Abolish landlords? Bring it on!

Last weekend, Green Party members voted like lemmings to ‘seek the effective abolition of private landlordism’ at their conference in Bournemouth, and become the first political party to effectively declare war on much-maligned landlords around the country.

The motion, aptly titled ‘Abolish Landlords’, won strong delegate backing to become official party policy and promise heavy regulation and higher taxes.

Sounds familiar! But they also want rent controls (which have never worked anywhere), scrap Right to Buy, and demanding business rates on Airbnbs.

Empty properties would face double taxation and buy to let mortgages would end.

Local authorities would have the right to buy a landlord’s home when they sell or fail EPC standards, or if they are empty for more than six months.

It’s a great headline

The Greens might say they want to abolish landlords with a catchy headline but this could be a vote winning notion.

Stand back and you’ll see that what they’re really after is the abolition of private landlords and their replacement with the state.

If you’re paying a regular sum to live in a house you don’t own, you’re renting.

That means there’s a landlord, whether it’s a private individual or the government.

The plan, then, is to swap a competitive market of millions of landlords for a state monopoly.

And we all know that nothing screams ‘more housing, better quality’ like a monopoly, right?

Ask anyone who’s visited or lived in Russia over the years, and you’ll find a failed centrally controlled diktat of housing nonsense.

The Greens can’t be so deluded that they really think they can deliver a utopia of affordable, well-maintained homes, can they?

They obviously don’t read Property118 and its regular coverage of how poor council homes are.

Ban landlords for homes

There are around 2.5 million private landlords with 4.6 million households renting from them, so what happens if the Greens assume power, or they managed to get into a power-sharing agreement?

The party’s vision seems to assume that banning private landlords overnight would magically solve the housing crisis.

But would it?

If they do, I’m predicting utter chaos as millions of households get their eviction notices and the landlords sell-up.

Where will those tenants go?

It’s unlikely that courts will rubber-stamp mass evictions, so you’d have a legal and logistical mess before anything else.

The end of the Greens

There’s no doubt that the abolition of landlords, should it ever materialise, will spell the end of the Greens, or whoever decides to force us out.

Here’s why: imagine there’s a sudden flood of 4.6 million homes onto the market.

That would immediately tank house prices.

Oh, no, that means Middle England, who might have been cheering from the sidelines about the demise of landlords, are now in the fight.

Residential land values would also plummet.

Sounds great for first-time buyers, right?

Not really because the big sell-off would also trigger a mortgage crisis, with many homeowners stuck in negative equity.

Housebuilding would grind to a halt as developers lose incentives, and the economy would take a massive hit.

Electorally destroyed

The Greens might argue the sell-off would see house prices aligning with earnings, for example, a 1:3 ratio where homes cost three times annual income.

That’s a risky strategy that ignores the political and economic fallout.

Homeowners would be furious at seeing their biggest asset devalued.

And even if prices dropped, you’d still need more houses to meet demand.

I don’t think we need more houses since we need to address the demand side too.

High immigration levels will keep pushing housing demand up, while thousands of homes sit empty.

Taxing vacant properties is a start, but it’s a plaster on a broken system.

State housing monopoly

The state as a housing monopoly landlord wouldn’t magically fix this and, let’s be honest, would likely make things worse.

Monopolies are notorious for inefficiency, not innovation.

Private landlords, for all our flaws, compete to offer better properties at better prices.

A state landlord? Good luck getting a leaky roof fixed before 2030.

The bottom line is that by abolishing landlords, there would be a huge mess despite the Greens’ plan assuming the state can handle 4.6 million properties better than 2.5 million private landlords.

State and council-run housing in the 20th century gave us crumbling tower blocks and endless waiting lists.

Rents, in economic terms, help to incentivise landlords to maintain properties.

Remove that, and you’re left with a system where no one’s motivated to keep homes liveable.

Don’t forget too that we have scores of councils and housing associations sweating bullets about meeting the upcoming deadline for Awaab’s Law.

The public sector is incapable of delivering quality, safe homes at scale.

The housing crisis

The housing crisis is a serious issue, with not enough homes and rising rents, plus homeownership is now a distant dream for many.

If the goal is to make housing fairer, safer and more affordable, the answer isn’t abolition – it’s balance.

So yes, bring on the debate about abolishing landlords.

Because the more people understand what it would actually mean; chaos, economic turmoil, and ultimately a state housing monopoly that won’t house everyone, the more they’ll realise that solving the housing crisis does not mean having fewer landlords.

The Greens have certainly made their position clear. Now landlords and tenants can make theirs equally plain at the ballot box.

Until next time,

The Landlord Crusader