Landlords - rent arrears

bigfreddiel

According to the C5 program slum landlords and nightmare tenants, 51% of landlords are in arrears with their rental income. Is this accurate?

The show obviously paints a real bad picture of being a landlord, you would never do it after watching just one program!

On the other hand, the BBC1 program, Homes Under the Hammer paint a great picture of being a landlord, great returns if you get it right!

So what is the reality?

Cheers fj

Cornucopia

£0 arrears over the past 3 years and only minor late days going back for around 10 years.

Location, types of property, choice of tenants and agents all contribute to this.

I have no issue whatsoever with the media painting a somewhat negative view of being a LL - it is not something to be undertaken lightly.

theartfullodger

Ah but that will the slum landlords the TV "experts" deal with. Scum who I'd happily deport regardless of nationality (yes, intentionally ambiguous)

G_M

I doubt anyone here knows the %.

And I doubt if a landlord-specific forum (eg landlordzone) would know either.

The landlords associations (NLA, RLA etc) might have done research and have figures - ask them.

Or contact BBC's "More or Less" and quote the C5 program. They do research into statistics and usually find that media (and politician's) statistics are a load of rubbish.

Did C5 say where they got the 51% figure from? Maybe they asked 100 random landlords. Or 100 landlords they came across outside a county court.........

Guest101

It's far more likely the statistics is multi layered:


1: each property being assumed to be held by an individual landlord, as opposed to a property
2: including social housing
3: the question being manipulated - such as: in the past 10 years have you ever had any rent arrears.

Pixie5740

Homes Under the Hammer only has some spiv estate agents come round and say how much the property could be let out for, which they probably over egg, it doesn't show the reality of actually having tenants.

The C5 programme usually deals with the lower end of the rental market because that's where slum landlords operate. Those who claim LHA will be in this lower end of the market because it's all they can afford and with the caps on LHA and other changes to benefits then I imagine (I have no evidence to back this up) that a lot of people will be in arrears, maybe not for the full amount of rent but the top-up amount they're supposed to (but possibly can't afford to) pay themselves.

[Deleted User]

lol.., as a benefit recipient who had to top up their rent to the tune of £150 plus a month, and just did whatever they had to to keep the rent up to date regardless of what happened to their benefits (at one point it was cut by half) - I have to say that the above is a bit of a generalisation.

There are many reasons a person can fall behind in the rent.., as many for the employed as unemployed (late wages, wages !!!! up, sick pay reduction, maternity leave, losing job, being irresponsible with spending etc). A sense of personal responsibility can not be defined by whether on benefits or employed either!

Pixie5740

Yes it was a generalisation as the changes to the benefits system are hitting a lot of people hard, especially the cap in LHA combined with the reluctance of many landlord to let to people who claim LHA.

I will add that in the couple of episodes of "Slum Landlord 7 Nightmare Tenants" I have seen, the nightmare tenants usually rent from landlords who seem like total turkeys who haven't done their due diligence when selecting a tenant.

Cakeguts

I don't think that landlords with tenants who are not in rent arrears seek publicity so it is probably all going to be biased.

KayTM

I quite like to watch "Homes Under The Hammer" occasionally because it can be quite entertaining. But that's all it is - entertainment. It doesn't really reflect reality. They use the word "profit" in a quite bizarre way. Take this cost and subtract that cost and the buyer has - or could make - a "profit" of the difference.

That's too simplistic. There's never any mention of the owner's time (and their friends' time), nor of any opportunity costs, ie where they could have got better returns, and they don't take account of a lot of other factors - stress, living in difficult conditions meanwhile, etc, etc. That's inevitable from a TV programme. You have to take it with a pinch of salt. It can give you some ideas and ballpark figures of what certain jobs might cost. I just hope that viewers don't take it as advice, which I'm sure it's not meant to be.

And, of course, there's usually a happy ending because after all the purpose of the programme is to show you how clever it is to buy at auction, do a place up, and make a nice "profit". If only everything in life was so easy.

bigfreddiel

Thanks all for replying, as I thought, C5 is an extreme view, just like some of its other 'benefits' style of program.

And the BBC, well it's got to be PC, especially for its mid or ing prime slot. So it's always a good story, nice outcome, no problems to leave us all feeling good.
Cheers fj