Updating post from Reddit.
On almost every UK sub, I see people with such a disdain for landlords. I don't get it, what's wrong with being a landlord?
I don't own any properties, but in the future me and my sister want to buy property together and rent it out. Is this something as evil as people make it out to seem?
I think good landlords are fine but a lot of landlords are opportunistic money makers that typically don’t understand how much work it takes to maintain and manage a rental property. They just think it’s easy money and they are not prepared for the fine margins in being a landlord.
If you become a landlord the main thing you should be doing is putting as much if not all of your profits from your rental income into a separate bank account. This account is for maintenance and other associated landlord costs and then after all is said and done that’s your profit. Most landlords don’t really take into account the cost of being a landlord and so cut costs where they can because they were likely only taking into account the cost of the mortgage and thought any money left over was all profit which just isn’t true.
You are asking why people don’t like other people who take most of their paycheque for something that used to be significantly cheaper in the name of “building generational wealth”, whilst their tenants get poorer.
Then the majority of the rent you pay goes to the bank to pay mortgage.
Exactly - I’m basically buying someone’s home for them lol.
Most landlords have interest only mortgage so not actually paying off the property.
How very noble of them…
He was basically saying, you're wrong. Not that it's noble or otherwise.
I'm not sure that landlords wanting to build generational wealth is why rents are increasing...
A larger issue is some of the corporates. They are buying in certain smaller areas with an aim to control rents. We have refused business from a PE firm that does this when we saw their plans.
Most individual/family landlords are decent people, sort issues quickly and generally provide a good service. It's (from experience on both ends of this) when corporates get involved, either in the ownership or management end, that problems tend to arise, which is why I won't be building our own business beyond a size I can manage myself according to my morals and that it definitely won't be sold to a corporate/asset management-type when we do go to sell.
Fair points. This is what happens when corporations and capital gains are taxed less than income...
Careful now, reasonable talk like that will get you banned from this sub
My parents used to rent until they bought their property. I will rent with my partner until we buy property. I don't have any bad feelings towards the people I'm renting from?
I don't understand the entitlement. They have bills to pay aswell. I can't expect to live in their house for free?
It’s not entitlement. It categorically does not make any sense to me why people should own more than they need - house prices are more expensive because people discovered they were a good investment vehicle. Houses are houses, they should not be a commodity to be brought and sold for a profit. The landlord has bills to pay - true, but they are benefitting from the arrangement that is putting someone else in the poor house.
If you want to go in to the politics of it, across the political spectrum landlords were sort of seen as an outlier - Landlords being draining in nature is the the one thing where Karl Marx, Adam Smith and even Winston bloody Churchill seemed to be united.
If they have bills to pay they should get a real job.
Most of the landlords I know also work full-time jobs.
Then they shouldn't need to be landlords.
But its great you have a job then additinal income what's not to like
I mean you're just taking a huge chunk of money from someone that you didn't work for. What's not to like?
This is a community for Landlords. You can be anti-landlord in other places like /r/HousingUK/
People can choose to invest their money where they want? Just because they're better off than us doesn't mean we have to hate them.
Your “investment” is someone else’s expense.
This is a community for Landlords. You can be anti-landlord in other places like /r/HousingUK/
I mean people use to invest their money in slaves when it was legal. That doesn't make it good or right.
Nobody needs to be a landlord. It's a form of investment the world over. Buying shares is a form of investment, you wouldn't say don't buy shares in Apple for example and start your own iPhone and laptop company instead.
Also not everyone can afford to or wants to buy a property.
Once I retire I'm going to sell my home and rent because I want the flexibility to live in different areas in the UK and across the world for as long or as little time as I want.
Name one thing landlords do that couldn't be done without them.
Because hedge fund management is OK, but providing good homes isn't. Gotcha.
Notwithstanding those private LLs with second 'real' jobs.
Landlords don't provide homes. Builders, property developers, councils, etc. provide homes. Landlords buy the homes and hold them hostage.
Homes are put up for sale, the wealthiest can buy the homes easiest because they can buy in cash, or larger deposit. The people who couldn't buy a house because of this still need somewhere to live, so they rent - they rent from the person who already had enough money to buy a house. Now the person who was wealthy enough is getting wealthier, whilst the renter struggles even more to save, which then just exaggerates the problem and wealth inequality.
Did the landlord build the house?
Indirectly, yes, they call it a housing ladder for a reason.
