For the landlord side: Renting out my one house in London after I bought another one to live in (across the country). I had tenants who flat out refused to pay their rent after a few months living there. This went on for several years, and it took legal battles and numerous court fees to evict them. None of which they turned up to contest.

Before they left, they plastered globs of lard on the walls, and destroyed the kitchen floor and wall by rigging the water pipes to constantly overflow down the outside wall.

I was not allowed to enter the property to inspect it, nor was I allowed to "harass them" by speaking to them face-to-face, because they didn't want me to. I was powerless.

Yes, they lost their deposit, but I was out of pocket tens of thousands, which I basically couldn't afford. I maxed out my credit cards and bank account overdrafts. Even selling the house, it took me nearly 5 years to get back to zero.

I'm not saying that UK law is worse for landlords, but the laws aren't particularly on the side of landlords either.

IANAL if you have the refusal to pay in writing (even text message) then surely it's a straightforward matter to evict them via section 8 notice, if you have kept up your end of the tenancy agreement, or section 21 and wait 2 months then court? Also, if you suspected that "Structural damage that requires urgent attention" had occurred, then you are able to enter the property to carry out inspections/repairs without notice (Housing Act 1988), otherwise you need to give them minimum of 24hrs notice.

As a landlord in the UK you have tons of power, while it's great you didn't abuse them, why you didn't exercise these legal rights when these people abused your property?

Let's just say I would have done things very differently if I knew then what I know now. I learned a LOT in the whole process. I was a lot more naive back then, and could have done a lot of things a lot better.

I'm going to call you out on the tenants remaining in the property for "several years". That simply wouldn't happen unless you didn't follow the procedure to evict them.

UK laws are very much in the favour of the landlord.

I want to come to this persons defense and say that if you own a single property and don't know rental laws really really well, you can get screwed over pretty easy. As with any field, the people who know the rules can screw over the ones that don't. People that rent out a single property and then work a day job are running on a lot of trust and luck.

That's a reasonable call, and to be fair to the tenants; it might have been less than I remember. I haven't got the details to hand, so I can't check.

But without going into detail, I definitely buried my head in the sand too much, and they did pay a small amount at one stage to make me think it might be okay. It was sixteen years ago now, and I've thankfully forgotten a lot of it.

I do remember that I had to restart the whole process when it was thrown out because a date was wrong on a letter. I wasted a whole heap of time trying to get the judge to reverse that decision rather than moving on and starting again.

Anyway, like I said, I was very naive back then, and made lots of mistakes.

"It was sixteen years ago now, and I've thankfully forgotten a lot of it."

Sorry you've had such crap tenants. 16 Years is a long time, and the laws could have changed on this in this time. So there is a good chance you are both right!

I sometimes hear people muse about buying a house to rent it out, because it seems such easy money. I would never be able to do that, because renting out property is a real job with real risks and responsibilities, and it's not a job that I want.

I might rent out a house to a friend of a friend, but certainly not to a complete stranger.

I was going down that path a few years back, until I realized that after property tax and maintenance, it would be like taking on an extra part time job and only getting about $10K per year in return. And that's assuming they don't destroy the place.

Depends on the locality and when you got in - in the real estate cycle.

The goal is to have a property pad off by tenants in 20-30 years so you have a nice nest egg to add to your 401K.

Best investment are certain multi-unit properties - thats where the math works the best.

I’m sorry you had to go through this. Alas, this can happen in most civilized countries that protect renters. We rent out an appartment in Austria, and had a similar, but less devastating situation. In the end, public welfare paid up for them, because they did live on welfare. Interestingly, the eviction failed because the renters just „forgot“ to move everything out of the apartment, and over the next 2y, welfare paid all dues because they couldn’t find a cheaper stay for them. Then, they moved out on their own.

The problem in the UK is about (lack of) building more supply, not about the exact arrangement the law prescribes for renter/tenant relationship.

Plenty of supply outside of the South East of England. Even housing association apartments are being offered privately because of the lack of demand.

