Grasping landlords

[Hofzinser]

Our tenancy agreement is up for renewal, and our landlord has informed us that the rent for the coming year will be £40 per month more than it was last year.

While I've grown used to year on year rent increases over the years, it strikes me that in the current climate rents should be coming down if anything. Plus, that's a greater increase than last year in both percentage and actual money terms.

So am I right in thinking that rents are lower than they were this time last year and I should tell him to shove it, or do rental costs still rise even when house prices are going in the other direction?

[WOM]

Grasping landlords

Are there more vacant units in your building than there were last year? If so, he's trying to cover his losses. If not, he's responding to market demand and gambling you don't feel like moving.

If it's the former, tell him to shove it. If it's the latter, negotiate an increase that's along reasonable accepted lines (3%-ish) and explain that it's in your mutual best interest to have acceptable annual increases, and that he'd lose more having your apartment vacant for a month than he would by increasing your rent for a year.

Given the current climate, more people are likely to be renting than buying, so factor that in.

[gt3]

Grasping landlords

Hof - given that more and more people are wanting to rent rather than buy, I'm afraid it's a landlords market out there. £40.00 a month sounds quite reasonable, but then I don't know what your rent is currently.

[garcia]

Grasping landlords

your landlord is a cunt. you should probably offer him #50 a month less than it was last year, and if he rejects move to a new flat. in case he hadn't noticed, the biggest property bubble in history has just burst. there is no justification whatever for increases in rent and in all likelihood you will see them cascading down in london over the next 12-18 months. at least, that's what's been happening here where we seem to be at a slightly later phase of crash.

under no circumstances accept an increase. it might also be worth your while negotiating a six month lease so you can take advantage of the falling market this year.

[garcia]

Grasping landlords

Given the current climate, more people are likely to be renting than buying, so factor that in.

given the current climate, more people are completely financially fucked. where is the demand coming from to drive up prices in the rental market? also interest rates are close to zero so your landlord's mortgage repayments are actually falling. tell him to fuck off, he is trying to gouge you.

[Ginger Yellow]

Grasping landlords

Prime residential rents in central London have fallen dramatically over the past three months, by 9.6% which is by far the biggest fall ever recorded by our index which was created in 1995,’ explains Liam Bailey, head of residential research at Knight Frank. ‘To put the figures in perspective, the drop of 2.1% recorded in September 2003 was the previous largest biggest decline on record in prime central London.

[caja-dglh]

Grasping landlords

garcia - there is a bit more to the equation than you include. While the landlord is clearly being a chancer, the likelihood of encountering fees for no reason other than moving rental (search to agent, credit check, random fee for breathing) would probably mean that it would offset.

That said, offering a lot less on the basis of having an established trustworthy relationship - good for the landlord - and telling him to stop being a chancer bastard... that might work.

[gt3]

Grasping landlords

See now GY's post comes as a surprise to me. The people I've spoken to all say that rents are all going up. However, it doesn't surprise me that people are moving out of central London which is what GY's source refers to. South of the river, where I am, I reckon it's a different story.

The title of the thread of course remains true.

[garcia]

Grasping landlords

While the landlord is clearly being a chancer, the likelihood of encountering fees for no reason other than moving rental (search to agent, credit check, random fee for breathing) would probably mean that it would offset.

broaden the equation further to include human emotional factors. the satisfaction of denying the thieving landlord the opportunity to cheat you will offset these token monetary costs. or i guess hofzinser could cough up and keep letting don fanucci stick it in him...

anyway i don't understand why any of those costs need apply, especially in a market bust situation. in dublin you can easily find rental accommodation online without having to pay anyone, i assume similar websites exist for london (if not we all missed a rather lucrative trick).

[Lucia Lanigan]

Grasping landlords

Yeah, the "prime" in GY's quote is the key thing, I thihk. I doubt any of us is renting a flash pad in Belgravia.