They used to finance new builds all the time, but new build premium is expensive. That moved into BRRR bringing unmortgageable homes back into use.
What would happen if every freehold landlord sold their properties and took the cash? (Not talking about high rises with 100 flats or housing association programmes of course).
I think these are more the kind of landlords that the people above us talk about/feel like this about. Just a guess.
It would be so catastrophic that the government would step in to stop the sales due to rise in homelessness as the opposition party rises in popularity given the majority of households loose their wealth as prices crash and look for alternatives. Then comes the repossessions as mortgage lending halts as lenders can't value stock, stopping remortgages causing thousands of homeowner's every week having to pay SVR ( 3x current mortgage payments). This escalated to repossessions and god knows if banks could survive this. Remember the economy in last crash
It'll recover after some time but the uncertainty would make it impossible for first time buyers to own a home. Plus their would be less homes as builders would have stopped as supply now outstips demand given no access to finance.
But that's all theoretical, as the proposition is flawed all landlords couldn't sell at once. After a load sell off the values would plumet making many mortgage prisoners unable to sell as their on negative equity.
If your going to get rid of landlords, it would have to be slow to avoid economic catastrophe. The end result would be less home's overall and youth living with parents for longer and increase in homelessness.
Landlords are a vital part of the housing mix, you can argue there too many or too few but they are needed.
Sure, just like touts provide good tickets.
We have real jobs. We chose how to invest our money.
Being a landlord isn't a real job.
Who said it is though
Stooges mostly.
It's a business so no, it's not a traditional PAYE job. More like being self employed.
It's not a business. It's not like being self-employed.
Why not?
Because owning something isn't a business and taking the majority of a worker's paycheck every month isn't employment.
It's not employment and nobody says it is. It's a business that provides a service. If it was that bad the government would ban all rental properties but it's not doing that.
In fact it's encouraging developers to build properties specifically and only for renting. Build to rent. I think they've given up on trying to help people buy a property and instead have accepted that lots of people will always rent.
This is a community for Landlords. You can be anti-landlord in other places like /r/HousingUK/
This is a community for Landlords. You can be anti-landlord in other places like /r/HousingUK/
Landlords aren't 'working' for the income their buy to rent properties bring in, while low income wage slaves who can't afford to buy are forced to fund their early retirements, or more buy to rent properties. Ad infinitum.
Buy to rent adds to the mental property market which continues to keep poor people poor and rich people richer.
It's fairly grotesque.
I can't stand the whole "all I do is provide great homes" argument. It's nauseating and not entirely true.
People don't take on the risk of running rentals out of the goodness of their heart. There's quite obviously another motivation to it.
But let's be honest though, it isn't a walk in the park either.
People don't just chuck a house or flat up on Zoopla and count their Monopoly money at the end of the month.
Property is fraught with its fair share of risks and admin that need to be done. There's a reason why we have lettings agents as a middleman.
The risks and costs of renting out a property are small. If it was as scary and difficult as you try to describe, it wouldn't be everyone's go to method of wealth building.
Its a relatively easy and risk free way to make quite a lot of money, while building an asset.
Describe how it's harder than the wage the person living there earns to pay the rent. It's a 40 hour a week job to rent out a flat to someone is it?
This is a community for Landlords. You can be anti-landlord in other places like /r/HousingUK/
By the sounds of it you have quite a blinkered view on the state of the economy and division of wealth.
Whilst your landlord might not be doing anything directly wrong to you, looking after the property well, dealing with any issues you have etc… that’s not the problem (although it’s a kick in the nuts when that’s also a problem).
The main issue is that the rich keep buying up property and renting it out to poorer people making it harder and harder for individuals to one day own their own property, and ultimately have their mortgage paid off at some point in their lives to be able to retired or generally have more disposable income.
My parents never had as good a career as what I’ve had, yet I don’t think I’ll ever be able to afford a house like theirs. This is the problem, and rich people buying up property and becoming lifestyle landlords makes everything worse.
Have you been a tenant?
I was, for over a decade. Now I'm a landlord.
I completely understand why people hate landlords.
It's invariably developed through repeated experiences of poor maintenance, an overinvestment in tenant's lives (dictating if they're allowed a hamster FFS), rent increases, and the constant threat of eviction and homelessness dangled over the tenant's head if they do something to displease their lord.
If I were prime minister, I'd make it a legal requirement to private rent for at least 5 years before you're allowed to become a landlord.
