Okay, increasing the supply of housing will lower prices regardless of whether they are rented out or bought.
> Someone is either willing to pay £1k a month for renting a place or not, they care not for the cost of the house they are renting.
Sure, but landlords do care and won't buy property to make it available for renting if they don't expect to be able to cover the cost. This decreases the supply of rental housing, which means fewer options and higher prices for tenants. If they already own the property and can't manage to get tenants paying rent which represents a competitive return on their capital (i.e. the current market value of the property) then they'll sell to someone looking to either own the property outright or demolish it and redevelop some other form of property. Either way it removes the housing from the rental market.
> … now worth about £320k, it's being rented out for £1k a month because people will pay £1k a month …
So the owner is only getting a 3.75% return on their £320k investment. That's not completely terrible, but it still essentially has negative value compared to the opportunity cost of selling the property and investing the proceeds. This is not a sustainable situation.
> … it has nothing to do with how much it was bought for, only what people will pay.
That much is true. The original purchase price doesn't matter in hindsight. (Obviously it does matter when deciding whether the property is worth purchasing to begin with.) Aside from calculating capital gains/loss for taxes, what counts after the purchase is only what the property would sell for now, not the amount that was originally paid.
They will charge what they can. If they aren't happy with the return, they can sell the house and invest the money in DOGE or whatever, that means more houses for people to buy, higher supply leads to lower prices, which is good (with very limited exceptions - mainly of those in negative equity looking to move or remortgage)
HTB is only available on new homes so not removing any stock
> Your sympathy is not required, but you should at least see how landlords paying higher prices for housing leads to higher rents for tenants.
Why? Someone is either willing to pay £1k a month for renting a place or not, they care not for the cost of the house they are renting.
> you should at least see how landlords paying higher prices for housing leads to higher rents for tenants
I owned a flat, I rented it out for the maximum amount of money I could get for it (balanced against other things like reliablity of tennant etc). It doesn't matter how much the flat sells for.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/75180448#/ sold in November 2006 for £150k, it's now worth about £320k, it's being rented out for £1k a month because people will pay £1k a month, it has nothing to do with how much it was bought for, only what people will pay.