Something to cheer the renters up

the_bread_baron

KAZadit.

so i would suggest stocking up on PICKLED ONIONS and weathering the coming financial storm.

Nil_Desperandum

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

Right, what I want to ask is this: How does buying a house to rent out push prices up? (This is a serious question)

I'd suggest simple supply and demand. BTLers reduce supply and increase demand.

BTW I'm not against BTLers, it's just another part of the market.

carolt

kazd wrote: »

Can I just point out we do not have 3 x btl but 1 x btl, we had aspired to purchase three with the view to helping our kids. However, we realised in the first three weeks of owning the house what a nightmare situation we had got into. This was when the first complaints came in about the original tenants came in.

Were we in this to make money, we certainly did not buy the house with a view to throwing £5k a year down the drain which is what it has cost us so far. At the same time we did not buy it to make a fast buck for a nice holiday or new car.

I agree that the price of houses is out of control, first time buyers are in an awful situation which is why we wanted to help our own children. What parent wouldn't but at the same time I can appreciate that kids do need to stand on their own two feet. Unfortuantely in this corrupt time that we live in this is harder to do than you realise especially those of you without children.

We do everything in our power to give our kids a good education, we always talk of them going to uni, maybe they won't all go but we would like them to go. It certainly won't do them any harm and a degree can be helpful in obtaining a good job in other countries as well as this. Common sense of course always helps.

Never in a million years would I recommend the btl market to anyone. We have an aquaintance who's parents have many btl an she said it was a potential minefield. However, you do only tend to hear the horror stories, as I said our current tenants are fine.

My husband and I have spent many years trying to think of ways of increasing our income. I have just recently taken a new job and the salary I am earning is the same as it was when I gave up work 14 years ago to have kids but the cost of everything is ridiculous. For eg our petrol bill has gone up from £1600 in 2005 to £3600 in 2007.

My choice is definitely to get rid, I don't believe there is any equity in the house and if we sold quickly would probably need to take at least a £10k hit on top of what we have already paid out. Thats £10k of the mortgage, so a loss of £30k over the original cost of the house.

However, the problem remains that we have tenants which I think would make the house difficult to sell and I for one would feel awful about turfing them out. Which is why I am also thinking that we should take the hit for at least the next year.

Thanks for your reply.

I have to admit, having just reread your original post, I'm not quite clear why you did post. Was it for advice on what course of action to take? You claim in other posts you weren't looking for sympathy, yet your original post refers to your 'desperation' and elsewhere that you were driven to tears by the situation.

If it was the former, you have received plenty of advice on here; not always palatable as there is no easy painless way out of this, as you well know.

If it was the latter, I'm afraid I find it hard to feel sympathy because you are actually going to have to contribute a few hundred pounds a month to the cost of buying a second house. You had one - you weren't homeless. Your children were years away from needing their own homes. Yet you chose to buy another one and yet - amazingly - seem to view yourself as some sort of victim because you might actually have to pay for it yourself! Instead of getting someone else's parents and/or children to pay for it through their rent!

Why you find it so surprising and upsetting that if you buy 2 houses you might actually have to pay for 2 houses yourself, rather than getting one free, I'm not quite clear.

You appear to have gambled on house prices staying at record highs and historically lax credit conditions remaining in place for the life of the mortgage. If you had thought to plan ahead and taken out a long term fixed rate, you would not now be in the situation you are now. You would be getting your free house. The fact that you didn't means that you are the victim of your own lack of planning and as such, whilst you won't want to hear it, can blame no-one other than yourself.

Hopefully, your experience will provide a salutary lesson for those who claimed BTL as some kind of easy get-rich-quick scheme.

I feel sympathy for those FTB's to young to remember the last crash who bought their first and only home at the height of the market and may well stand to lose the roof over their own head thanks to the credit crunch and falling prices. But you are old enough to know better. It would be lovely if every family could afford an extra house for all our children - or if the UK was big enough to make that feasible. But of course, that was never your plan; it relied on there being a shortage of property so that OTHER PEOPLE'S parents and children would have to fork out to cover your monthly mortgage bill. Obviously, as a parent, I understand you put your own children first. Just don't expect other people's parents and children to feel quite as sorry for you as you do for yourself.