A lot of it will be ideological, renting helps the rich stay rich and keeps the poor, poor. There's not a lot most of us can do about that in the system we live in.
But a lot of it will also be experience based. E.g. I once lived in a property that had significant damp and mould on the external walls in my bedroom, which was clearly a structural moisture issue. My landlord refused to do anything about it, other than email me a condensation fact sheet. When I pushed him on this, he asked me if I could try breathing less.
If you're going to be a landlord, please don't be a shitty one.
There's absolutely no reason why a landlord can't be a nice landlord. It's a professional job, there are standards for good reasons and you have to be prepared to spend a lot of money maintaining properties to a decent standard. Being a hands-on landlord is far better than using agents. Agents are the real problem in this business.
My motto is, 'Is it sufficiently safe, warm and reasonably priced that I'd be happy with my own children living there?'
It can be a hugely satisfying role and when tenants move on to their next step, often to move in with a partner, you can congratulate them and give them all your best wishes.
Not being a dickhead achieves far more in life.
Professional job hahaha - what profession is that exactly?
Because landlords generate wealth passively from the income of poorer people. The concentration of wealth in property owners then furthers inequality throughout society
Edit: just got banned for this lmao
We don't like landlords because they hike rent prices so high we can barely afford to live or eat, they buy up all affordable housing to rent it back to you for more than its worth, largely don't allow pets, and most have shitty homes that are riddled with mould and will tell you to open a window, try and take your deposit over nothing and generally build generational wealth while not giving a crap about you no eating or getting ill due to the lack of care put into a property.
I could go on but this is the basis of my disliking.
Landlords provide a service to people who don't qualify for state help. I don't think that's a bad thing. We need landlords!
What do we need them for exactly? The more landlords we have, the less able people will be to find homes to live in.
Landlords provide housing in much the same way touts provide tickets.
We provide shelter for tenants. It’s a thankless task.
There are some right scum out there sadly.
Like actual scum.
There's also some really good landlords who know what they are doing, they play fairly and follow the law.
The ones that are the polar opposite are usually dreadfully misinformed.
Like you, I'm not a landlord. I am a tenant though.
I've got family who've landlorded and I'd like to get into the BTL game with my partner at some point in the near future.
I think people have a good habit of seeing things as binaries , that's why we hear a lot of landlord scum of late.
I work for many landlords and whilst I don't hate them I do believe there should be a limit on how many properties a person or business can own. I live in a fairly small town in Essex and when I was looking to buy a property I kept getting outbid over and over and over. Turned out I was up against one of my own customers, who now owns over sixty properties. As a cash buyer he can buy at lower prices and eliminate the competition. That means hardworking young people in this town find it almost impossible to buy a house, but they can rent one of his for £1400 a month whilst the mortgage would only be £700. Given that we live in a country with a finite number of houses, I consider it an act of collective insanity that one person can own more homes than they can live in.
I don't hate them all, just mine.
Because it's a lottery. With some good people and some very bad and a lot of greedy companies.
I had a landlord that was absolutely lovely, and one which I dealt through only via a terrible agent and it was a nightmare of an experience. The rest have been average.
Many People hate people they have to give significant money to, and when they look to get around it they realise how difficult it is to own a home so jealousy sets in on top.
Others are simply communists, they want someone else to subsidise their housing for them.
Some have some real greviences as some landlords are dicks, you get a few of the minority of bad landlords in a row - you start thinking they are all bad.
The main problem is it’s a rigged game that 95% of the people don’t fully understand how money works and they are aiding and abetting into this rigged game. They reason no one can afford buying property is because of “usury” and government printing fiat money that’s not linked to gold or anything tangible.
Landlords just are better at playing the rigged game, so “don’t hate the player, hate the game”.
Lots of sweeping anti landlord sentiment here, and rightfully so. There are a lot of rogue landlords out there providing inhumane conditions for people to live in, so everyone is completely entitled to hate them for their shitty practices.
In response to some of the comments suggesting landlords do nothing - what people miss out is that landlords are often buying up some of the worst housing stock and turning them into livable properties.
These are properties that are often in such poor condition that a regular buyer won't touch them because of the work needed to make it liveable. This isn't something people can manage while working full time jobs, or living there with families.
A segment of these are properties for social housing for vulnerable people, a gap that councils do a rubbish job at filling or simply don't have capacity to fill themselves.
Landlords don't just buy property and rent it out, a fair share of them are developers in some capacity.
