Rent Controls - The Swedish Experience

martinsurrey

cells wrote: »

in Germany the private landlords seem to be able to operate at a PROFIT and pay taxes on the profit and do all that by charging rents below that of council homes in the UK

The largest German corporate landlord owns over 300,000 properties and the average rent they charge for a 75 sqm apartment is 390 Euros a month (£285 per month)

private rents are only an issue in areas of a shortage of homes.

Exactly.

lets take Surrey as an example.

population: 1,000,000
area: 1663 km sq
population density: 601 people per kmsq. That's almost 3 times the national average, yet is 30% lower than Jersey, which is hardly a concrete slab!

(map for those who don't know it)

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Jersey/@49.2113564,-2.1342415,17015m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x480c52a48c927533:0x519c23a30a1a6cc3!6m1!1e1

So if we gave Surrey the same population density as Jersey, it could house 1,403,000 people, or its missing houses for 400,000 people (assuming Surrey and Jersey have similar vacancy rates).

Hampshire is missing 1,880,000 people at Jersey density
Kent 1,653,000 missing people at Jersey density

If house prices in these 3 areas are so high, why aren't more houses being build...

Planning! find me a build plot for under £200k in these counties.

In Germany 60% of new builds are self build, in the UK its a pitiful 10%, the planning process is too hard, too speculative and too restrictive.

cells

antrobus wrote: »

In 1987 9.47% of the housing stock was private rental; in 2013 it was 18.54%.

sorry I got the date wrong, any time before 1972

If you include all the rental stock, its any time before 1987 there were more renters than today

antrobus wrote: »

Then it wouldn't be BTL now would it?

What do you call buying a house to let with cash?

cells

martinsurrey wrote: »

Exactly.

lets take Surrey as an example.

population: 1,000,000
area: 1663 km sq
population density: 601 people per kmsq. That's almost 3 times the national average, yet is 30% lower than Jersey, which is hardly a concrete slab!

(map for those who don't know it)

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Jersey/@49.2113564,-2.1342415,17015m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m2!3m1!1s0x480c52a48c927533:0x519c23a30a1a6cc3!6m1!1e1

So if we gave Surrey the same population density as Jersey, it could house 1,403,000 people, or its missing houses for 400,000 people (assuming Surrey and Jersey have similar vacancy rates).

Hampshire is missing 1,880,000 people at Jersey density
Kent 1,653,000 missing people at Jersey density

If house prices in these 3 areas are so high, why aren't more houses being build...

Planning! find me a build plot for under £200k in these counties.

In Germany 60% of new builds are self build, in the UK its a pitiful 10%, the planning process is too hard, too speculative and too restrictive.

I think the primary mistake which leads to all of the planning problems is that in the UK the councils are stupid and only think new homes are needed for additional people

I was reading a report on France housing stock and house building and it specifically broke down new housing demand into two sectors. One was houses needed for an increasing population (240,000 or so a year) and the second was demographic changes leading to more single person and two person households requiring (200,000 or so a year) so the total demand needed is close to 450,000 a year and the relevant French department has set a goal to build 500,000 homes a year

In the UK over the last 15 years its just been about trying to build to meet population growth totally forgetting about demographic change needs.

The result is that today France has close to 34 million homes while the UK is closer to 28 million homes yet the population in both are within 2% of each other


The UK needs >400,000 new homes a year yet only 140,000 a year are happening.
No wonder rents are going up lots and prices even moreso

CLAPTON

I have friends who bought house(s) to rent out in the 1980s.
They got a loan from the bank.
The bank called it a mortgage.
It wasn't called a buy to let mortgage but its purpose was to buy a property with a view to letting it out to paying tenants.

antrobus

cells wrote: »

sorry I got the date wrong, any time before 1972

If you include all the rental stock, its any time before 1987 there were more renters than today....

But you were not talking about "all the rental stock". You specifically stated that "if you go to 1987 or any time before that the BTL sector was bigger than it is today as a portion of the stock".

A claim which is nonsense whichever way you look at it. Particularly because BTL was only invented in 1996.

cells wrote: »

...What do you call buying a house to let with cash?

An investment.

antrobus

CLAPTON wrote: »

I have friends who bought house(s) to rent out in the 1980s.
They got a loan from the bank.
The bank called it a mortgage.
It wasn't called a buy to let mortgage but its purpose was to buy a property with a view to letting it out to paying tenants.

Yes, people have always borrowed money to buy houses for the express purpose of renting them out to other people. (I dare say that it's the sort of thing that has been going on ever since somebody invented banking.) Allthough of course, these tended to be regarded as commercial mortgages, and were generally more expensive than the residental mortgages you got from building societies.

Then in 1996 the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) established a panel of lenders who were willing to advance funds to private individuals specifically for the purposes of acquiring property to rent out without charging the usual premium. ARLA marketed this iniative under the name 'Buy-to-Let'. Hence the name.

It took a few years to get going, but by the 00s it really got going.

CLAPTON

antrobus wrote: »

Yes, people have always borrowed money to buy houses for the express purpose of renting them out to other people. (I dare say that it's the sort of thing that has been going on ever since somebody invented banking.) Allthough of course, these tended to be regarded as commercial mortgages, and were generally more expensive than the residental mortgages you got from building societies.

Then in 1996 the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA) established a panel of lenders who were willing to advance funds to private individuals specifically for the purposes of acquiring property to rent out without charging the usual premium. ARLA marketed this iniative under the name 'Buy-to-Let'. Hence the name.

It took a few years to get going, but by the 00s it really got going.

yes indeed


there seems very little functional difference between
-a bank mortgage that is used to buy a property to let out
and
-a bank mortgage that is used to buy a property to let out that is marketed as a catchy BTL mortgage

michaels

Of course if you were to borrow against your residence in order to purchase a property to let out (obviously not an ARLA 'buy-to-let') you were still able to offset the interest against tax as business expense.

zagubov

It seems very strange to me that some people pay money to rent a house from people who pay that money to rent the bank's money to "own" the house. It just seems there's at least one step too many.

CLAPTON

zagubov wrote: »

It seems very strange to me that some people pay money to rent a house from people who pay that money to rent the bank's money to "own" the house. It just seems there's at least one step too many.

is that opinion based on holy book you believe in


or the Corbyn's Trotsky economic manual