Providers or parasites? The vilification of landlords continues

Two stories on Property118 on the same day manage to spell out the real issue facing PRS landlords in the UK: we are facing a witch hunt and nothing we do or say will change that.

I’ve had some brickbats thrown at me over the years but never have I been vilified as a tax-dodging parasite.

So, let’s look at the scathing attack from a Novara Media writer who branded landlords as a ‘workshy, parasite class’.

I’ve discussed before that being a landlord is very much a job and even those with an agent are surprised at how much input they have to make.

Apparently, Two-tier Kier and Rachel Reeves have rented out their family homes and I’m guessing they might now agree with me (and that’s despite Kier strongly stating that being a landlord ‘isn’t work’).

Renters’ Rights Bill nonsense

It’s bad enough that we have to cope with the nonsense Renters’ Rights Bill and its wicked assault on our property-owning rights.

Far from being the greedy fat cats of popular imagination, landlords are grappling with a system that punishes success, distorts economics and ignores the housing crisis’s deeper roots.

The article pulls no punches and landlords are accused of shifting properties into limited companies to sidestep taxes, calling it ‘widespread tax avoidance’ at a time when welfare cuts loom over the vulnerable.

Her venom doesn’t stop there – she claims landlords contribute nothing, not even new homes, merely sowing ‘anxiety and anger’ among tenants.

Let’s be honest, it’s a brutal portrayal, painting property owners as leeches bleeding society dry.

Yet this overlooks a stark irony: policies like Section 24 of the Finance Act have driven rents skyward.

Far from pocketing windfalls, many landlords are being squeezed into raising rents just to survive. But don’t let that spoil a ‘good’ story.

RRB will fix societal woes

Then we have a recent online conference when barrister Justin Bates KC argued that the Bill is not malicious but a bid to fix societal woes.

Those woes include spiralling evictions straining council budgets and rents outpacing wages, partly funded by taxpayers via benefits.

If you haven’t heard the clip on Property118, I suggest you do. It’s a very one-sided argument that bears little relation to what landlords do and their hard-won experience.

In the face of a government keen to use legislation as a cudgel with the abolition of Section 21 notices, regardless of anti-social behaviour or unpaid rent, we STILL need to explain why evictions are rising.

It’s not down to Section 21 and those who say it is will, I’m guessing, be silent when the law is in place and evictions actually rise.

And even then, I’m sure landlords will get the blame despite a court system that is buckling under the strain as more of us decide to quit and sell up.

Tenant rights in the PRS

I don’t know of any landlord who wants to deny a tenant of their rights – so long as those rights don’t mean handing over control of their property.

All of us acknowledge there are criminal landlords in the sector and despair that so little is done to get rid of them.

Instead, law-abiding, decent landlords are hit with harsh legislation and the criminal landlords will continue. There will always be criminals – and this will get worse as decent landlords want quality tenants who will pay the rent and not trash the property.

Those that can’t meet stricter renting criteria will be forced into poor quality homes that councils tend to ignore.

It undoubtedly plays better to tenants and the media that landlords are villains because we rent out homes, and we are never seen as providers.

Another issue is the belief that landlords are ‘paying off’ mortgages with tenant cash. We aren’t.

Many landlords opt for interest-only loans or will own their properties outright.

How, then, should rental homes be funded?

By taxpayers? With a housing shortage being made worse by millions of migrants and a population boom, overregulation won’t magic up the homes we so desperately need.

It’s a failure of cause and effect, as politicians vow to tackle symptoms (to win votes), and not offer solutions.

Keep tenants in their homes

I’m among those who suspect the Renters’ Rights Bill’s true aim is to shrink demand for social housing by locking tenants into private rentals and make them eviction-proof even amid the mounting chaos.

Arrears? Anti-social behaviour? That’s our headache, not Westminster’s.

Meanwhile, the narrative casts landlords as bloated profiteers, masking government flops in fiscal policy and planning.

It’s our success in owning a few properties, providing shelter that is frowned upon and taxed into oblivion.

This relentless pressure risks a breaking point.

Landlords aren’t an infinite well of cash; we are balancing rising costs, tighter rules and public scorn.

There’s so much turmoil and worry for landlords that sell-offs undoubtedly loom, and with them, fewer rentals, more homeless and councils buckling further.

We house millions in a country that’s failed to build enough.

We are portrayed as parasites in the face of a housing crisis which demands more than landlord-bashing: it needs homes, not headlines.

Until then, landlords must soldier on, maligned and misunderstood, wondering how long we can endure. It won’t be long until the country and its misguided politicians find out.

Until next time,

The Landlord Crusader

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