rent caps

[JohnD]

because Conservative government policy discourage the build of social housing.

Let's suppose you had a car in good working order, worth £12,000

The government gives your neighbour the right to take it off you, for £6,000

Of which the government takes £2000

Would you buy another £12,000 car? In the knowledge that your neighbour can take it off you for less? Have you got £12,000, bearing in mind that you actually only received £4,000 for your last one? Where are you going to get the other £8,000? Borrow it, and maybe be left with the debt and no car again?

 

[EFLImpudence]

That made me think that the same policy could be applied to car rental companies.

What would the outcome be?
Obviously - no car rental companies (all gone bust) and no cars for rent.

 

[JohnD]

A government would only bring in such a policy if it wanted to damage car rental companies, and enrich neighbours who were able to buy the cars cheap. Perhaps the government could rely on such neighbours voting for them.

 

[Ian H]

Didn't you know?

No.

Do you mean them selling off council houses? That them selling their own houses rather than making private landlords sell theirs.

 

[JohnD]

the government didn't own Council Houses.

But they forced them to sell below value.

Are you willing to pay Rochdale higher Council Tax so they can build homes, and sell them at a loss?

Who knows, maybe a future government will force private landlords to sell below value.

Would that be equally wrong? Or equally right?

 

[Notch7]

"Number of new social homes down 90% since Tories came to power
Just 1,400 new social homes were built last year - down from almost 40,000 in 2010"

https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/social-housing

The graph in this link shows a different view:
https://fullfact.org/economy/council-houses-labour/

 

[IWalkLikeHimaMartian]

The graph in this link shows a different view:
https://fullfact.org/economy/council-houses-labour/

It is still only part of the story.
The shortfall in the building of social housing was not identified as a problem until the early noughties:

There is a long standing consensus that we are not building enough homes in England. There have been a plethora reports over the last decade starting with the Barker Review in 2004.

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/36783/
Since the identification of the problem the labour government's response is obvious by the trend.
The coalition's response was a bit hit and miss.
It is too early yet to see the trend of the current shambolic government's response.

Additionally, it is recognised that although the completion of homes is the "monitored" data, the start of building, changes in regulations, acquirement of land, etc could be the result of a previous administration.

 

[ladylola]

We have my parents old house which we rent out. They brought it well below market value in the council house sell off of the '80's . The rent we charge is fairly cheap compared to most advertised in our area and is on a par with housing association rents. We occasionally attend a private landlords forum run by our local council , essentially a big get together of landlords , potential landlords , guest speakers and so on. I have to say a majority of the private landlords there do come across as purely self centred and frankly greedy , they may talk about providing homes or a much needed service but in the end anything that may hurt their income is not looked on with anything other than distain . Reductions in housing benefits for example resulted in calls to simply not rent to young people or those on benefits. In principal I think setting of rent levels would be a sensible thing , I look at some rents and I really wonder how people afffford the levels .
On the other hand I do a lot of work for a couple of private landlords/property developers and they pay pretty well presumably on the back of those high rents they charge so while I may not be over exploiting my own tenants I am part of the system that could be seen as exploiting others.
I'm thinking that the property will probably be sold before I retire.
Something I would like to see implemented is the compulsory purchase of empty properties . Probably every neighbourhood in the country has a few places that haven't been used for years and rather than going to waste they should be purchased at below market value and put out to rent.