I don’t disagree that he should be formulating a stronger line on the issue of safety for workers, but I’ve not heard the full interview so I don’t want to read too much into one small excerpt.
Keir Starmer Labour Leader
- Thread starter Damien
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I don’t disagree that he should be formulating a stronger line on the issue of safety for workers, but I’ve not heard the full interview so I don’t want to read too much into one small excerpt.
respectfully disagree.
To say property investment plays by different rules is a one sided perspective.
What about businesses who buy properties that are uninhabitable, pay for the refurbishment and then house tenants on UC. All along the way laying VAT, Stamp Duty, Corporation Tax and Capital Gains on disposal.
the private rental sector is a valuable element of the housing market.
food, water, electric, even internet are basic requirements of life and they are all commodities.
It certainly feels as if most people except for landlords are being asked to take a fairly big hit in their income and then pay full rent (eventually) so the poor landlords don't lose anything. If the country is earning less then rents should go down or inequality will just increase.
Many renters on low incomes will be eligible for housing benefit, which pays their rent, so they dont lose out. The reason that being able to pay in arrears isn't such a bad policy is that it allows for the fact that many people will eventually get backdated UC after the tortuous waiting period. If the current HB arrangements aren't generous enough then simply making them more generous seems a lot better choice than trying to decide which out of landlords or tenants should be out of pocket.
Not a surprise when you see how many MPs personally derive income from renting out property, especially Tories.
Boris Johnson’s nightmare would be walking into a room with all his kids in it. I don’t think he particularly cares about how competent his opposite number is in the HoC.
Yup, going by what Starmer said yesterday this seems to be the policy.
Housing benefit is an absolute pain. It’s been swallowed up by Universal credit and even if you’re dirt poor you can still be ineligible. I earn minimum wage and I’m not eligible.
Disagree.
the reality is that if a tenant doesn’t pay their rent for the next 4 months, the landlord will never see that money come back.
11m people on furlough on at least 80% pay is a better deal most landlords are getting. No one is asking for sympathy, but at least get a better grip on the facts.
Landlords can always sell if they're short on cash. Tenants typically have little or no safety net.
Yeah I work in a homeless charity, I know all about what a nightmare it is can be for people. But as I say, making it more generous is easily the quickest and simplest way to sort this problem out. Increase the income threshold, increase the capital limit, drop the benefit cap & increase the LHA and the system would be pretty much there.
That kind of correction can only happen in an open market. So a lot of tenants will unfortunately lose their properties before that can occur.
can they... I mean firstly they have tennents which can make it difficult to sell and especially if the tenant isnt paying ... so presuming the tennents have not paid them (hence the landlord is short on cash) firstly they have to be evicted which is going to take several months
At that point they can start to market the house and in a good market perhaps a couple of months with say another three months for the paperwork to go through... but its probably going to be a pretty shocking market if all of the tennants are being made homeless at the same time
So either they are in negative equity so they cant sell as they are short on cash and cant make up the shortfall... or they have to sell in a difficult market which could take many many months
So perhaps a year to get any cash out - all the time the mortgage company wants paying of course
so yeah houses are not a liquid asset - they cant simply cash out
I agree that the private sector has a role to play but I think you're doing whatever the opposite of throwing the baby out with the bath water is (leaving it in the shitty water?). It's undoubtedly a good thing when, say, an old warehouse is converted into housing, and in the absence of the public sector having the will or ability to do it, private investment has been key, and doubtless will be key going forward. If that was the limit of what the private sector did in the housing sphere I wouldn't have too many complaints, I think that such developments should include high requirements for affordable housing, but ultimately I understand that the goal of private investment is to make money and something is better than nothing.