Garcia: even if one were to rent a room in an existing London houseshare (the only situation I can think of in which you could avoid spurious agency charges) there's the fact that those arrangements tend to be quite last minute - realistically, you're going to have at least a fortnight's overlap where you're still paying rent on both places. That would mean Hof would be no better off moving to another place where the rent's still the same as his current rate, if you costed it out over the next year.

[Ek weet nie]

Grasping landlords

Does London not have a version of www.daft.ie?

If it does just have a look at similar properties in your area (bearing in mind that they aren't necessarily getting the asking price).

Dublin is experiencing rental falls throughout the market but that is due to an excess of properties compared to demand.

[Hofzinser]

Grasping landlords

Thanks for the advice all.

I think we're definitely going to play a bit of hardball, as it were, and basically call his bluff and say we're moving out if we have to. We were probably going to be moving within the next six months or so anyway, so if we have to bring that forward it'll be a bit of a pain but not a major deal.

The flat above us (owned by the same landlord) was empty for a couple of months the last time someone moved out, and that was just last autumn, so hopefully he'll relent tather than having to go through the process of finding another tenant.

[wingco]

Grasping landlords

You'd think it would be a landlord's market right now, but I'm really not sure that it is. In the block where I live, there are numerous empty properties. Maybe these are up for sale, owned by people who can somehow do without a monthly revenue on their apartments, or are up for rent but no one's biting. That said, properties similar to mine are being advertised to let at the moment for £100 a month more than I'm paying. I still suspect that both landlords and sellers are, to an extent, in denial about the true market value of property at the moment.

[erwin]

Grasping landlords

In Portugal, the landlord is only able to raise the rent, if you have a contract, by a factor published by the Government, linked to inflation. I think it was 2% last year, or something like that.

When my ex and I first lived here, we had a contract for three years and the landlord put the rent up every year by the allowed factor. At the end of the third year we did what dglh suggested:

offering a lot less on the basis of having an established trustworthy relationship - good for the landlord - and telling him to stop being a chancer bastard... that might work.

It didn't. We offered the same, in fact, without the increase, and he laughed at us. We left ... and had the satisfaction of hearing from a neighbour that first he had trouble finding anyone, then had a series of tenants that broke the place up, didn't pay the rent, etc.

[garcia]

Grasping landlords

I still suspect that both landlords and sellers are, to an extent, in denial about the true market value of property at the moment.

absolutely. people are always reluctant to admit they are much less wealthy than they thought they were. but over the next while everyone will belatedly realise that london property prices only make sense in the context of massive availability of cheap credit. that is finished for at least a generation, so there is only one direction prices can go.

[WOM]

Grasping landlords

You're lumping the rental and purchase markets together, which is flawed. With the base assumption that everyone has to live somewhere, they're either going to purchase - which causes a rise in prices due to supply/demand - and create stable rental prices; or they're going to continue renting, which causes a tightening of vacancy rates and a rise in rental prices. For most people, there's no reasonable 'third alternative'. So, yes, current economic realities will affect real estate prices; just not all real estate prices.

[Ek weet nie]

Grasping landlords

You're assuming that the number of properties and number of people remain constant there WoM. In Dublin, there was a building boom in the last few years resulting in more properties than needed. I'm not sure if London is the same but I've read pieces that would suggest it is. It's possible to see a fall in both values and rents if there isn't enough demand.

There's tools like propertybee to let you see how long a property is vacant in Dublin and the asking price history. I'm sure there are similar for most cities.

[WOM]

Grasping landlords

Yes, absolutely. And I've heard about the massive number of vacant houses in Dublin (or is it Ireland in general?). But my assumption is that we were speaking of London specifically, which I also assume has a fairly mature real estate market without a huge inventory of built-but-unsold units.

As well, London is one of a large handful of world-cities, that isn't going to be subject to the same small-scale regional fluctuations that other cities might be. It draws people from all over the UK, and from abroad. Toronto is the same. We're a net recipient of migrants, so our demand remains high despite short-term bubbles.