£100k for a 2 bed terrace 30 minutes from Manchester and Leeds [0]. £78k for a 2 bed house [1] 35 minutes from Manchester and Liverpool, under an hour from Birmingham, and on HS2

[0] https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-69983... [1] https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-80308...

I don't understand your point.

I was giving concrete examples of affordable houses everywhere that isn't London and commuterbelt.

Personal attacks will get you banned here. Please don't post like this to HN again.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

For more than a year, I was paying for them to live there for free. That doesn't sound to me like I'm a parasite in this story.

Can you elaborate? Help us to understand your point of view.

The reality is that there are a lot of people who can't afford to own their own property.

The council/govenment simply cannot house everyone, and the population is growing faster than the rate new houses are built.

Private landlords actually solve a lot of people's problems by renting their properties out to said people. And the contract that is signed between the tenant needs to be a win-win situation for it to work.

Specifically speaking for people who are renting. The 'win' for them is that they have a place to stay, they do have a choice where they stay. If they want to stay in a 3 bed house, they'll need to pay whatever rate that rent is going for.

One problem is that some tenants try renting in a property they simply cannot afford. So when it's time to pay rent, they take advantage with the system and refuse to pay. It's actually really difficult to evict people from your rented properties even though they signed and agreed to a contract.

The 'win' for landlords is that they get rent. If you're a good tenant who looks after the property and pay rent on time, imagine that there is a problem with the property and the landlord doesn't get it fixed or refuses to get it fixed then really the tenants should aim to look for somewhere else to live. The landlord will lose out on a good loyal tenant.

I don't think its fair to claim that all landlords are parasites. Tenants can be horrible, landlords can be horrible, but unless the agreement is a win-win situation for everyone. Somebody is going to have a bad time.

> Private landlords are parasites.

I take it you don't acknowledge the need for short or long-term rentals, either by migrant workers or low-income households who have no access or interest in taking home loans.

Housing is a right.

> Housing is a right.

That only means that the state should not have the right to evict a homeowner from their private property, not that you have the right to live in someone else's home at someone else's expense.

Could you please not be a jerk in HN comments? I'm sure you can make your substantive points without that.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Ok will do, though I don't think I was being that much of a jerk here. But I do see how the comment was not nice

I agree: there are degrees, and yours was far from as bad as it gets. But still.

I bought just before the '07 crash with a 95% LTV. The value of the flat dropped 40% overnight.

4 years later when I had to move for work and family reasons, we were still in negative equity, so we had to rent it out. Fortunately we had good tenants, and the income just about covered the costs including the interest on the mortgage (which we could offset against tax, can't do that now), which was a good job as we ourselves were paying far more in rent elsewhere. Fortunatly we'd gone for an interest-only tracker mortgage, as we needed everything we were paying into savings to pay the rent on where we were actually living.

Eventually sold in 2016 for the price we paid 9 years earlier

Would you shy away from a challenge or an opportunity just because you might be bad at it or fail in some unknown way?

What I meant is that you shouldn't enter into an investment scheme and act like a victim because it blew up in your face. Nobody is going to cry over the poor, poor landlords

Ok, I agree. But your original comment just said “Maybe you shouldn’t be a landlord then”, and I foolishly responded.

yeah I edited it around the same time you replied, my bad

It seems like you learned a valuable lesson about stepping into a space where wealthy, well-connected players dominate.

It seems like if you had the appropriate connections to government, this process would've been easier?

I did learn valuable lessons, yes. Not that lesson, though. That's a lesson that you might need to unlearn. It will hold you back from trying anything on your own cognizance.

I learned a lot about contracts. I learned a lot about tenant laws. I learned a lot about insurance. I learned that if you have a cleaner employed in the houses you rent, then you have a legal right to enter the property to "inspect their work". I learned a lot about different types of people.

I did not learn any way, shape or form, that "having connections to government" would have made my efforts any easier.

How exactly do you imagine that having "connections to government" would affect a problem caused by the law?

