Westminster Politics 2024-2029

UnrelatedPsuedo said:
Anyone that ever says ‘We need private landlords’ is either protecting their own interests, lacking imagination, or just plain stupid.
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While lots of social housing is desperately needed, there's an important role for private sector landlords. Its not viable for social housing providers to buy an individual derelict house and bring it back into use. Because a) they can only charge social/affordable rents and this mandates cost margins are and b) they're geared to work at scale. They need swathes of land where they can build 10+ houses with the same basic template to make it financially make sense. Buying and making flats one at a time costs more than they make.

But a single private owner can split a house into three flats, or buy a house then build a second house in the garden, or convert a basement into a standalone, or whatever. These are an important source of house building, especially in the major cities where land is hard to find.
 
quadrant said:
It also penalises people who move more often (young people and growing families) and benefits those that don't move (older people).

And if you completely control the market top to bottom, then you create a big value differential between selling and renting, at which point landlords just sell instead because its more financially desirable. Which shrinks the pool of rental properties further and puts them in the hands of people that can afford the deposits, while the remaining renters have fewer to choose from.

All in all, a very regressive policy.
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Yep. It’s just terrible policy all round. I understand why people on the left are instinctively drawn to it - who doesn’t want to stick it to ‘greedy landlords’? But it’s best to make policy based on the evidence of what works to actually improve people’s lives.
 
quadrant said:
While lots of social housing is desperately needed, there's an important role for private sector landlords. Its not viable for social housing providers to buy an individual derelict house and bring it back into use. Because a) they can only charge social/affordable rents and this mandates cost margins are and b) they're geared to work at scale. They need swathes of land where they can build 10+ houses with the same basic template to make it financially make sense. Buying and making flats one at a time costs more than they make.

But a single private owner can split a house into three flats, or buy a house then build a second house in the garden, or convert a basement into a standalone, or whatever. These are an important source of house building, especially in the major cities where land is hard to find.
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Are you not confusing landlords with property developers? Everything you described is the process of restoring a property, which could then be sold for profit rather than then kept to generate passive income at the cost of needed affordable housing for people.
 
nickm said:
Fair shout, it's a challenge. Although I'd like to know what the structural barriers are to the private sector building 50% more properties than they do, and tackling those. It's not as if they won't be able to sell every house they build.
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Aren't the structural barriers that the private sector wants to make a specific margin on new builds? Building social housing offers far lower returns, when they could whip up an apartment complex in the middle of towns aimed at foreign investors who then rent them out at extortionate rates. Considering that homes are built as investment vehicles, I can't see how the private sector alone can ever be a reliable partner for this target.

Ultimately I'd like to see government funded starter homes that are built purely for first time buyers and sold at cost. No leasehold, pure freehold, 5 year minimum before you're allowed to sell.

Also an end to buy-to-let mortgages. If you own a home outright then it's free for you to do as you please, also if you own a home and need to move country for work. But it shouldn't be allowed that you can effectively Glazer your way to homes and then look to make profit on the rent off the backs of others.
 
Spark said:
Aren't the structural barriers that the private sector wants to make a specific margin on new builds? Building social housing offers far lower returns, when they could whip up an apartment complex in the middle of towns aimed at foreign investors who then rent them out at extortionate rates. Considering that homes are built as investment vehicles, I can't see how the private sector alone can ever be a reliable partner for this target.

Ultimately I'd like to see government funded starter homes that are built purely for first time buyers and sold at cost. No leasehold, pure freehold, 5 year minimum before you're allowed to sell.

Also an end to buy-to-let mortgages. If you own a home outright then it's free for you to do as you please, also if you own a home and need to move country for work. But it shouldn't be allowed that you can effectively Glazer your way to homes and then look to make profit on the rent off the backs of others.
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Not sure I like that tbh. Just means the richer you are the more properties you can acquire and rent out for pure profit.
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
You know my point. The scale, structure and pricing is the problem.
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Sure. I get that. But the whole housing market thing is complex as feck. Small legislative changes have have profound effects down the road and they're not necessarily what you want/expect. So I would always tend to disagree with simplistic takes like "we need to get rid of private landlords!" It's also something I'm woefully under-qualified to have a opinion on, to be fair.
 
pacifictheme said:
Not sure I like that tbh. Just means the richer you are the more properties you can acquire and rent out for pure profit.
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Yeah valid point, I just don't see how you could prevent people that own their homes outright from doing as they please with it. I think having that stipulation would mean that if you're minted enough to buy multiple houses outright (very few are) then the returns of being a private landlord actually aren't that high because:

a) there are far fewer people that you can sell your house to, as the buy-to-let mortgage market is no more
b) the rental return to recoup your investment in owning the house outright is probably not sufficient to cover the outlay of purchase - it all of a sudden becomes incredibly illiquid, which mortgages negate.