It sounds like you've learnt your lesson; next time you gamble foolishly without adequate risk protection/research, don't post on a public forum unless you can take people criticising your initial decision to gamble. Sorry if that sounds cruel; but as someone who has worried for years about whether we'd ever manage to afford one house for our children, it is hard to really share in the devastation you feel from being unable to afford two.

Sorry.

JonnyBravo

carolt wrote: »

Thanks for your reply.

I have to admit, having just reread your original post, I'm not quite clear why you did post. Was it for advice on what course of action to take? You claim in other posts you weren't looking for sympathy, yet your original post refers to your 'desperation' and elsewhere that you were driven to tears by the situation.

If it was the former, you have received plenty of advice on here; not always palatable as there is no easy painless way out of this, as you well know.

If it was the latter, I'm afraid I find it hard to feel sympathy because you are actually going to have to contribute a few hundred pounds a month to the cost of buying a second house. You had one - you weren't homeless. Your children were years away from needing their own homes. Yet you chose to buy another one and yet - amazingly - seem to view yourself as some sort of victim because you might actually have to pay for it yourself! Instead of getting someone else's parents and/or children to pay for it through their rent!

Why you find it so surprising and upsetting that if you buy 2 houses you might actually have to pay for 2 houses yourself, rather than getting one free, I'm not quite clear.

You appear to have gambled on house prices staying at record highs and historically lax credit conditions remaining in place for the life of the mortgage. If you had thought to plan ahead and taken out a long term fixed rate, you would not now be in the situation you are now. You would be getting your free house. The fact that you didn't means that you are the victim of your own lack of planning and as such, whilst you won't want to hear it, can blame no-one other than yourself.

Hopefully, your experience will provide a salutary lesson for those who claimed BTL as some kind of easy get-rich-quick scheme.

I feel sympathy for those FTB's to young to remember the last crash who bought their first and only home at the height of the market and may well stand to lose the roof over their own head thanks to the credit crunch and falling prices. But you are old enough to know better. It would be lovely if every family could afford an extra house for all our children - or if the UK was big enough to make that feasible. But of course, that was never your plan; it relied on there being a shortage of property so that OTHER PEOPLE'S parents and children would have to fork out to cover your monthly mortgage bill. Obviously, as a parent, I understand you put your own children first. Just don't expect other people's parents and children to feel quite as sorry for you as you do for yourself.

It sounds like you've learnt your lesson; next time you gamble foolishly without adequate risk protection/research, don't post on a public forum unless you can take people criticising your initial decision to gamble. Sorry if that sounds cruel; but as someone who has worried for years about whether we'd ever manage to afford one house for our children, it is hard to really share in the devastation you feel from being unable to afford two.

Sorry.

I'm in the all to rare position of having to agree with carolt.

Fail to prepare, prepare to fail. etc.

All too many people don't think through ALL the possibilites carefully enough. And this is with investments of £100,000's. Amazing. But it is all part of the mindset that "everyone else is doing it, so I better join in. I don't want to miss out".
By the time that occurs to you it's too late!


BTW

kazd wrote: »

£2.00 Savers Club = £34.00 So Far

+ however may £2 coins I have saved in my Terramundi since 2000.

Terramundi weighs 8lb 5oz

ok so 8lb 5oz = 3770gms

£2 coin = 12 gms

Terramundi = £314

Cash it in..... it's not helping where it is.

tbs624

I actually thought it was - in some ways -quite a brave move to make, posting on here.

I read the original post as a sad tale, yes the OP looks to have been unprepared, but I can see that having had a property trashed by a tenant, being unable to recoup money from a rogue agent despite pursuing him/her to court, and then finding the rest of it unravelling rapidly as the credit crunch bites, she perhaps felt that she could show that there was another side to all those who still see BTL as a good thing (and we can see on the boards that folk are still looking to do it).

