Homes Under The Hammer today

seven-day-weekend

Cakeguts wrote: »

You have forgotten to mention all the private landlords who don't have mortgages and don't let to people claiming benefits but do offer employment to lots of trades people who look after the repairs on the rented houses which have to be kept to a high standard.

We have a BTL apartment which we bought because it was a better home for our money than leaving it in the bank. We don't have a mortgage on it and our tenant is not on Benefits. It's not five years old yet so does not need anything in the way of maintenance.

We are not subsidised by the Government, afaik.

Gwendo40

dunroving wrote: »

Like I said, I'm not partisan. The Blair years have a lot more to do with our current situation than the current government, in my non-partisan opinion. The Tories could be doing a better job of dealing with the situation but Blair and Brown created it.

New Labour under Blair/Brown were just a Tory-lite party in government.

AnotherJoe

Bogof_Babe wrote: »

I know btl has its place and is necessary to house those who genuinely need to live in a cheap rented place, but it brought it home to me how hard it must be to get a foot on the ladder these days if you don't have access to much money. Guessing again, but they might have saved up all their lives for the chance of their own home.

Anyway that's the way it goes. Sad though.

Exactly, What you didn't see on the TV were the couple with two kids who couldn't even afford to buy a house like this but have now been afforded the opportunity to rent rather than being in a bedsit.

humptydumptybits

moneyistooshorttomention wrote: »

Didnt see the programme - but am guessing they looked like they werent flush with money and maybe said it was to be a home to them - hence conclusion they wanted it as a home. I know that, if I were needing an auction house as a home for myself personally - I'd be trying to figure out how to tell b-t-letters that was my intention and hoping they had a conscience and would stand aside for me.

I sympathise as well when people get outbid by those who want a property for other reasons.

Obviously there are landlords/ladies and landlords/ladies. Some will be doing it "professionally" and I definitely think they should "move out of the way" for those needing the place as a home.

One can have more sympathies with someone who only wants 1 or 2 properties to rent out - because they can't think of any other way to get a decent interest rate on their savings (ie because of the abysmally low interest rates of the last few years).

It would be interesting to know how many of the b-t-letters are "professional" landlords/ladies - though I'm guessing that most of them are. So I have no sympathies with them. I'm guessing that the average "person in the street" probably would be too concerned about the risk of bad tenants to put their savings into buying a property or two these days? - and would therefore "run around in circles" instead searching for a way to keep their savings safe from inflation.

What about the seller? Why shouldn't they get the best price they can? They might desperately need the money.

Crashy_Time

Arklight wrote: »

The problem isn't that people can buy houses and rent them out. The problem is that the taxpayer spends £25 billion a year paying the mortgages of private landlords to house people who should be in council rented accommodation, or in affordable owned accommodation.

It's simply a wealth transfer from the state to private individuals, and it's a colossal state subsidy of the private mortgage industry. There is no other country that does this.

Exactly, tax rules are changing for BTL though.

Crashy_Time

Yep, the "mass building" is just political noise, they want high prices, but global forces are against them now it seems

dunroving

[Full disclosure: I missed the first few years of HUH, being overseas, so my comments below are on my perceptions, based on watching catch-up episodes. However, I think I got my chronology right, based on who were the presenters in each episode!]

The early years of HUH seemed to have a lot more stories of people buying "their" homes, at a discount because they didn't mind rolling up their sleeves and sorting out the problems that are often inherent in auction properties.

More recent episodes seem to present a series of caricatures of the dimwit investment buyer who didn't see the property before purchase, didn't read the legal pack, lives 300 miles away, etc. - but somehow STILL manages to miraculously make a profit or a high-yield rental income.

If BTL landlords and property investors take any of this seriously, it can only be good news for real buyers, because most BTL landlords and investors will become bankrupt if they believe HUH.

On a more serious note, Dion Dublin does a pretty poor impression of Martin Roberts.

Cakeguts

Hey_Jude_1967 wrote: »

The problem is its happend under both Labour and Tory parties and just because Labour are currently run by a dreamer who will be booted out when he fails to win the next GE and his successor will flip back to Labour being a centralist party like it was under Blair and the cycle of promises will yet again be made and yet again be broken. Don't get me wrong here because I've never believed housing should be used for investment purposes or the RTB scheme unless the homes were sold at market value and all of the money rasied used to build new (genuinely) affordable homes for people .

The thing is in this country we take the capitalist economic model where the market will find the true value of a commodity/product and Govt chooses to try and manipulate the housing market by schemes such as HTB and HTB Equity etc where they try and make homes affordable (lol) but all they do in reality is keep the the price of housing artificially high . Governments of both colours cannot be trusted to keep within budgets so building council housing is not affordable in my opinion although I do like the idea.

Developers aren't stupid and they know they could increase the number of new builds to the market by 500,000 a year but that would mean the prices in many areas would drop, fall in values equels a fall in profits. Drip feed new developments onto the market and people will fight to buy them and keep profits high.. I've said it for years there is a cartel in the Building industry ................


Programmes like Homes under the hammer have an awful lot to answer for and have contributed to the UK society being selfish and greedy.

Developers can only increase the number of houses if they can sell them.

A lot of people think that the simple solution is to just build significantly more houses but if they can't sell them they can't buy more land to build more houses.

All land in the UK is already owned by someone. There isn't any free land that a developer can just go and build houses on they have to buy it. If they don't make any profit they can't buy any more land.

In some parts of the UK the cost of rebuilding a house is much less than the value of the plot it is on. So even if the actual cost of building the house is cheap the land that it is on is not.

csgohan4

Cakeguts wrote: »

Developers can only increase the number of houses if they can sell them.

A lot of people think that the simple solution is to just build significantly more houses but if they can't sell them they can't buy more land to build more houses.

All land in the UK is already owned by someone. There isn't any free land that a developer can just go and build houses on they have to buy it. If they don't make any profit they can't buy any more land.

In some parts of the UK the cost of rebuilding a house is much less than the value of the plot it is on. So even if the actual cost of building the house is cheap the land that it is on is not.

Developer also land banking don't help in driving up prices when houses prices fall.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-43287565

Crashy_Time

Reality is, there are plenty of houses.