The problem is that such projects aren't representative of the sector as a whole, and certainly aren't representative of the impact of the private rental sector on the average person's life. The sort of private landlordism most people come into contact with is bad for (almost) everyone but the landlord, it pushes up house prices, both by taking properties off the market and because landlords will pay more than homeowners for the same property. The reason I say it doesn't play by the rules is because normally, the price of commodities responds to a variety of different factors (including affordability to a wide range of customers). Landlordism doesn't because rather than having to respond to what is affordable to people in general, it only has to respond to what is affordable for the richest person (or small group of people) willing to live there. Rents are arbitrarily set at a 'market rate' which has no relation to how much it costs to administer the 'service', which shouldn't be par for the course for literally the most basic requirement for human life (and which also has an estimated cost of £9b a year to the taxpayer in housing benefit going straight to landlords). Landlordism is one of the primary drivers behind the community breakdown we see in many parts of the country as people are forced out due to high rents, or because they need to leave their parents' house and can't afford to buy locally. Obviously London is the big example, but my hometown (Durham) is seeing the same thing - private landlordism with student-only policies has made it impossible for the average local to buy or rent a house in the city. As a consequence, the city is dead for 5 months of the year which has killed off a lot of small businesses, the lack of locals living in the city means that most of the businesses and facilities now exist primarily to service students, which in a poor area means a lot of locals are priced out of their own city. The areas where prices have become inflated due to landlordism are also the places in the catchment areas of the best schools, so educational inequality is exacerbated - the school I went to 10 years ago is unrecognisable now. Sorry to harp on a bit, but I'm trying to demonstrate the breadth of the impact of allowing private landlords a stranglehold over your housing supply has had one one small town.
Obviously on top of that, you have all the bullshit that most people who have rented will have experienced with landlords - bad service, poor conditions, breach of contract, illegal charges - which many renters can't challenge because they don't have the money to go elsewhere, but all of the things in the previous paragraph are consequences of landlordism irrespective of whether they are 'good' landlords or not.
Again, I'm only partially railing against landlords themselves here, the point is that it's a bad system with a lot of negative impacts on both individuals and society as a whole, and allowing it to be such a big part of our housing sector is daft.
In terms of your last paragraph, I'd also be critical of how other basic essentials are supplied in this country, but there aren't many people literally being forced to uproot their entire lives because their electricity bill would be cheaper somewhere else, whereas that happens with housing all the time.
I don’t disagree, but don’t understand your point.
the original statement was that landlords are not losing out, and that’s really not true.
if you have a non paying tenant, the landlord had basically zero chance of getting the money back.
again, I’m in no way asking for sympathy, just that this is the reality, and not that landlords are ok any way immune to the effects of this virus and many will lose a lot of money.
All good points and well made.
Personally, every property we have we have improved, sometimes substantially. Many were uninhabitable when we purchased them. We only provide let’s on an AST and don’t deal with students - nothing against them per se, but we like longer term tenants.
rents are effectively set in terms of the ‘market value’, and can be cheaper than a mortgage of the value of the house, but clearly varies depending on where you live.
it’s usually the accidental landlord who has one property who are the biggest problems.
I would add that there is a hell of a lot more regulation now, which is very much on the side of the tenant. Mandatory electrical tests are coming in this year (July). Add in the tenancy deposit scheme and the proposed abolition of Section 21, and there should be no reason why tenants suffer a bad landlord.
clearly there will be those who provide poor quality housing and offer an appalling service, but I suggest these are becoming fewer as the government has tried to professionalise the sector over the past few years.
I’ve seen lots of appalling places, and have myself reported illegal HMOs to the council. I won’t convince you of the validity of this as something that you consider as beneficial to society, but can only ask you to consider that there are some good landlords out there that care about their tenants and where they live.
the other problem is not landlords taking stock away from the market, it’s the fact there is anywhere between 250-650k of empty houses England - if a good proportion of those got brought back into use it would alleviate many of the issues.
Sun, I've got a lengthly response to this but I've apparently dropped the worlds smallest violin while I was reading you're post and until I find it I won't be able to reply back.
Shit, it's got to be around here somewhere!
