Is all the bad press we landlords get justified? Are we really devils
incarnate, chasing filthy lucre and ignoring the rubbish scattered around
our precious investments? Do we have zero concern for communal gardens, and
a lack of regard for the community and first-time buyers? Are we always
looking for a way to benefit from other people’s misery via a repossession
or four?
Ostensibly, backing up this stereotype is a perfect example close to home. A
four-storey house next door to mine has been converted into three flats, all
of which are owned by the occupiers. The neighbouring house on the other
side has been similarly converted; two of its three flats are rented out.
The occupants of one of these two buildings are clearly more concerned about
keeping up appearances. Guess which is which?
On the mainly rental side, the garden is a riot of long grass and weeds, even
a fallen log. On the owner-occupiers’ side, the garden is an immaculate
sward of bright green, and months have been spent redecorating the outside.
My neighbours the renters, however, sometimes find it hard to marry bin
liners with a dustbin.
So, is it a clear-cut case of selfish, lazy renters? In a word, no: the
owner-occupiers’ perfect garden was, for a long time, a mud bath. It has
been spruced up only because one of those owner-occupiers wants to sell.
One-bedroom flats in Islington are going for a bomb, and they want to cash
in, which is perfectly understandable. But why are one-bed flats so
valuable? Because buy-to-let investors like me want to buy them. The
benefits of the buy-to-let boom haven’t been felt only by greedy landlords.
Closer examination of the largely rental property, meanwhile, reveals that,
even though the garden is messy, the landlord who owns two of its three
flats has repainted his windowsills and repointed the brickwork. The
owner-occupier in the top flat, however, has not followed suit.
In my experience, landlords are paranoid about their buildings falling into
disrepair. Who wants to rent a filthy building? Tenants, faced with a huge
private market and competitive rents, are quite picky, as well they should
be. I can’t think of anybody who would rush to sign up for a house with
damp, abandoned mattresses littering the pavement outside (as recently shown
in the press, illustrating another evil landlord story – yawn). The managing
agents of the east London block in which I own a flat are for ever moving
boxes, old bicycles and litter away, as they know such detritus gives
landladies like me the vapours.
And what of allegations that landlords and tenants alike lack community zeal?
Rather more tricky to defend, I grant you. Buy-to-let landlords, by
definition, do not live where they invest; and their tenants might not be
highly motivated to campaign for the local school or join Neighbourhood
Watch. But I only say “might not”. Who knows what the individual community
spirit of a tenant might be?
There is not a scrap of reliable evidence to show that, just because you are
paying rent each month rather than a mortgage payment, your community ethos
goes out the window. Paris is a city almost wholly inhabited by residential
tenants, but they seem to have quite a lot of communal zeal. Indeed, rather
more so than London, if the uptake of independent shops and local state-run
schools is anything to go by.
I would say that any sense of community spirit in Britain has been
fundamentally undermined by a growing disaffection from local amenities
across the board, and not just because of the right to buy for council
tenants. Why campaign for local schools when you send your children private,
or for your local swimming pool when you are a member of a private health
club?
Or, indeed, why bother supporting the library when huge chains of booksellers
are open for business virtually 24 hours a day?
I suppose the wider issue of whether investing in property is fundamentally
immoral hinges on whether or not you believe property to be theft: if you
do, you should probably go and live on a camp site, or in a squat.
“Do we trade on other people’s misery?” asks Marcus Locke, who owns more than
40 properties in London, many former council flats or repossessions. “If I
buy a repossession, the damage has already been done and the creditors have
seized the asset. What I am doing is taking a property that is in disrepair,
spending money on it and representing it to the market.
“If you have one appalling flat in a block that has had difficult tenants in
the past, it affects the whole block. So, if you can buy it, refurbish it
and put responsible people in it, surely that enhances the environment. All
we are doing is putting an asset back into the economy.”
And making a profit out of it. Locke cheerfully admits that he is a
millionaire, which is, of course, what sticks in some people’s craw, even
though we live in a capitalist society. No matter that giant corporations
make zillions on an hourly basis, and that their employees earn spectacular
bonuses – the buy-to-let landlord is “immoral” for doing the same, according
to some. And, even though most of my tenants earn quite a lot more than I
do, that doesn’t matter, either. I am a landlady, and so my grass, my
community spirit and my morals are unkempt. QED.
buytolet@sunday-times.co.uk
