Time to give up the dream....?

JWF

In answer to Abaxas's post - With a huge volume of buyers simply out of the market, what will support house prices?

All the BTL'ers buying up the houses so people can rent them back, maybe the Wilson's could fill the gap.

the_ash_and_the_oak

JWF wrote: »

In answer to Abaxas's post - With a huge volume of buyers simply out of the market, what will support house prices?

All the BTL'ers buying up the houses so people can rent them back, maybe the Wilson's could fill the gap.

Yes but if there is a scenario where credit is more expensive and/or less available - then the question becomes would BTL not be affected too?

longtimelurker_2

All the time you can't put up a shelf, keep a pet or have to worry about how much a landlord is going to keep from your deposit for discoloured bathroom grout, home ownership is going to be people's ideal living situation.

the_ash_and_the_oak

see what you mean but i rent and i have a pet on the wall (tho tbf couldn't really be bothered putting up a shelf imo)

Graham_Devon

Simply won't happen.

People will not be able to afford the rent due to ever increasing HPI if this did happen.

Great, so only a few can own. Which pushes prices up. But why would they want to own and rent out a second place if the renter cannot afford the rent.

Theres a limit to everything. Hamish would have you believe the sky is the limit on HPI. It's not.

No point in buying a second house if you can afford it, to make a loss on renting it out as no one can afford the rent.

lostinrates

Mr_Matey wrote: »

Part of the problem is that you have to deal directly with landlords as a tenant in the UK, and they may be less than professional.

In Australia, the Estate Agent manages everything in exchange for a fee. Tenants never meet landlords, and it works well. Of course you can still get problems with estate agents who are lazy and don't repair things...

I've had a terrible landlord we dealt with directly, sure. And a couple of unprofessional ones, but somenice ones too. My last landlord (English in Italy) was just lovely and he knew he was a bit unprofessional but it worked: we all just behaved like normal,reasonable people.

I suppose it gets harder because not many people are reasonable!

ETA: I have painted and decorated, on agreement with LL, in more than one rented place.

ses6jwg

As a student we went through the Agency one year and the Landlord directly the next.

Give me the landlord any day.

The estate agency just dont care.

lieutenant_dan

Not a like for like comparison with countries like Germany and others in Europe where home ownership is traditionally low. That's because the rents are also much lower and the tenants have more rights.
There've been reports too of tenants being better off in the long term (think it was one of the Scandinavian countries) by paying lower rents in comparison to a mortgage, and investing the difference between the two in other areas.
The big problem here is that rents are also very expensive, at least with a mortgage at the end of 25 or however many years, it's yours. High rents is dead money, and it's likely to form a sizeable proportion of anyone's salary, and is money that will never be seen again.
So like for the above example it will be hard to put money aside for investment purposes as the rents are expensive, and many find themselves in the trap of high rents and not much left to save for a deposit either to eventually buy.
It really is bad to have people with little choice but to pay these high rental amounts, effectively paying someone else's mortgage instead of their own, and being left with nothing at retirement age if they can never buy.

Graham_Devon

lieutenant_dan wrote: »

It really is bad to have people with little choice but to pay these high rental amounts, effectively paying someone else's mortgage instead of their own, and being left with nothing at retirement age if they can never buy.

Trouble is, the welfare system will then pay their rent for them.

As the welfare system keeps up with rents and HPI, it pushes up rents for everyone else too.

the_ash_and_the_oak

total anecdotal here so take w pinch of salt but according to my parents there are 1 bed flats near where they are that are more expensive to rent than country cottages 15-20 miles out of town. The reason is that the former are paid for by housing benefit but the latter don't accept DSS - creating a kind of two tier market