[garcia]

Grasping landlords

pretty optimistic outlook for london there. as far as i can see, the main thing making london different over the last few years was a hugely lucrative financial sector which has just imploded.

[Ek weet nie]

Grasping landlords

It is Ireland in general. The problem in Dublin is that a lot of the people who would be interested in moving to the newer developments are stuck in negative equity further out in commuter land. That and most of the developments are poorly built and pretty cramped size wize (I live in one of them so I'm not looking down my nose). Coupled with a lot of economic migrants leaving the country and unemployment looking set to rise to at least double the current percentage means that the property market for both buying and renting is, to use a technical term, in the shit.

London won't be affected to anywhere near the same degree but a lot of what I've read would indicate that it is suffering the same issues.

[My Name Is Ian]

Grasping landlords

I'm surprised by all this. I was unaware that landlords increase rent by considerable amounts. It's about 12 years since I first moved out of my parents house and I've never had a landlord request an increasing during the term of a contract. I've never stayed anywhere longer than three years, but still.

The only handy hint that I would give would be to avoid letting agents like the plague if possible. Every time Kate & I have moved, we have been treated like dog shit by them. They've not turned up for appointments, tried to push into properties that we didn't want and couldn't afford (and had told them as much) and lied (one tried to make out that I'd failed a credit reference check that they hadn't even done - I can check at work whether they have, and they made up something on my credit reference file to a landlord which simply didn't exist because they had someone else lined up to take the property).

Charging £150 per person for credit searches, admin fees and so on is an utter, utter rip-off for the amount of work, which is, I suspect, no small part of the reason why they are so keen to make you feel as if they want to get you into a property until you've paid them their fees. We saw a little cottage in Brighton that we liked and could afford the rent, but by the time the lettings agents added up all of their charges we needed to fork out almost £3,000 to move in. Once we added up their charges, we told them to shove it.

So, just as we have done every time we have moved in somewhere, we ended up using the small ads (Gumtree, in this case), and found a lovely one bedroom flat with a nice big living room and a garden which cost us a grand total of £1500 to move into, including the first month's rent.

[Max Payne]

Grasping landlords

garcia wrote:

your landlord is a cunt. you should probably offer him #50 a month less than it was last year, and if he rejects move to a new flat. in case he hadn't noticed, the biggest property bubble in history has just burst. there is no justification whatever for increases in rent and in all likelihood you will see them cascading down in london over the next 12-18 months. at least, that's what's been happening here where we seem to be at a slightly later phase of crash.

under no circumstances accept an increase. it might also be worth your while negotiating a six month lease so you can take advantage of the falling market this year.

Sadly this is not how it works Garcia.

[Max Payne]

Grasping landlords

twohundredpercent wrote:

The only handy hint that I would give would be to avoid letting agents like the plague if possible. Every time Kate & I have moved, we have been treated like dog shit by them.

This is Gold. Also if you get hold of the landlords they're often *genuinely* unaware the agents are being such bastards.

[garcia]

Grasping landlords

Sadly this is not how it works Garcia.

happily that is how it works when the economy is falling apart. nobody has yet explained where all this demand is going to come from to keep london rents high even though jobs are disappearing by the thousand and banks are not lending. obviously landlords, estate agents etc will continue to peddle the myth that there is a scramble on for increasingly scarce rented accommodation, but keep in mind the bigger picture and you won't be fooled by that bollocks.

[WOM]

Grasping landlords

Garcia, again, are you talking about purchase prices - which are more directly tied to tight credit - or about rental units? All those people who lost their jobs still need to live somewhere. They're not all going to pack their bags and move back to Podunk to live with their parents. House prices may fall, but that's because fewer people are buying. Those people will likely stay in their rental units, which will keep rental prices up.

Are you basing your opinion on anything, or are you just hoping this will happen because landlords are pricks, etc etc?