r/Glasgow Tools

Thanks. Not a rant at all. This was an interesting and informative read.


I completely agree that the perception that renting is a gold mine is ridiculous. As most things in today's society it stems from absolute ignorance about what it takes to live legally and pay your taxes rather than be a parasite in society. Add on top of this an absolute ignorance of what it takes to maintain a property. In London for example there are studies that despite the astronomical rent it is actually pretty much the same thing as owning the property given the expensive mortgage and all the other expenses that are now yours. Not to mention the absolute fuckery that leasehold is. You are basically renting for 100 years or whatever.

We should not exclude the slum landlords that bring down the level and have many properties and basically do this for a living and make profit by not maintaining the properties, bulling the tenants, cheating on taxes, etc. They do bring down all the other landlords and I like to think that when people hate on landlords they mean them.

I understand your point about the legislation as well and agree that as many other problems (drug use, knife crimes, etc) it is not aimed at all at solving any root cause, it is only pretending to deal with the symptoms and in doing that is compounding the real problem.


As a tenant I can say that legislation is not helpful either. Especially when you do not know your rights but most of all have no savings to stretch and find anything because the law is sloooooow and rather than do something about it, most people agree on bad conditions or agree to have part of their deposit taken away because they really need the rest of the money.


I ended up with a slum landlord a couple of years ago because no one will rent a flat to me with the dog. Terrible conditions, a few months in I got a letter that he only just got his licence. Called the council and they just shrugged. Then he did not put my money in a deposit scheme and I chased him for weeks and he eventually treated me condescendingly as if it was not my right to do so. There were many other issues and I decided to use my six months break clause. I found a flat to move to and he did not give me references so I lost that flat and then tried to tell me I cannot use the breaking clause. Enough was enough. I left the flat in much better condition that when I got it, moved out and gave him to one of those no win no fee agencies because he had not secured my deposit in time. 18 months later (!) and two court cases he lost about 5k, I got 1k and the rest went to the agency. I wanna see him fuck with other people again.

Thanks for your replies and I hope you get a great tenant as you seem a good landlord.