Let’s assume being a landlord is made illegal overnight. Tenants won’t be made to leave their homes, however, until the landlord has been able to sell up.
I mean obviously we're not going to abolish landlords overnight unless we abolish a whole lot of other things along with them in some kind of incredibly successful revolution, but thinking that we'd keep them around long enough to profit from the sale of their real estate assets is just a failure of imagination. Let's assume that all mortgage debt is cancelled and ownership of every dwelling is granted to whoever's been living in it.
cRazi_man@europe.pub 3 weeks ago
A sudden ban would be madness. This would have to be phased in in some system of selling landlord permits which are phased out over time.
Or beat them at their own game by investing in massive amounts of good quality of social housing to flood the market.
One way or another, property prices will go down and people can’t stand the thought of negative equity.
blackn1ght@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
I do like the idea of permits. Landlords must have a permit per property within a local authority (LA) and reject applications if they see fit, such as having too many permits already or blacklisted. The LA should be free to set whatever cost they want per permit. Tennants can raise issues in a centralised portal where the landlord can view them and resolve them, and if they’re not actioned upon or done properly the LA can intervene and start charging additional fines, or failure to deal with serious issues like mould could see the LA taking possession of the property.
The LA set the rental price so landlords don’t just wack up rent prices.
This might provide some income for cash strapped councils without having to purchase their own housing stock and managing it.
There could even be some funds available for well rated landlords that have to use the money to improve properties as an incentive to be proactive in their repairs etc.
HumanPenguin@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
This is basically the green proposal.
Massive social housing build. With 2x taxation (council tax I assume) for empty houses.
Idea being landlord are either forced to rent at reducing prices. Or sell the property at reducing prices. Rather then hold on and force a housing shortage while the gov tries to build housing.