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What this time will show is how much better it is having a reduced audience at PMQs. Actually allows normal debate that can be heard
If a landlord finds themselves in negative equity then that is unfortunate, but not as bad as facing eviction and possible homelesness. Most are probably able to get a loan to see them through while they sell. Frankly, it's time people stopped seeing homes as investment vehicles.
I rented out my old house for years, so I understand the pressures a small landlord can be under. Protecting them, at a time like this, should be a long way down the list when so many others are seriously struggling.
It's only a matter of time before the BBC try to sneak in canned laughter and jeers to the benefit of their beloved Boris.
From what you've said, it sounds like you're basically doing what I wish the public sector would do in terms of bring uninhabitable properties back into the market. Ultimately I think the public sector converting, buying and building a shit-tonne of social housing so there's an accessible and affordable alternative to private renting would be my priority if I was in charge. I think you'd pretty soon see those 'market rents' fall, the worst landlords sell-up and house prices would come back down as a result.
I think as much as the law may be on the side of the tenant, it doesn't really matter if the tenant doesn't have the resources (whether that's knowledge, time, energy or money) to fight their corner. To take deposit disputes as an example, I know plenty of people who gave up fighting unfair deductions because the landlord/letting agent were dragging it out and the tenant desperately needed at least some of the money back, usually to put down their next deposit. Every landlord I've ever had has tried it on with the deposit, in my experience it appears to be a tried-and-tested tactic to squeeze a little more out of younger tenants. I've also seen cases where landlords have pretty blatantly weaponised deposit deductions as 'punishment' for any other disputes during a tenancy (e.g - tenants refusing a landlord entry when they turn up unannounced, tenants not allowing the landlord to carry out disruptive building work etc). At the end of the day, the outcome of a lot of disputes is basically decided by the fact that the landlord usually has more staying power then the tenant, rather than who is in the right. There's an inherent power imbalance that, barring making legal advice and emergency funds freely available to each and every tenant or a really robust government-funded inspection/enforcement process, I can't see being overcome.
On your last point, I agree that having empty houses back in circulation would be great, but how much it would solve depends on where they are. There are near full streets of empty houses in some parts of County Durham, but doing them up and putting them back into circulation wouldn't make a jot of difference to the cost of housing in Durham City Centre, never mind London. The issue isn't that landlords are taking houses out of a nationwide pool of available housing that is evenly distributed across the country, it's that they (understandably) specifically aim to acquire property in areas where demand outstrips supply and rents are correspondingly high and exacerbate the problem by further reducing supply and pushing up house prices for others.
Ultimately I don't doubt that there are landlords out there who honestly mean the best for their tenants, and there are a minority of tenants whose circumstances dictate they would rather rent than buy. I wouldn't even rule out doing it myself in specific circumstances; if me or my fiancé had a job offer good enough to justify us both relocating for a year or two, we'd probably let our house in Durham out to cover the rent wherever we move. I just think that, on-balance, if you had a table of causes of and solutions to of the housing crisis, the private rental sector would go down as more of a cause than a solution.
Anyway, probably not a discussion for this thread!
thanks for taking the time to give a well reasoned reply.
I paid almost £2k a month in rent. Renewal was due end of April. I fought for a huge reduction that got accepted. Almost 20%.
Rents are going down.
Think he's smart just pointing out the facts and letting Borris do the rest in putting himself down:
good move... certainly more effective than i have a email question from doris in dover
Well he's certainly approaching this like a lawyer so far.
I can't tell if the famously light on detail Johnson will find it difficult to wiggle his way out of this kind of precision attack or if Starmer will just end up (sadly) boring the British public.
Hopefully the former.
The latter.
I sadly suspect so too. I think behind some bluster about order etc, a lot of Brits secretly love the hullaballoo that goes on in PMQs and MPs getting in zingers against their counterparts.
Starmer will spend 2 minutes cross examining Johnson's terrible decisions and Johnson will make some rah comment and that's probably what people will focus on.