The current situation is that you can leverage yourself with interest only mortgages, own multiple homes, extort some private renters and then flip the houses quickly.
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
Anyone that ever says ‘We need private landlords’ is either protecting their own interests, lacking imagination, or just plain stupid.

It’s dogma. Full on emperors new clothes stuff.

Saying “But making a new system would be so hard” is toddler behaviour. Yes it would be painful but it would benefit all. The economic reality is that we need very few private landlords and those that are necessary, should never be in the hands of people that have renters buying the house for them.

Honestly, I get it. You all like that you get to do close to nothing while a poorer person buys you a fecking building. But please stop and interrogate that sentence.

Somebody else. Buys something for you.

fecking housecats.
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I'm not sure what happened to you to make you despise anybody with any semblance of wealth so much. Not even wealth, just anybody not on the fecking breadline. Were you beheaded by a Lord in a past life or something?

Making a new system would be painful and it would not benefit all. Anybody who owns a house, especially anybody who has a mortgage, would be fecked. But you seem to think anybody with more than pack of fags to their name is evil so fair game. The market absolutely needs private rentals. All that needs to happen is the government should build more houses, not pass the buck on to the private developers who have zero interest.
 
horsechoker said:
"How do you think anyone could be nominated if you don’t exist ?"

This is the question for philosophers
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His agent (a reform representative) could hand the papers in and they would be accepted. Worse thing is at least 10 people have to subscribe to this nomination so they have been duped as well. If this has happened across the country, I expect there to be legal challenges from candidates who lost.
 
MikeUpNorth said:
Rent controls never work. In fact, they invariably make the problem worse. This is pretty well understood in the economics literature.

Sadly, there is no way to regulate your way out of a supply/demand mismatch. You just need to roll up your sleeves and build more homes.
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This is bollocks. Rent controls are working fine throughout mainland Europe. If you could point us all to this holy grail that is "the economics literature" perhaps we'll find out why they're talking such shite.
 
Raven said:
This is bollocks. Rent controls are working fine throughout mainland Europe. If you could point us all to this holy grail that is "the economics literature" perhaps we'll find out why they're talking such shite.
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Sure! Here’s the big meta study that was published earlier this year, summarising many different studies into rent control across different countries: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1051137724000020

Definitely worth a read if you’re interested in the topic.

EDIT: The paper summarises the number of studies that find a positive or negative impact on different variables:

1-s2.0-S1051137724000020-gr2_lrg.jpg


As you can see, rent controls typically result in lower mobility, less construction, and worse house quality. It also results in higher rents for everyone not in a rent controlled property.
 
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Spark said:
Aren't the structural barriers that the private sector wants to make a specific margin on new builds? Building social housing offers far lower returns, when they could whip up an apartment complex in the middle of towns aimed at foreign investors who then rent them out at extortionate rates. Considering that homes are built as investment vehicles, I can't see how the private sector alone can ever be a reliable partner for this target.

Ultimately I'd like to see government funded starter homes that are built purely for first time buyers and sold at cost. No leasehold, pure freehold, 5 year minimum before you're allowed to sell.

Also an end to buy-to-let mortgages. If you own a home outright then it's free for you to do as you please, also if you own a home and need to move country for work. But it shouldn't be allowed that you can effectively Glazer your way to homes and then look to make profit on the rent off the backs of others.
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On the bolded, no way. There should be nobody profiting from these situations. You want a house, you get a house, you want to move, you sell the house back to the state for the same price adjusted for inflation.
 
Frosty said:
Voter ID rule may have stopped 400,000 taking part in UK election, poll suggests
Exclusive: 3.2% of those surveyed say they were turned away at least once, with minority ethnic people worse-affected

More than 400,000 people could have been prevented from voting in the general election because they lacked the necessary ID, with those from minority ethnic communities more than twice as likely to have experienced this, polling has suggested.

Of those surveyed by More In Common, 3.2% said they had been turned away at least once last Thursday, which if reflected across the UK would equate to more than 850,000 people. Of these, more than half said they either did not return, or came back and were still unable to vote.


