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You’d be forgiven for thinking that the sole cause of the UK property ‘crisis’ over the last 2 years was landlords. Such has been the ‘serves you right’ attitude of the press towards anyone who admits to having bought property that they never had any intention of living in. Quite how a sector of the home ownership demographic, which only amounts to some 7% of the total, was able to wield such an evil sword, is frankly beyond me.
I’d go so far as to say it is high time the UK Government came out in support of private landlords, without whom the country’s acute housing stock shortage would be far, far worse than it already is. Indeed, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, should cast aside his traditional blame-spreading ‘get thee behind me Satan’ stance and adopt far more of a ‘come on in, have a cup of tea’ attitude to one of the country’s most unfairly harangued financial benefactors.
The trouble is of course that the ‘my home is my castle’ home-ownership race fuelled so fanatically by Lady Thatcher in the 1980s (as a convenient way of reducing her government’s expensive social housing obligations) has left the country with a very warped perspective on the rights and wrongs of landlording.
Just because a few thousand honest investors (and, okay, the obligatory band of ruthless sharks who give them such a bad name) preferred to engineer their own retirement funds by investing their savings in bricks and mortar, rather than relying on their ‘we won’t touch it, honest’ company pension funds, is hardly grounds for such misplaced loathing.
Leave the landlords alone I say. House prices aren’t beyond the reach of first time buyers because of them. If only it were that simple. They are merely savers of a slightly different kind. And every country needs its savers, for it is they who generate the funds that allow the financial institutions (if you need to loathe, loathe them, they know how to take it) to provide the funds to first time buyers in the first place. Theoretically. That those same institutions expect their just-out-of-school, would-be home-owners to stump up a 40% deposit before they can jump on the gravy train, is neither here nor there.
And besides, what’s wrong with renting anyway?
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