspect they are in a huge minority. I know so many friends who have been squeezed hard by their landlords in the past year, demanding that rents increase hugely. The excuse was increase in mortgage costs and energy costs and general costs of living. The problem is renters are mostly powerless to do anything about it, sure you can go to tribunal but you still have to pay that rent and its a long process.

Either way, I still maintain that housing costs are one of the main challenges that this country faces because it underpins pretty much everyone's sense of how wealthy they are and how much money they have to survive. It is the biggest real cause of inequality.

Buy to rent and stuff is something that should be looked at but the problem is much bigger, and is almost foundational. We are under building homes at a chronic level for a start and that's been going on for decades. On top of that we are living in a QE era that we might only now be emerging from, which has meant that asset prices have shot up to insane amounts in relation to wages, and nobody has really got the balls to address it.
In a 0% interest rate world people needed somewhere to put their money and it was into housing and if you didn't catch that bubble early you were priced out. Now the only people buying houses are those who either inherit them or inherit the money from their parents who became rich due to having the extraordinary luck of owning a house 20 years ago. 

But nobody really has any appetite to look at the real causes of this problem, so the best they can do is fiddle around the edges, make mortgages cheaper so people just end up borrowing for life or tweaking a few rules which have almost no effect for most people. 

[Rippounet]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

On top of that we are living in a QE era that we might only now be emerging from, which has meant that asset prices have shot up to insane amounts in relation to wages, and nobody has really got the balls to address it.

I don't know about this "nobody."

At least 95% of monetary creation in the past two decades (if not more) has gone (directly or indirectly) to the financial sector. The numbers (whichever ones you take) are kinda dizzying, and this has fueled concentration of wealth back to 19th-century era levels in many countries.

I think it's quite easy to see what needs to be done to address it, and it's not about balls, it's about power: the people in power are the ones who profit from the situation, so they won't do anything. It's up to the working class to realize that the financial sector has destroyed any kind of social consensus (the "keynesian bargain"), and that the environmental crisis means no economic growth can compensate (not that it ever really did... ).

Funnily enough, even Marxism isn't radical enough for the times we live in: Marx believed a financial sector was a good thing for the economy. Something else he was wrong about, it seems.

[felice]

19 hours ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

If rents are capped and don't pay landlords enough then they will either sell the houses or put them on Airbnb.  which means less properties to rent.

Selling a house doesn't destroy it; the new owner will either live in it (instead of wherever they were living before), or rent it out themselves. Just ban AirBnB entirely.

[mormont]

It's worth pointing out that in Scotland, we're three months into a rent cap (albeit that's supposed to be temporary - six months with the option to extend it another six months). The Scottish government is also introducing licensing for AirBnBs, (with exceptions if you're doing what AirBnB was originally intended for i.e. letting out space in your actual home) though they've today given owners another six months to get licensed.

This follows measures over the last decade such as introducing a model tenancy agreement that included compulsory clauses that gave tenants significantly more rights (and consultation is going on to extend those rights further), abolishing the old fixed-term tenancies in the process, beefing up the powers of the rent tribunal, introducing a repairing standard for rented property, licensing houses in multiple occupation, setting up independent tenancy deposit schemes, and requiring registration of landlords and letting agents.

At each stage of this process organisations representing landlords have loudly warned that each of these measures will lead landlords to sell up en masse, leading to a shortage of private rented accommodation. We're still waiting for that to happen.

Some landlords have sold up, for sure. Generally their properties were bought by other landlords. Because the business is so freaking profitable that you can do all of the above and still, there's enough money to be made that it's worth it.

Even the UK government is now copying (or has copied) a lot of these reforms and you're beginning to see them in England and Wales. So the lot of private tenants is improving a little and can improve further.

ETA - you know, I forgot to mention the eviction ban, which goes along with the rent cap and was previously in place during lockdown. Also imposed to dire predictions from landlords which did not come to pass.

[Raja]

Not great, Bob

Jeremy Hunt's City deregulation plans are 'dangerous mistake'

Quote

Sir John Vickers, a senior economist who led the independent commission reviewing the UK banking industry after the 2007-08 crisis, said key elements of a deregulation package unveiled by Jeremy Hunt on Friday could put Britain’s financial stability at risk.

Vickers said he was particularly concerned about plans to roll back ringfencing rules that George Osborne introduced as chancellor after the crash, and were intended to protect everyday customers by separating their deposits from riskier investment banking operations.

Those rules, which only came into force in 2019, were the “bedrock of how we regulate banks in the UK”, Vickers said.

“If they’re saying: ‘Look, we’re 10 years on, we could make some adjustments, but it remains part of the bedrock,’ then I would say: ‘Fine’. If, on the other hand, they’re saying: ‘Maybe it’s time to roll back on this,” then I think that would be an extremely dangerous and wrong path for us to follow,” he told the Guardian.

The changes to the ringfencing rules, which will go to consultation in 2023, could take years to implement, but could free a number of smaller banks – including TSB, Santander UK and Virgin Money – from having to follow the regulations.

However, they could also result in larger banks such as NatWest and Lloyds facing fewer restrictions on how they fund their operations, and allow them to sell more complex products to customers within their ringfenced bank.

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

The brightest areas in the are clustering around the more conservative areas.

[The Anti-Targ]

Either everyone living west of Melbourne is very progressive on trans issues, or no social conservatives living west of Melbourne use twitter.

I wonder which is more likely.

[mormont]

On that point, the Scottish Tories are claiming that they have to vote against the Gender Recognition Reform Act because it's been 'rushed through' by the Scottish Government.

The bill has been making its way through Parliament for seven years.

 

[Heartofice]

Given that the UK ( except for Scotland of course but yeah whatever) is one of the few places it seems to be pushing back on gender ideological positions, and taking a more sensible stance on things recently,  then im not worried too much what someone on Twitter who uses the term TERF to vilify anyone who disagrees with them thinks. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

6 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Given that the UK ( except for Scotland of course but yeah whatever) is one of the few places it seems to be pushing back on gender ideological positions,

Ah, a small example of how rhetoric around trans people has gotten more extremely hostile.

8 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

then im not worried too much what someone on Twitter who uses the term TERF to vilify anyone who disagrees with them thinks. 

Terfs:

trans:

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

1 hour ago, mormont said:

On that point, the Scottish Tories are claiming that they have to vote against the Gender Recognition Reform Act because it's been 'rushed through' by the Scottish Government.

The bill has been making its way through Parliament for seven years.

 

Ah it’ll always be too soon to make the changes they don’t want to ever see happen and may interfere with their bigoted ambitions.

I’m reminded of some British terfs being against trans people even beginning gender-affirmative care at 30.

Too Young! 

 

[Varysblackfyre321]

32 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

TERF to vilify anyone who disagrees with them thinks. 

Also interesting to note here an  exceptionally conservative and right-wing  man gets defensive when terfs are insulted. Interesting./s

If a terf is a terf you call it a terf.

That’s fun to say out loud.

@HeartoficeHa. you actually read these.