Do you want to discuss boring politics? (9 Viewers)

fernandopartridge said:

Because you are being obtuse

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Totally lost. Renting in cities being a preference for folks at various points in their life is hardly a hot take.

I saw talk about not having a private rental sector. New argument to me, so I asked a question or two.

I'll leave you lot to it as I've got no clue wtf is going on. We can go back to arguing about football from tmrw.

Grendel said:

No it isn’t? Why would anyone in their right minds want to rent if they could buy?

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Couples moving in together for the first time, people moving for work on fixed terms etc

Brighton Sky Blue said:

Couples moving in together for the first time, people moving for work on fixed terms etc

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It’s very rare and if you move for work normally companies would cover costs

Grendel said:

It’s very rare and if you move for work normally companies would cover costs

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Well in our case we rented before deciding we wanted to commit to buying somewhere else. I don’t think that’s especially uncommon at least among my generation

Sky_Blue_Dreamer said:

Has it sustained itself?

We've got increasing homelessness (which is also linked to increase in population) but most importantly the cost of housing as a percentage of earnings is going up and a major factor in the cost of living crisis.

Part of that will be due to poor wages and wage stagnation but the fact people are buying properties as investments and income generators increases the cost as those people offer more than people wanting a house to live in as it's a business investment and then recoup that (plus profit) in rent is a huge factor as well.

Increasing supply by building houses is undoubtedly an important factor in sorting out the cost of housing, but if you added in big restrictions on the private rental market in terms of number of properties allowed to be owned and not allowing for profit companies to own residential property this would also have a huge impact.

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Homelessness is a political choice. I was in the Netherlands which has similar housing issues and saw a single homeless person across three major cities and serval small towns, and he was a guy wandering around Amsterdam.

The cost of housing has gone up because we haven’t built enough houses. It really is that simple. Everything else is noise. If there’s high demand for something like housing in the south east, then without sufficient supply prices will rise. If you want prices to fall you increase supply. The contortions people will do to try and get around this very simple and very obvious fact amaze me. We gave people a veto on new houses in their area and surprise surprise they used it to stop new houses being built (and anything else).

The rental market is shit because there aren’t enough houses so even shit landlords can make a killing. If there was a steady supply of high quality housing on the market then people wouldn’t be forced to stick with shitty landlords. And every c**t wants to be a shit landlord cos it’s seen as easy money, sufficient housing supply stops that too.

If you add restrictions to the rental market in one place you increase costs elsewhere. There’s no examples of good rent control systems anywhere. Just places like Berlin and NYC where some lucky lottery winners get cheap rent and everyone else gets screwed because their house came onto the market later. So you get even more power for landlords as you’ve made their place even more desirable and those you haven’t you’re just lining their pockets.

Just build more houses where people want to live. It really is that straightforward.

We’re not even particularly high for a European country:

wingy said:

I think the main driver is the access to finance,it seems to me

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That was sort of included in the wages bit. House price inflation way above wage inflation means more money needs to be borrowed or longer to pay it back.

With the global crash from subprime mortgages the bigger rules around borrowing are required but I think there could be more scope. If you've proved you can pay rent that's roughly equivalent to what a mortgage would be then I think there should be some trust in the payee. Although there are also now more gig economy workers with insecure incomes which again makes lenders nervy and leads to higher interest rates.

Sky_Blue_Dreamer said:

That was sort of included in the wages bit. House price inflation way above wage inflation means more money needs to be borrowed or longer to pay it back.

With the global crash from subprime mortgages the bigger rules around borrowing are required but I think there could be more scope. If you've proved you can pay rent that's roughly equivalent to what a mortgage would be then I think there should be some trust in the payee. Although there are also now more gig economy workers with insecure incomes which again makes lenders nervy and leads to higher interest rates.

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It's more I think if you set up a company for instance, then that type of finance, risk assessment how vigorous is that check etc idk of course but I wonder if it is as fierce for that sort of funding for landlords?