There will be fewer people renting, by necessity, but the people who want or need to rent will not change by as much, creating an imbalance between supply and demand that will drive up rental prices.

Why would demand not change by as much as supply, if both a buyer and a seller have been removed from the rental market? It's like landlords being forced to sell to tenants at a reduced price.

The article offers so little detail that I can only assume what country it's talking about. It mentions a parlement, references some publications that are in the UK and has a URL from the UK itself, so I assume that's where this is happening, but there isn't a single actual geographic reference anywhere on that page. It's probably a safe assumption on their part that their target audience will assume correctly, but it's not any extra effort to list a location along with the date and author.

🎻

^🎻^

:)

_🎻 or perhaps _🎻

A civil union? I mean, I suppose you wouldn't want a really rude union… ;-)

what a majority actually wants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deutsche_Wohnen_&_Co._enteignen

Fair enough, it does happen. Relevant background: https://nationalmortgageprofessional.com/news/investors-hold-most-empty-houses

The states with the highest vacancy rates in investor-owned properties were:

Indiana (7.2%); 
Illinois (6.1%); 
Oklahoma (5.9%); 
Alabama (5.9%); and 
Ohio (5.8%). 

States with the lowest vacancy rates were:

New Hampshire (0.9%); 
Vermont (1%); 
Idaho (1.2%); 
Utah (1.5%); and 
North Dakota (1.5%).

I'd argue my sentiment remains, investors for the most part rent out property, they don't typically hold it vacant. When they do it's more likely vacancies are transitory (trying to find a renter) than long term and intentionally kept vacant.

And while we're at it, profit must be only high enough to:

• Fairly cover maintenance for the tenants' residences
• Administration (but not: to fill pockets)
• Expansion into building more price-controlled housing

Right. We are in agreement that this should cause some reduction in property prices.

But not all renters are able to buy property. Here's an extreme example - lets say 99.9% of landlords are forced to sell their rental homes. There are now just 100 units left in all of London.

There are 10000 students who need a temporary place to stay, and another 10000 people that have bad credit and cant get a mortgage. What will happen to rental prices?

Because having your rental unit taken away from you does not remove you from the rental market. You might consider leaving the rental market and buying property if housing prices collapse, but outside of that most people are going to have to look around for a new rental unit in a now tighter market.

The Negotiator is a trade magazine that "serves the residential property industry, specifically targeting estate and letting agents and their suppliers". The original source for this news is https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/buy-to-let/landlords-quit-rental-market-at-fastest-rate-in-a-decade, which is mirrored by https://www.aol.com/articles/landlords-quit-rental-market-fastest-094056000.html .

It comes after Labour introduced the Renters’ Rights Act on May 1, which abolished section 21 “no fault” evictions and transformed all tenancies into rolling contracts.

—https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/property/buy-to-let/landlords-quit-rental-market-at-fastest-rate-in-a-decade/

Then who will buy those properties? If we have 100 houses for 100 groups of people, mixed renting and owning. Then 20 landlords sell. Who are they selling to if no one can afford it?

They have to reduce the price until someone can.

Yup. This sounds like the perfect opportunity for some kind of housing cooperative. You'd just need to find someone to provide the initial capital to buy the houses

I wish the US had something like Art. 15 of the German Constitution. As for the UK, we are lucky in this regard with the flexibility our lack of rigid constitution offers

It does remove another renter, though. The market would only be tighter if they reduced supply by more than demand.

Yes, again, I agree with you that the landlords will have to reduce their prices because there will be a temporary housing glut. Although, they might just let them sit unused off the market until prices recover.

But the houses will get sold. There's a housing shortage everywhere.

Yes, in your scenario, assuming that all the houses must be sold and nobody is allowed to buy a second home (which would happen in the real world as the prices drop) and nobody becomes homeless (which would also happen), all those houses would go to previous renters. The remaining renters are those who are in the most financially weak situation - even as property prices drop and rental prices go up they still couldn't afford to buy before the market stabilized. In this market there is now going to be pressure driving down the prices of homes and driving up the price of rentals.

How does being evicted remove a renter from the rental market?

I mean... they give you a place to live in return...

Renting / landlords by themselves aren't necessarily a bad thing, it's poor renters rights and particularly shitty landlords that are the problem.

I say this as someone who got on the properly ladder just as much to get away from shit landlords as anything.

Nice! CONGRATULATIONS UK!

not a constitution until the people voted on it

In addition: The Telegraph is a rightwing rag who are automatically against anything Labour does. Apart from their right-wing bias, in the last few (3?) decades they've seen a decline in quality to the level of gutter journalism, so they have no credibility and their claims are basically meaningless.

We're cheering a bunch of rental properties being removed from the market?

Sure, some homes will enter the market for private buyers, so those doing quite well might have a slightly cheaper house but a lot are going to be sold to less scrupulous/more corporate landlords who feel they can extract more value, or in packages to developers.

I get it, we hate landlords hut this feels like cutting off one's nose to spite the face.

I must be used to American rightwing media because this Telegraph article seems downright neutral by comparison haha. Also, I have a question. It says that one of the things this bill does is abolish "fixed term tenancies". Does that mean, for example, that someone could just move in for a month and then move out?

I agree, but I would believe them when they're saying Labour's doing a good thing, especially when they don't realize that's what they say.