Among people turned away at least once, about a third had ID that was not on the relatively narrow list of permitted documents; about a quarter said the name on their ID was different to that on the electoral register; and 12% said they were told the picture on the ID did not match their appearance.

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...0000-taking-part-in-uk-election-poll-suggests

This needs changing urgently.
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Interesting. I posted a link on the election thread that estimated its impact on previous elections at 4% so that sounds consistent.
 
Raven said:
On the bolded, no way. There should be nobody profiting from these situations. You want a house, you get a house, you want to move, you sell the house back to the state for the same price adjusted for inflation.
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I like it! Amendment passed.
 
nickm said:
Interesting. I posted a link on the election thread that estimated its impact on previous elections at 4% so that sounds consistent.
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In all seriousness the Labour Party's success needs to be given more credit as this law targeted their base.

Labour say they don't want to make a change, but hopefully automatic voter registration and expanding the forms of valid photo ID will undo some of the negative effects.
 
Frosty said:
In all seriousness the Labour Party's success needs to be given more credit as this law targeted their base.

Labour say they don't want to make a change, but hopefully automatic voter registration and expanding the forms of valid photo ID will undo some of the negative effects.
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It's daft that my NEC card isn't accepted as a valid ID purely because I'm not 18-24 or a pensioner.
 
MikeUpNorth said:
Sure! Here’s the big meta study that was published earlier this year, summarising many different studies into rent control across different countries: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1051137724000020

Definitely worth a read if you’re interested in the topic.

EDIT: The paper summarises the number of studies that find a positive or negative impact on different variables:

1-s2.0-S1051137724000020-gr2_lrg.jpg


As you can see, rent controls typically result in lower mobility, less construction, and worse house quality. It also results in higher rents for everyone not in a rent controlled property.
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As I thought, it's making the exact same points that are always made about this topic. There is an incredibly easy way around most of these issues and that is to stop making the motivation around home building profit. Another way is not to have any uncontrolled rent. My brother rents in Holland and the system is heavily controlled and works miles better than the free for all in both Britain and Ireland.
 
Raven said:
As I thought, it's making the exact same points that are always made about this topic. There is an incredibly easy way around most of these issues and that is to stop making the motivation around home building profit. Another way is not to have any uncontrolled rent. My brother rents in Holland and the system is heavily controlled and works miles better than the free for all in both Britain and Ireland.
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Rent controls in the Netherlands for (mid-market) privately let housing were actually introduced in the Affordable Rent Act, which went in to force on 1 July 2024. It's probably slightly too soon to know what the effects will be!
 
MikeUpNorth said:
Rent controls in the Netherlands for (mid-market) privately let housing were actually introduced in the Affordable Rent Act, which went in to force on 1 July 2024. It's probably slightly too soon to know what the effects will be!
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They are extending existing rent controls... You know, because they see that rent controls work.
 
Raven said:
As I thought, it's making the exact same points that are always made about this topic. There is an incredibly easy way around most of these issues and that is to stop making the motivation around home building profit.
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That's the maddest idea I've heard in years.

Demand is high, let's not over think this. Build the bloody houses, build everything, it will sell. Then fewer people will need to rent and you can quit guessing whether rent controls work or not.
 
Raven said:
They are extending existing rent controls... You know, because they see that rent controls work.
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Are these not their first rent controls on the private sector? I thought it was just public housing that was “rent controlled” before now?

(Just to be clear, “rent control” for social housing is not what economists mean by rent control as clearly the state doesn’t obey normal incentives around investment and construction.)
 
MikeUpNorth said:
Are these not their first rent controls on the private sector? I thought it was just public housing that was “rent controlled” before now?

(Just to be clear, “rent control” for social housing is not what economists mean by rent control as clearly the state doesn’t obey normal incentives around investment and construction.)
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"At the moment landlords have free choice in deciding the rent of property which is calculated to be worth more than 143 points in the regulatory system. Homes with fewer points are classed as social housing with a maximum price of €879 per month and are only open to people on low incomes."

https://www.dutchnews.nl/2024/06/senators-set-to-back-expanding-rent-controls-to-90-of-homes/
 
Raven said:
"At the moment landlords have free choice in deciding the rent of property which is calculated to be worth more than 143 points in the regulatory system. Homes with fewer points are classed as social housing with a maximum price of €879 per month and are only open to people on low incomes."

https://www.dutchnews.nl/2024/06/senators-set-to-back-expanding-rent-controls-to-90-of-homes/
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Thanks. It will be interesting to see how the policy works out and whether they avoid the problems with rent controls that previous studies have found.
 