Still, its early days, I'm sure he'll grow into it more as time goes on.
I've just found out he's an Arsenal fan though so sadly that's my vote for labour at the next election gone.
People won't care about that one bit but hopefully such tactics over time will become death by a thousand cuts and make his incompetence clear. It becomes harder to lie if you do it every week and get called out on it.
Boris is a strong character and for some reason loveable to many. They'll like him regardless of any outrage (as per Trump) so you need to get the people who like him to question not his character but his competence. Starmer presents a very competent looking alternative.
Boris is a strong character and for some reason loveable to many. They'll like him regardless of any outrage (as per Trump) so you need to get the people who like him to question not his character but his competence. Starmer presents a very competent looking alternative.
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He's certainly playing to his strengths and looking impressive for it
Edit: starmer that is
Edit: starmer that is
Starmer's approach certainly seems to pin Bojo with details - he knows the latter is all about bluff and showmanship, so its an interesting contrast of styles.
Whilst it seems obvious that Starmer is getting the better of Johnson in these exchanges, I do wonder whether that can actually translate into any discernible change in public opinion. I am a cynic, but from looking over at the U.S it seems like facts dont really matter anymore. I hope I am wrong, of course.
Also, it should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain that PMQs would be a better affair without the jeering and constant background noise. If I were the speaker I would now be making a point of enforcing an appropriate atmosphere for future sessions. It is not in the public interest to hear a bunch of well-paid MPs behaving like school children and bickering with they constant annoying snide remarks.
Whilst it seems obvious that Starmer is getting the better of Johnson in these exchanges, I do wonder whether that can actually translate into any discernible change in public opinion. I am a cynic, but from looking over at the U.S it seems like facts dont really matter anymore. I hope I am wrong, of course.
Also, it should have been obvious to anyone with half a brain that PMQs would be a better affair without the jeering and constant background noise. If I were the speaker I would now be making a point of enforcing an appropriate atmosphere for future sessions. It is not in the public interest to hear a bunch of well-paid MPs behaving like school children and bickering with they constant annoying snide remarks.
Starmer's legal background is going to make him extremely dangerous, but he needs to work on his delivery now he's in such a prominent public facing role. He needs idiots on the street to listen to him and believe in him.
Agree with you on both points.
I am getting to enjoy his highly astute questioning.
Lots of people seem to think that Boris had charisma. Not me. He is so full of himself and full of bullshit.
Starmer lacks obvious charisma, so he is going to have to keep on exposing Boris faults.
His time will come when he gets the chance to really tie Boris down.
In the meantime, he is doing exactly what he has to. And doing it faultlessly so far.
Got a good feeling about him over the next few years. I think the public will eventually turn on Boris as they realise his copious amount of bluster is nothing but hot air, and then old Keir will be there to pick up the pieces, standing upright with all sorts of confident.
Oh yes, it will be a delicious fall from grace for Boris indeed.
Oh yes, it will be a delicious fall from grace for Boris indeed.
Yeah, I'm hoping Covid makes people start demanding sensible, smart leaders again instead of this celebrity reality TV show bullshit politics has become in recent years.
At some point I was feeling sorry for Boris. 
Not a single thing he said answers the question.
The people complaining about a lack of bluster from Starmer have it wrong imo. There is no point trying to compete with Boris in that. Boris has been doing it since his school days.
For many of us who have lost loved ones, hearing Boris' nonsense being exposed will have an impact regardless of politics affliation. The empty chamber also helps Starmer.
In the end, it won't move the needle much but you only have to look at the papers to see it is working for Starmer.
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Not quite as good this week, but still, the pattern has been set now and it looks like PMQs is going to be an uphill struggle for Johnson. The key will be if Starmer can successfully judge the public mood. The public increasingly want answers about this coronavirus outbreak and if he continues to make Johnson look like he hasn't got any then I can see Starmer benefitting greatly.