| Comment | I'm afraid this is the downside of the governments strategy to go after landlords. Over the past 10 years or so, it's become harder and harder to be a landlord. The challenges include;
- higher taxes (not able to offset mortgage costs)
- more regulations (hmo licenses, energy efficiency improvements, etc)
- more rights to tenants (eviction bans, rent increase bans, no minimum tenancies, etc)
- tighter restrictions on lending (its hard to get a btl mortgage because lending amounts are tied to the rent you can achieve)
The result is that landlords are selling their properties in large numbers and have been doing for years. As a result, the stock of rental properties decline.
So this is one of supply and demand. There isn't much supply of rental property, and demand is high and increasing. The result, is lots of competition for every property.
I'm not trying to get sympathy for landlords, this is just the reality of the situation. Villainising and penalising landlords ultimately makes landlords sell up, which means fewer rental properties left 😔 |
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