Housing isn't just a fundamental economic problem, it's a fundamental political problem.

First, Labour should heed David Cameron's words on this:
Tories refused to build social housing because it would 'create Labour voters', Nick Clegg says
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...e-labour-voters-nick-clegg-says-a7223796.html

It would have been in a Quad meeting, so either Cameron or Osborne. One of them – I honestly can’t remember whom – looked genuinely nonplussed and said, ‘I don’t understand why you keep going on about the need for more social housing – it just creates Labour voters.’
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And it's not just unfounded speculation - the Financial Times graph that @Sweet Square shared shows social housing construction totally ending in Thatcher's right-to-buy 80s. That decision created a new politics, which has led to Blair/Starmer - extremely "centrist" Labour. Whatever you think of the man, it also created "Corbynism" - a left Labour which created the biggest age polarisation seen in the UK, with the owner and the renter generations voting on opposite sides.

On the other hand, if stimulating private construction does largely alleviate the housing crisis (and I think the standard YIMBY arguments are way too simplistic on this), the flip side of Cameron's warning could be true - does homeownership create a right-wing voter, and will that be a problem for a more right-wing Labour party...
 
MikeUpNorth said:
Thanks. It will be interesting to see how the policy works out and whether they avoid the problems with rent controls that previous studies have found.
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Well, they've worked well enough so far that there is a mandate to expand. I guess time will tell but they're far from the only European country with strict rent controls.
 
So 1.5 million homes at say £100,000 per home = 150 billion or 30 billion a year for 5 years?
( given its my math, I'd caveat this as within an order of magnitude correct)

Extend the allowance freeze for a further 3-5 years and we have the money for the state to build them and own them as council houses.


(A higher outlook for inflation since the Budget last March means that the Government’s six-year freeze to Income Tax and National Insurance thresholds is set to raise £40 billion a year by the time it is fully rolled out in 2027-28, making it Britain’s biggest tax rise on incomes in at least 50 years, new analysis from the Resolution Foundation shows today (Friday).

A four-year freeze in personal tax thresholds – the Personal Tax Allowance and Higher Rate Thresholds for Income Tax – was first announced in Budget 2021. At the time, it was forecast to raise £8 billion a year once fully rolled-out in 2025-26. In Autumn Statement 2022, this was supplemented by a two-year extension of the policy through to 2027-28, and the addition of an employer National Insurance threshold freeze (raising £6 billion).)
 
Raven said:
Well, they've worked well enough so far that there is a mandate to expand. I guess time will tell but they're far from the only European country with strict rent controls.
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I’d disagree that the Dutch housing system is working well. From the little I know, it seems like one of the most dysfunctional and overpriced markets in the world.

https://www.theguardian.com/news/article/2024/may/06/netherlands-amsterdam-next-level-housing-crisis

The solution is to build a lot more houses.
 
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MikeUpNorth said:
I’d disagree that the Dutch housing system is working well. From the little I know, it seems like one of the most dysfunctional and overpriced markets in the world.

https://amp.theguardian.com/news/article/2024/may/06/netherlands-amsterdam-next-level-housing-crisis

The solution is to build a lot more houses.
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There is a housing crisis there like just about everywhere in the western world. It is however, not as overpriced or as dysfunctional as Ireland (I'm not up to date with the costs of British rent). Supply does need to be increased though, you're absolutely right on that. The main example they use in that is Amsterdam though which is a lot like London in the sense that it's one of the most sought after places on the planet to live. My brother and his Mrs make good money out there but even they stay away from Amsterdam because it's prohibitively expensive.
 
pacifictheme said:
Are you not confusing landlords with property developers? Everything you described is the process of restoring a property, which could then be sold for profit rather than then kept to generate passive income at the cost of needed affordable housing for people.
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Privately developed properties (almost) never go to the social housing market.
 
Isn't this thread supposed to be about Westminster politics and not about discussing @altodevil's views on multi-property ownership?
 
Raven said:
What that having a roof over your head should be the main motivation in building homes? You'd want to get out more.
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It would be nice if you rely on the philanthropy of housebuilders to solve our housing shortage, but doubt you'll get many new houses that way.
 
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