I thought this was quite funny / interesting

westernpromise

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/renting/grainger-the-property-company-making-the-most-of-generation-rent/

Some amusing quotes from the CEO of an institutional landlord:

The Government has voiced its support for this nascent sector, but also, surprisingly, punished it. “The one thing that we were absolutely devastated about - and we had the reassurances going into it that it wasn’t meant to affect us [institutional landlords] - was the 3pc stamp duty. “Inevitably it affects our portfolio. It was meant to cool the buy-to-let investor, not treat the corporate landlords in the same way."

Aw, what a shame! You only get a interest tax deductibility advantage over individual landlords but it's not enough, you want more!

A bit of sexism:
“Because it’s housing and because its homes; women naturally get how important that is. A home is right for someone, we’re homemakers. We get what it’s like if your windows won’t shut and you have a small child - we get that.”

Go that, chaps? Women are better than men.

"we have exited Germany, stopped doing developments for sale. Now we are just doing PRS".

Why would a corporate renter exit Germany, focus on the UK and stop building? Because they expect to make more money out of UK tenants!

Brexit may lead to a rise in rents, partly due to the fact that political and economic uncertainty may lead people to delay buying, what Lucian Cook of Savills describes as the “emergence of accidental tenants”.

If there is an economic crisis, many may not be able to get a mortgage, and will be forced to continue renting. ...if people pause because they are not certain about buying, you could argue there will be more demand for rental properties.”

But...but...everyone knows that when house prices fall rents go down! It's only a handful of idiots, VIs, TPTB, and Bilderbergers who think that when house sales stall rents go up! And what's all this rubbish about "f there is an economic crisis, many may not be able to get a mortgage"? Everyone knows that's not true - if there's a crisis house prices collapse but nobody loses their job, and so can buy a house cheaper. There are never any losers from an economic crisis, and it is never the case that a house affordable previously a t a high price becomes unaffordable at a lower one because you're now on JSA.

This silly woman needs to get reading HPC so she understands the world a bit better.

marathonic

westernpromise wrote: »

This silly woman needs to get reading HPC so she understands the world a bit better.

I thought this was quite funny/interesting.

HPC was set up in 2003 and those reading HPC to understand the world better have been expecting house prices to crash during a period when they've gone from an average of £129,761 to £204,238.

In fairness, there is some fairly good economic analysis on the site - it just takes a lot of time to separate the words of wisdom from the 90%+ of totally biased commentary that continuously thinks the next crash is just around the corner.

Obviously, they'll be right at some point and there will be a pullback - they'll be boasting about their prophesy coming to pass when, in reality, a pullback in any market will come eventually if you're cheering for it for over a decade.

westernpromise

HPC existed avant la lettre in 1996, in the shape of the newsgroup uk.finance. Google has the old Deja News archive of it, and I have found predictions of an imminent house price crash as early as 1996. So crashtrolls have always been with us.

What I thought was interesting was the naivety of the corporates at not being carved out of the 3% stamp duty penalty. As well as the debt interest advantage, they wanted a pass on that too. As they've not got it, they are echoing what some landlords have been saying, which is that they'll have to pass this cost on to tenants.

It is starting to look to me like the state strategy for raising homeownership is to do it by making renting more expensive. I have been reminding people on here for a while that house price crashes tend to push up rents, by increasing both the demand for (you can't get a mortgage) and the perceived value of (you avoid capital loss) renting. This lot agree with me.

It is quite likely that in the future, the era of the BTL landlord will be looked back on by tenants as a golden age, in the same way that people in retrospect preferred it when there was a high street full of shops, rather than an aircraft hangar superstore 3 miles outside town and nothing but charity shops left. Tenants today moan about the previous generation not having to rent; the next generation of renters may moan about having to pay even more than this one, to corporates, to rent grotty, faceless, identikit capsules.

There's no iron law that says renting is poor, so has to get better. It could just as easily stay the same or get worse. It is highly likely IMO that state intervention to "improve" it will make it much, much worse.

N1AK

westernpromise wrote: »

It is starting to look to me like the state strategy for raising homeownership is to do it make renting more expensive. I have been reminding people on here for a while that house price crashes tend to push up rents, by increasing both the demand (you can't get a mortgage) and the perceived value (you avoid capital loss). This lot agree with me.

I wish I could believe there was a strategy in the first place, but I genuinely believe there isn't and any action that is taken is purely to give the impression that they are doing something.

Increasing the cost of renting won't increase home-ownership unless it is by getting people who could easily afford to buy but don't want to change their mind. In practice the issue is people who can't raise sufficient deposits and afford payments on mortgages at ridiculous income multiples.

We're reaching a point where typical incomes simply aren't sufficient to buy, however as housing is a must have for most people they'll pay whatever they can afford to rent. That means that if you can afford to buy a house, you can rent out portions of it for large amounts.

There is literally no way we're going to get housing costs down without increasing the ratio of property to people.

westernpromise

N1AK wrote: »

Increasing the cost of renting won't increase home-ownership unless it is by getting people who could easily afford to buy but don't want to change their mind.

Correct - in much of the country buying is very affordable indeed, but for whatever reason, people don't buy.

We're reaching a point where typical incomes simply aren't sufficient to buy, however as housing is a must have for most people they'll pay whatever they can afford to rent.

In some places (the SE) more than others (the NE), yes. But what could happen (it has before) is that rents rise so that where you used to rent 2 bedrooms for £Xpcm you are outbid and can now only afford 1 bedroom for £Xpcm. This is not a non-existent risk because all state action lately has tended to penalise letting in a way that is certain to reduce rental supply.

There is literally no way we're going to get housing costs down without increasing the ratio of property to people.

Well, yes and no. If I could swap houses with my mother I would - hers is twice the size of mine and has her in it, while mine has four of us in it. She and her peers all identity stamp duty as a key reason not to downsize. There are others of course but the others aren't anything the state could help. But if there were a way to persuade people to downsize, you'd add supply without building a single house.