Thank god. Landlords are scum and our housing market is cooked. The USA is in desperate need of a housing market crash. Prices are way too high and many millennials still can't afford homes despite being in their 40's. Younger generations don't stand a chance. Homes are not an investment. Your home isn't worth more just because you've lived in it for years wearing it down, breaking things, and stinking up the place. Like anything that gets used they lose value over time and the market needs to reflect that. Hopefully this makes landlords leave the housing market in droves. A flood of housing hitting the market at a time no one is able to afford them will hopefully trigger the crash.

They say 2008 was a housing market crash but it didn't. Houses cost way too much before and cost way too much after. They use every trick to kick the can as long as they are able to. I want to see a 60% loss in housing value across the board. Everywhere across the USA. And I want to see that loss become permanent. Intrinsic value that is lost forever because it was never actually there to begin with. Just made up numbers with voodoo math.

I'm not from the UK myself, I've just read some trash tier articles from The Telegraph in the past. Articles written with long words, but still obvious falsehoods. Which is a shame, because they didn't use to be like that. Wikipedia lists some of their controversies (see history since 2004): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Telegraph

About the new law:
“Fixed-term tenancies mean renters are obliged to pay rent regardless of whether a property is up-to-standard, and they reduce flexibility to move in response to changing circumstances, for example after relationship breakdown, to take up a new job or when buying a first home.

Instead, all tenancies will be periodic, with tenants able to stay in their home until they decide to end the tenancy by giving 2 months’ notice. This will end the injustice of tenants being trapped paying rent for substandard properties and offer more flexibility to both parties to respond to changing circumstances.” https://www.stirlingackroyd.com/property-insights/fixed-term-tenancies/

The new homeowner is the renter removed from the market, not the previous renter.

so the US Constitution is not a constitution? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Economic_Interpretation_of_the_Constitution_of_the_United_States#Historiography

i didn't say that but the german grundgesetzt specifies it's valid until the german population votes on a constitution

It's about time. Generally speaking the UK have some pretty robust consumer protection laws, mostly thanks to the EU, but the laws around renting were draconian, they might as well of not existed.

To be clear I'm not really all that certain on why they would be quitting, you can still absolutely make money as a landlord under these rules you're just not allowed to run a Victorian era workhouse level operation. Maybe that's what all these landlords were doing.

I actually think that buying a property to let it out should be illegal. There's just no benefit to society to let people do that. And we don't do that in other areas of business so why housing?

You're not allowed to go and buy a bunch of Coca-Cola and then sell that Coca-Cola at a 40% markup while doing nothing to add value. It's explicitly banned, if you do it with valuable enough products it's called profiteering.

However I don't necessarily see your point, why people giving up on being landlords is necessarily going to result in those properties being sold to other landlords, if they could still make money being landlords then surely they would keep at it.

Wow that telegraph website is absolute arse

For the most part, until it's more profitable for them not to. It's never done to the benefit of people who need a place to live.

God if I could get a nice suburban starter home in my area for under $250k I'd be so happy... Everything that's not dilapidated or in a terrible neighborhood is going for $400-500k right now 🙃

Landlords are by definition a bad thing. Everyone needs a place to live. People who hoard the necessities of life and loan them back to you are cunts, and need to be regulated into oblivion.

Back into the sewers, then?

Empty houses contribute more tax in some parts of the country where councils have been given permission to raise taxes on empty properties. IIRC it is up to 4x the normal rate.

Similar things could easily be rolled out where its a problem. Especially given that we already have working examples in the UK. Though its more about holiday homes, the same applies.

good maybe price of houses can come down.

do you think these landlords are just gonna sit on empty homes? doing nothing with them?

Everyone hates scalpers. That's why it baffles me when there are always legions of white knights rushing in to defend house scalpers. I automatically assume they are all house scalpers who are desperately trying to see themselves as good people.

They don't build homes, they just hoard them and charge a premium for access. They're just middlemen. Landlords don't provide a damn thing.

Fuck em

This means rent will increase and house prices will drop in short term? Long term who knows. But yeah fixed tenancies kind of suck and because of high demand especially in places like London, bad landlords can get away with being shitty by exploiting fixed tenancies. Shouldn't really be a problem for those who anyways aren't shitty so hopefully this is a clean up of shitty landlords who don't want to maintain their rental properties properly.

That's a big assumption that the new homeowner was a previous renter and not just someone cohabiting or buying an additional home.

Thats just the replacement mechanism isn't it? Or is it de jure a provisional constitution which was just kept?

Yeah, from that it sounds like the implication of a supply crunch pushed by the original article is highly misleading:

The analysis suggested that rents were flat across the country, increasing by just £4 to an average of £1,475 a month compared to last year.

However, stock across the rental sector still increased year-on-year, driven largely by new build-to-rent properties coming on to the market. Available properties increased by 1.3pc on average, reversing years of decline.

The data showed 7pc growth in rental properties costing between £800 and £1,500 a month, while the number of more expensive rentals on the market declined.

So even though existing properties are leaving the UK rental market, if you factor in new construction it's a net gain and affordable rentals have increased, facts it omitted entirely.

The house does that, they just paint over the plug sockets.

Your argument is the equivalent of "slave owners gave slaves housing, clothes and food. The problem isn't slavery, it's the lack of regulation and bad slave owners."

A good slave owner was still a slave owner. A good landlord still takes money out of your pocket for something that should be your fundamental right.

But hey, I'm willing to compromise. I'm okay with landlords owning the house they're renting, if they're not allowed to rent for profit. But somehow no landlord is okay with such an idea even though it's still a net positive for them.

EDIT: correcting spelling errors due to autocorrect.