Critic says tenants paying off a landlord’s mortgage ‘can’t be right’

Reply to the comment left by Godfrey Jones at 05/02/2025 - 10:49This Mr Bird fella is living off the homeless!!

I'm not even a landlord, but it's a short sighted and narrow minded, like trying to blame benefit claimants for the state of the country.

International Corporations funnel money abroad, or UK business is strangled and we import services so we lose tax revenue.

With the housing, my view has always been, making mortgages easy to get, meant people borrow more to out bid the other person on a house. Increase in LTV, joint borrowers etc all lead in increases in money available and thus prices go up. As prices go up, loan sizes increase and thus those doing BTL have higher costs. Rents go up, and we repeat.

If you want cheaper rents, build more affordable houses. The answer has been the same for 30+ years, but it's just never been done.

If you just cut off the private rental sector, and leave it to the social housing that's got a multi year wait, you are buggered. The local councils aren't going to cope.

Interesting how he became a multi millionaire running a charity.
I saw this and had to steal . I have said similar to some people over the years but this really hits the nail on the head.

After seeing a "Shelter" sponsored posting on my timeline today, I scrolled through some of the nasty comments. Many were slagging off landlords... Many people think landlords are parasites, trapping people, overcharging rent, forcing people to rent all their lives, preventing people from saving up for a deposit for a house, etc.... I posted this comment to try to balance out things:

I offer an alternative view.... you haven't got the money saved up for a 10% or 15% deposit on a house, but you want to move out of your parents home now, so what do you do? Jeesh, if only there were some people who were willing to let me move into a house for only a £700 deposit and another £700 rent (using your own figures above). That way, I can have my own house and have only put down £1400 and I can move in within a week or so of viewing it, rather than wait 3 to 4 months to buy. Brilliant. What's more, if I decide I don't like the area, neighbours, road noise, or change jobs and need to move 20 miles away, or need an extra bedroom, want a bigger garden, etc... I can just move out with only a months notice too, rather than have to put my house on the market and wait 4 to 6 months to sell it, or much longer in a poor economy. What a great system that would be... It's so flexible. So easy. And I am protected by law and have so many protection rights bestowed upon me too. Furthermore, if there is a leak, a boiler breakdown, a non working toilet, the cooker breaks or any other maintenance issue, somebody else pays for it, so I am assured that for the next year or so, my housing budget of £700 a month is never exceeded by a pesky roof leak or boiler breakdown.
Wait... What?!? A system like that already exists? Amazing. So, you're telling me that there are other people out there who have had the discipline to save up their wages and earnings and used their perfect credit score for the benefit of others, to enable them to get a mortgage, buy a house, refurbish it, make it habitable, make sure it complies with all the housing regulations, gas safety regs, electrical safety regs, meets the EPC regs and around 130 other regs (which I wouldn't enjoy if I bought a house) and then takes a massive risk by ONLY letting me put down £1400 to move in, within a week or so of viewing it, instead of putting down £20,000 and waiting 3 to 4 months?!? Who are these mystical people? Is there a name for them? What was that you said... a "Landlord". Wow. We should be so grateful that these "landlord" people are willing to help me out in my hour of need, as I can't save up £20,000, can't wait 3 to 4 months and I want to move now. Thank heavens for landlords who saved up their money and decided not to leave it in a savings account or ISA or pension, but took a massive risk, invested their money, paid for the house to be done up, are helping other people like this.... It's amazing... its a shame that certain members of society cant see beyond their own noses at what a fantastic service those "landlords" are providing....

Anybody else in this country can be enriched by their business or their job, including public employees, but no the landlords.

Let's, for the purposes of argument agree that ita simply paying off the mortgage. This being the case then why isn't the individual making a beeline for the banks looking for substantial changes to mortgages making them all Hire Purchase with merely a similar level of deposit to that which landlords take?

J Bird either demonstrating his complete ignorance of landlord financing or deliberately stirring up bad feeling between tenants and landlords.
How does J Bird make a living - off the backs of the homeless. ? More homeless more income?.
Can't see any vested interests at play here, move on.

He's right, we do need more Social/Council housing.

When anyone tells you they paying your mortgage, say Do you want to pay me for the 1st 2 years I lost on you?

Have you paid me the deposit that i put on the house? £50k for example? Where did that come? How did that 50k get paid on the house? You welcome to give me that back. In fact, why don't you buy the house, then you can pay your own mortgage.

Reply to the comment left by Peter Merrick at 05/02/2025 - 10:55
In London a return of about 4.8% is very rare we are looking at probably half of that if we are lucky and if we were to purchase these same properties today the income would certainly not cover the mortgage.
I think Mr Bird does not have a clue!

Private rental are a business, and like any other business they need to make money, what they spend that money on is irrelevant.

I agree we need more housing, I agree a new wonderful multi use project featuring all the benefits he mentions would be great. There is just one problem, if it was viable it would have been done, this poor guy is living in cloud cuckoo land and clearly has no clue about the PRS.

Why is always landlords fault that tenants are unable to afford a home of their own? We're not their parents or family?

I saved for my daughter her whole life to give her a deposit to buy her first home, she rented it from me for 12 months and is now in the process of buying it. Maybe tenants should consider asking their own family for help. Why would I give a totally radom person help when I have plenty of family members who also need help? Lets say I did, how would I choose out of the million tenants unable to afford their own property? Would that be fair on the other millions of people in need.

We've brought up a generation of youngsters who firmly believe that it's up to everyone else to look after them. The fact we have a house they believe that they should have one too. And not just any house but one that's the kind of house that we could only afford in later life.

They want it now!
And when they realise they can't have everything they want, they "scream and scream until they're sick!!!"