Many of the comments on here have been valid ones, both from those who have expressed some compassion and from those who wouldn’t want to, and it does sometimes give us all a nudge forward to hear how someone else views our situation. (It’s human nature to have a ‘wallow’ now and again.)

However, the vindictiveness of some of the more “challenged” posters(if your nose is snotty, wipe it - you know who you are) has been appalling.

Your post Carol is well- expressed and, as with your other one, makes important points.

I do hope that the OP isn't put off MSE forums, gets to resolve her personal situation, and at the same time manages to do the right thing by her current tenants.

poppy10_2

kazd wrote: »

you do only tend to hear the horror stories, as I said our current tenants are fine.

To be fair, you've had plenty of warning that BTL might not be as straightforward as you thought. You could have gotten out long ago.


September 2006

kazd wrote: »

We have recently bought a brand new btl property, within a few days of our tenants moving in, we got a call from the sales office to say that someone had spotted our tenants and said that they had been kicked out or repossesed from their previous property and that they were a nightmare. A couple of days ago I got a call from the Sales Director who said that they had been running amok around the show house, climbing out of the skylight of our property.

November 2006

kazd wrote: »

Our tennants have packed up and left our property after renting it for approx three months of a six month contract. In that time we have had numerous complaints from the sales office etc.
Apparently the house appears to have not been cleaned from day one, the cooker looks like its ten years old and the carpets twenty, they have smoked themselves silly and the house honks to high heaven.

July 2007

kazd wrote: »

Has anyone any experience with small claims court. We have just had a judgement upheld against a letting agency and they have been ordered to pay money owed etc. So far nothing received.

tbs624

poppy10 wrote: »

To be fair, you've had plenty of warning that BTL might not be as straightforward as you thought. You could have gotten out long ago.

Now come on Poppy - can't we quit with the ongoing virtual slapping?

As a newbie LL the OP did what a lot of people on these boards suggest, and paid an LA to oversee things (personally am not a fan of LAs - don't seem to be beneficial to either party) Clearly they didn't do their job, so the OP got new reliable tenants in place and no longer has the original agent.

She may well have had mortgage redemption charges that made it non-viable to get out within the first couple of years, and if she had bailed out after just one lot of tenants and maybe come on here to say so, no doubt she would have got slated for that too.

Going on and on about what someone should, in your opinion, have done doesn't help - there have been plenty of suggestions from other posters of ways for the OP to move it forward and that will no doubt be helpful.

We all make mistakes, and no doubt the OP will learn from hers as most of the rest of us do from our own.

beingjdc

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

Right, what I want to ask is this: How does buying a house to rent out push prices up? (This is a serious question)

The house is there, sitting on the market, waiting to be sold. Anyone is free to buy it - it isn't ring-fenced for a prospective landlord.

So the first-time buyers have as much chance of buying it as anyone else don't they?

What's the problem? Have I missed something blindingly obvious?

The law of supply and demand?

Think about an auction with sixty people at it. Then think about an auction with seventy people at it. All else being equal, which auction will come out with the highest selling prices?

JanCee

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

I am not from Housepricecrash (which seems full of envious people who take delight in someone else's misfortune).

I do not have a mortgage, nor a b-t-l (although I have had both in the past).

I have not read all the thread so forgive me if this has been answered already.

Right, what I want to ask is this: How does buying a house to rent out push prices up? (This is a serious question)

The house is there, sitting on the market, waiting to be sold. Anyone is free to buy it - it isn't ring-fenced for a prospective landlord.

So the first-time buyers have as much chance of buying it as anyone else don't they?

What's the problem? Have I missed something blindingly obvious?

The answer is it doesn't. It is an often quoted fallacy that BTL is the cause of rising prices, when in fact it doesn't occupy a large enough slice of the housing market to affect the overall prices. While mortgage lenders have been falling over themselves to lend at any given multiple to the residential market, BTL has always been more tightly controlled. Most BTL martgages have always required a minimum 15% deposit and rents that cover 125% of the mortgage.

