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

Reply to the comment left by Jonathan Willis at 05/02/2025 – 19:54
The big obstacle of course is funding. Councils across the board seem to be scraping the barrel for funding if not actually on the verge of bankruptcy in many cases.
And there doesn’t seem to be government funding of any scale on the way to help out. A case of needing to spend money to save money. It’s just a pity more wasn’t done along those lines in the era of near zero borrowing costs.

Just seems a different world now to when I bought my first home – an unmodernised Victorian terraced in 1977 which the Building Societies wouldn’t lend on (and banks didn’t really do mortgages then for ordinary folks). The mortgage was actually from the local council which was quite common then – my parents’ new build semi was bought in the 1950s with a mortgage from the council too. Today my local councils biggest responsibility is adult social care and children’s services which is an incredible 70% of the budget (so they say).

Reply to the comment left by Stella at 05/02/2025 – 16:05
I remember my daughter told me how much she was paying for a room in London whilst at university, and I worked out that their gross return on the whole house was about 3% before any costs were deducted. I asked her why they were even bothering to rent the property for such a miniscule return. We decided that it was probably because that’s what they had always done with it.

The problem with people like Mr Bird Brain is that they don’t consider the cost of finance as a legiitimate expense, because of course social housing providers don’t charge for it. Encouraged of course by the likes of Mr George Osborne.

Reply to the comment left by Zen at 05/02/2025 – 19:02
It does depend on location but why should young people move away from where they grew up if they prefer familiarity and the company of family. In our town 2 bed Victorian terraces in bad areas start at over 200K. Having read previous comments about affordable housing it is clearly way more complex than I thought but the result is still the same. Affordable housing is not really affordable and can’t be. In our town new 2 bed builds start at 389K in a good area and approx 335K in an area on the outskirts of town.

Reply to the comment left by Slooky at 05/02/2025 – 20:32As I understand it, the definition of ‘affordable’ is no more than 80% of full market rate – below that is the category of ‘social’ housing for rent which I believe is 60% market.

For purchases, there are of course part ownership arrangements and discounted sale properties (full purchase with a mortgage at a percentage of the market rate). I know of some £300k properties that were sold at 30% of that price to people who met the income and other criteria. They are under a legal covenant so they can only ever be resold at 30% of future value and only to people who the council approve as meeting income and other criteria (and no renting them out).

It’s just that these schemes hardly scratch the surface as they rely on piggybacking the speculative market rate developments that the big house builders are willing to undertake – and they will never build at a rate that would threaten existing price levels in the area for obvious reasons.

there seem to be new builds in most places and these will go to those in employment or with a good income and probably on mortgages..those who can’t afford to buy will need to wait till the government builds 1.5 million homes and some will be council government homes and probably blocks of flats

Reply to the comment left by Keith Wellburn at 05/02/2025 – 20:50
I have looked at part ownership deals and they work out so expensive paying a mortgage and a rent that it didn’t make any sense. I’m not aware of the discounted mortgage rate alongside full purchase price but my first thoughts are that I still feel that would be unobtainable. Despite all the schemes (which many people believe caused house prices to rise so much) affordable homes are just not affordable.

Delusional. I think that sums it up nicely.

The guy is clearly either a bit thick or just playing to his crowd.

Reply to the comment left by Jonathan Willis at 05/02/2025 – 19:54
Councils don’t have a clue about running private companies. When they initially set up housing associations, the idea was they would operate at arms length [ALMO], but councillors sat on the board, and as soon as they saw how much money they were getting from the government, they wanted to get their hands on it. If the CEO refused, they would pay them off.

So he is saying businesses who hire/lease office space shouldn’t be paying the landlord’s mortgages!!!
I thought it was for that very reason people are being asked to come back to office otherwise large property holding companies would crash for lack of rent.
I think he should float this idea with most companies would love getting rid of that expense bar of course the landlords but hey let’s do the “right” thing. Or may be his gift is exclusively for the small landlords.