It's not even entirely a problem caused by the law, beobab also just didn't know the full extent of their rights as a property owner. Tenent protections are strong but they wouldn't have stopped beobab from getting them out sooner and inspecting the property for damage.

I'm sure he/she means nepotism/graft/corruption getting the landlord extrajudicial favors.... though their comment seems a bit out of place in this context.

Totally agree, most of them are hard assed companies with no morals and very loose practices.

One place I used to rent from tried to swindle my deposit for "repairs" of things that were clearly just standard wear and tear over the years.

I argued till I was blue in the face and they eventually agreed with me on most of the things and agreed to "refund" me. They messed up somehow and transferred me 2x my initial deposit, normally I would absolutely let them know about their mistake but as they messed me around for months I didn't say a word and kept it. Suprise suprise they went out of business a few months later

Depending on the local laws, the 2x return of your deposit may not have been a mistake. They may have been legally obligated to return 2x of the deposit amount because they failed to return your correct deposit amount within a certain number of days.

Example: 21 days for some areas

Taxes and HOA just get rolled up into the rent. It's not like those aren't already impacting the price because the landlord must be the one to pay the money.

There are still important second order effects. Making those the responsibility of the renter makes it harder to comparison shop (remember what it used to be like buying plane tickets when everybody just showed the base fare?) and it means the renter bears the risk of any sudden increase in those costs.

That is the downside. The upside is renters have better insight into how voting to raise/lower taxes will affect their rent. In the US that is all rolled into rent, and as a result renters happily vote to raise the taxes in the area they live without realizing that it will come back in rent increases eventually. (though there is some time lag as other economic factors affect how much rent can be raised)

Seems like you could have the best of both worlds by making it the landlord’s responsibility and requiring them to itemize it for the renter.

Also, what happens when a property is vacant? Do taxes revert to the owner, or do they not get paid?

In the UK, yes. The owner is responsible for council tax when a property is empty. This varies across the country, it could be totally zero rated when the property is empty and unfurnished, or it could be that you have to pay entirely. Where I live, landlords can get one month free in any 12 month period for empty (no residents) and unfurnished (except for white goods) properties.

Not all taxes can be passed on. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence

(Basically, a landlord bears the economic burden of a land value tax.)

From your own article:

"However, some economists think that the worker bears almost the entire burden of the tax because the employer passes the tax on in the form of lower wages. The tax incidence is thus said to fall on the employee."

This is much closer to reality than the contrary

Yeah it feels a lot like the feudal system still exists in some small way with our rental system. Revenge evictions are common enough to be a well known problem. In public discourse the right of the landlord to do whatever they like with their tenancy agreements dominates and other viewpoints are still often marginalised, typically with whinges about difficult tenants and the apparent right of landlords to an early retirement while they leech off their tenants' work. A disproportionate number of MPs are landlords. Even Tony Blair made a killing from his own buy-to-let portfolio.

> Revenge evictions

The last apartment I rented (15 years back) had an interesting mechanism for this: The rent was about $2000 but they applied something they called a "subsidy" of $400 off per month. Basically if you pissed them off they could immediately raise your rent by $400 per month to drive you out.

The obvious answer for this problem is for the major housebuilders to adopt a 'build to rent model' rather than 'build to sell'.

It would eliminate the need for a middleman who is often borrowing money to fund the purchase himself, adding further inefficiencies to an already inefficient business model.

The prospect of builders becoming long-term landlords may also incentivize them to build a house that will last the course of the tenancy?

???

Developers (who hire builders) go to market for finance - they don't have the funds lying around.

Those financiers want a quickish (< 3/5 yrs) return, not a long term investment(20+ years).

Yes, I understand they want a fast turnaround on investment which is part of the problem.

The council taxes round here work along the following lines:

  £50k house -- £750 (1.5%)
  £150k house -- £1500 (1%)
  £650k house -- £3000 (0.5%)
  £3000k house -- £3000 (0.1%)

So, highly regressive.

Sadly the main complaint seems to be that wealthy pensioners who live in £1m estates have to pay.