The BTL LLs that have got into financial difficulties are mostly those that have bought packaged investments, that came with overinflated guaranteed rents to disguise the fact that the price of the property was also overinflated. Given the way the market is heading some FTBers might consider that the hapless BTL fools that snapped up new build flats actually did them a favour. Pricing them out of a fraudulently overhyped market that is due for a sharp fall.

neas

cells wrote: »

i dont have a problem with her kids BTL, i could not care less even if she has 100 BTL houses/flats

what i object to was her trying to play the saint, look at poor me who was trying to do the best for meh kiddies, now i am hurting becuase of things i didnt have the forsight to see or bother to try learn. OH AND IT WASNT FOR THE MONEY. yeh right


remove the bit in bold and i would have skiped over this thread. BTL-ers dont bother me. someone trying to play the saint when they have no right, that isnt a nice thing to do.

I have to kinda agree with this post (taking a unbiased read of it... forgetting the last 20+ posts you made).

True trying to justfiy morally the reason for buying the BTLs was wrong I personally agree. But given a similar experience I can't say i might not have done the same thing (albeit earlier in the HPI... which im sure a few people have done). When I was at uni parents would buy their childs home while the student mates helped pay the mortgage for 4 years. they'd sell the property for a fortune and the profits went to the child. (NB I went to uni 2001-2005... ideal time to buy low sell high

carolt wrote: »

Thanks for your reply.

I have to admit, having just reread your original post, I'm not quite clear why you did post. Was it for advice on what course of action to take? You claim in other posts you weren't looking for sympathy, yet your original post refers to your 'desperation' and elsewhere that you were driven to tears by the situation.

If it was the former, you have received plenty of advice on here; not always palatable as there is no easy painless way out of this, as you well know.

If it was the latter, I'm afraid I find it hard to feel sympathy because you are actually going to have to contribute a few hundred pounds a month to the cost of buying a second house. You had one - you weren't homeless. Your children were years away from needing their own homes. Yet you chose to buy another one and yet - amazingly - seem to view yourself as some sort of victim because you might actually have to pay for it yourself! Instead of getting someone else's parents and/or children to pay for it through their rent!

Why you find it so surprising and upsetting that if you buy 2 houses you might actually have to pay for 2 houses yourself, rather than getting one free, I'm not quite clear.

You appear to have gambled on house prices staying at record highs and historically lax credit conditions remaining in place for the life of the mortgage. If you had thought to plan ahead and taken out a long term fixed rate, you would not now be in the situation you are now. You would be getting your free house. The fact that you didn't means that you are the victim of your own lack of planning and as such, whilst you won't want to hear it, can blame no-one other than yourself.

Hopefully, your experience will provide a salutary lesson for those who claimed BTL as some kind of easy get-rich-quick scheme.

I feel sympathy for those FTB's to young to remember the last crash who bought their first and only home at the height of the market and may well stand to lose the roof over their own head thanks to the credit crunch and falling prices. But you are old enough to know better. It would be lovely if every family could afford an extra house for all our children - or if the UK was big enough to make that feasible. But of course, that was never your plan; it relied on there being a shortage of property so that OTHER PEOPLE'S parents and children would have to fork out to cover your monthly mortgage bill. Obviously, as a parent, I understand you put your own children first. Just don't expect other people's parents and children to feel quite as sorry for you as you do for yourself.

It sounds like you've learnt your lesson; next time you gamble foolishly without adequate risk protection/research, don't post on a public forum unless you can take people criticising your initial decision to gamble. Sorry if that sounds cruel; but as someone who has worried for years about whether we'd ever manage to afford one house for our children, it is hard to really share in the devastation you feel from being unable to afford two.

Sorry.

Have to agree full heartadley with this theres been alot of people pushed totally away from both the BTL and FTB market... because of people buying 2-x houses. Its a self fulfing prophecy, speculation that rises the prices highers.