An Englishman’s Home is
His Castle as Maggie Thatcher lauded - everyone should own their own home. In
1971, around 50% of people owned their own home and, as the baby-boomers got
better jobs and pay, that proportion of homeowners rose to 69% by 2001.
Homeownership was here to stay as many baby boomers assumed it’s very much a
cultural thing here in Britain to own your own home.
But on the back of TV
programmes like Homes Under the Hammer, these same baby boomers started to jump
on the band wagon of Stoke on Trent buy to let properties as an investment. Stoke
on Trent first time buyers were in competition with Stoke on Trent landlords to
buy these smaller starter homes … pushing house prices up in the 2000’s (as mentioned in Part One) beyond the
reach of first time buyers. Alas, it is not as simple as that. Many factors
come into play, such as economics, the banks and government policy. But are Stoke
on Trent landlords fanning the flames of the Stoke on Trent housing crisis
bonfire?
I believe that the
landlords of the 16,020 Stoke on Trent rental properties are not exploitive and
are in fact, making many positive contributions to Stoke on Trent and the
people of Stoke on Trent. Like I have said before, Stoke on Trent (and the rest
of the UK) isn’t building enough properties to keep up the demand; with high
birth rate, job mobility, growing population and longer life expectancy.
According to the Barker
Review, for the UK to standstill and meet current demand, the country needs to
be building 8.7 new households each and every year for every 1,000 households
already built. Nationally, we are currently running at 5.07 per thousand and in
the early part of this decade were running at 4.1 to 4.3 per thousand.
It doesn’t sound a lot of
difference, so let us look at what this means for Stoke on Trent …
For Stoke on Trent to meet
its obligation on the building of new homes, Stoke on Trent would need to build
1,016 households each year. Yet, we are missing that figure by around 424
households a year.
For the Government to buy
the land and build those additional 424 households, it would need to spend £60,980,611
a year in Stoke on Trent alone. Add up all the additional households required
over the whole of the UK and the Government would need to spend £23.31bn each
year … the Country hasn’t got that sort of money!
With these problems, it is
the property developers who are buying the old run-down houses and office
blocks which are deemed uninhabitable by the local authority, and turning them
into new attractive homes to either be rented privately to Stoke on Trent
families or Stoke on Trent people who need council housing because the local
authority hasn’t got enough properties to go around.
The bottom line is that, as
the population grows, there aren’t enough properties being built for everyone
to have a roof over their head. Rogue landlords need to be put out of business,
whilst tenants should expect a more regulated rental market, with greater
security for tenants, where they can rely on good landlords providing them high
standards from their safe and modernised home. As in Europe, where most people
rent rather than buy, it doesn’t matter who owns the house – all people want is
a clean, decent roof over their head at a reasonable rent.
So only you, the reader,
can decide if buy to let is immoral, but first let me ask this question - if
the private buy to let landlords had not taken up the slack and provided a roof
over these people’s heads over the last decade .. where would these tenants be
living now? ….. because the alternative doesn’t even bear thinking about!
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