Landlords that use this model are project managers. Developing property takes a lot of money, skill and effort. You need a system and extensive network in place to make things work, from managing the purchase process to managing trades and ensuring regulatory compliance. It's a business, and all businesses need effective systems to operate.
Another comment summarised my ethos perfectly. Don't be a dickhead, and if I or my family couldn't live in the properly comfortably, don't rent it out till it is rectified. Make liveable homes that people will enjoy staying in.
To say that all landlords just steal money and do nothing is an inaccurate assessment.
Why should you be allowed to inflate the property market for your own personal gain, at the expense of people trying to get on the housing ladder?
Same reason people hate ticket scalpers.
Nobody is saying you can't buy up all the tickets for a show and sell them on for a fat profit but you're not doing anything but exploiting arbitrage and everyone will hate you.
The difference is that people can choose to not go to a gig if the scalpers set the price too high. Can't choose not to have a place to live.
Too many slumlords that do nothing to provide decent accommodation. Everyone is then tested the same.
The renters reform bill will make it worse for tenants not better. Less property and higher renters with less choice.
Because they’re essentially properly scalpers
Rental/Housing prices are a massive drag on the economy as a whole. I wish people would talk about that more.
I just read a post about a landlord wanting to know how to get his tenants out when the contract expires because he wants to move his family back in. Tenants moved in May 2025 so unless tenants knew of this arrangement before moving in then I think this shows poor morals from LL at best.
I myself experienced my landlord wanting to sell up the property but they kindly let me know they were going to sell it as a buy to let, when the first viewers came round they asked me if I'd found anywhere else to live yet.... Turns out LL had clearly lied to me so I would accommodate viewings for them, but clearly didn't expect me to stick around when they were happening.
There is a housing crisis in the UK (and world).
People can not buy houses because they are very expensive.
Some small amount of people own houses (sometimes multiple, sometimes not).
Its an unfair non-equitable society that is leaving people behind.
Landlords, some very actively, some not by their own fault, are the people holding the assets that make others poor.
Therefore, people hate them.
Look, if you had very little to eat, and your neighbour, even if its not their fault, got 15Kg of food delivered to their house every day, at some point you'd hate the neighbour. Regardless if its their fault or not.
To be clear, many landlords are contributing to the housing crisis. I am not criticising those personal decisions, but when rent goes up by 20% many landlords see ££ in their eyes and put the price up. Putting the price up is indeed the cause of prices going up, like quite literally.
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I have a PhD and work in a top university. I can't afford to buy in where I work. Is it my landlords fault? absolutely no. But half of my salary goes to someone who just had the virtue of being born earlier than me, and they will absolutely never sell this house below market price, even if market price is x5 what they bought it for (less adjusting for inflation, but still a multiplier higher). I certainly don't hate my landlord, but I am very non sympathetic to them either, reasonably so, I'd say.
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So we all just get to live in whatever house we want?
What a beautiful dystopian image you paint.
Reality is different. Builders build. Plumbers plumb. Electricians wire, mortgage companies give loans to those buying. Landlords pay to rent out property to those renting
Nothing evil, nothing nasty. Just the real world.
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Buying the house with hard earned money and developing the house to something liveable is “fuck all”.
Ok
What people miss out is that landlords are often buying up some of the worst housing stock and turning them into livable properties. A segment of these are properties for social housing for vulnerable people, a gap that councils do a rubbish job at filling or simply don't have capacity to fill themselves.
Landlords don't just buy property and rent it out, a fair share of them are developers in some capacity.
Landlords that use this model are project managers. Developing property takes a lot of money, skill and effort. You need a system and extensive network in place to make things work, from managing the purchase process to managing trades and ensuring regulatory compliance. It's a business, and all businesses need effective systems to operate.
There are a lot of rogue landlords out there, so everyone is completely entitled to hate them for their shitty practices.
To say that all landlords just steal money and do nothing is an inaccurate assessment.
So should everyone just have free housing?
Yes, they should. In one of the richest countries in the developed world, it should be enshrined in law that every single person has the right to free, permanent shelter.
So should all the houses be the same, to make sure it is fair? What if some people have nicer houses than others? Should someone who has studied hard or someone who works 7 days a week live in the same size house as someone who works 2 days a week?
How would you choose who gets what house? If everyone is on the same level, and no matter how hard you work, you will stay on the same level as someone who does less work than you, why would anyone even bother trying?
In your world should people make money selling food?
You think it should be free?