Are Landlords or Tenants the Problem?

Are landlords or tenants the big problem? The evil scum? Now I'm probably going to get quite a lot of hate for doing this content, but I'm going to do it anyway. Now I do want to give you a bit of a warning, and, and that is that I am a landlord. I do have 340 tenants now, um, in fact no, I have 1,350 tenants with 340 rental units. Um, so I might be a bit biased, but you can let me know what you think in the comments if you think it's the landlords or the tenants that are causing the problem of really high rents, a lack of affordability, and the ability to get a house. Um, you know, now if you want to rent a house, you're competing with 25 other people. Um, and we do have a housing crisis, a huge housing crisis. We have a cost of living crisis. And people love to bash the landlords and blame them. And I want to give you a bit of a dose of reality, or should I say my reality. And actually, one thing I'm going to say right off the bat is I actually don't think it's landlords or tenants that are in fact the problem. I think there's one other cause of this housing and affordability crisis that's a far bigger problem, and I'll let you know that a little bit towards the end. Now let me know in the comments, do you think it's the landlords or the tenants, you know, that are causing the problem or are causing the great difficulties right now? Because, um, I'm going to talk about whether rents are fair, uh, I'm going to talk about whose fault I really do think this is, um, and like I said, disclaimer, I am slightly biased, I am a landlord. But, you know, I have 1,350 tenants, so I kind of do know what's going on. Right, now, first thing, let me ask you this. Oh, Kevin's got the answer I'm going to be sharing. Do you think that rents are fair? Write fair in the comments if you think rents are fair. Write unfair in the comments if you think rents are unfair. So fair or unfair? Let me know in the comments. Now, I've got a bit of a split opinion on this. In that on the one hand, I think that they're unfair. I think that rents are unfair to both landlords and tenants. I actually think they're unfair for tenants because they're too much, but I think that they're unfair for landlords because I don't think that they're enough. Now, that might sound like a, a contradiction, but, um, they're unfair for tenants because affordability is, do you know your cost of living relatively is the lowest it's been since the Second World War? You know, and your mortgage and your rent are such a high proportion of your overall cost of living now. And so in that regard, it's kind of unfair, but it's fair in the sense that rents are usually at a market rate in a usually free market. Now, in some ways, our market is free in that if you drop your rents a bit, you're going to fill your property and you're not going to have voids. If your rent is too high, there will be competitive rents in your area and you'll have voids and you'll have to drop your rents. And if there is demand for the price that you're charging, you will have a tenant, and if there isn't, you won't, and the tenant will pay it or won't pay it. So in a way, the market creates the fair competitive rent. So I built a 99-apartment block recently. I've got 159 tenants in it, and I thought it might take 9 months to fill, and I was a bit concerned of maybe oversupply, but because we were a good 15% cheaper than some big blocks built on the other side of town, literally a 5-minute walk away. Um, we filled our properties very quickly, probably within— we probably filled 159 tenants in 3 months, 6 months quicker than we thought, because we charged a more fair competitive rent than, than our competitors. But our interest rates are going up In fact, one of my portfolios— and you're going to say, 'Oh, poor Rob,' but I'm just telling you, you know, what's real, proven. Um, and that is I've got one portfolio, it's about got about 44 tenants in it, where I used to make about £1,500 in, um, rental income profit, um, and now I make virtually none. And that is because my interest rates have gone up significantly on that. Now I have put the rents up a bit, but from my landlord's perspective, I haven't been able to put the rents up anywhere near enough to cover this massive hit in my fair profit. So what's happened is the tenants have suffered a bit because I've had to put the rents up, but I've suffered probably more because I'm losing now the £1,500 I was making in profit. Now, you know, had I not had a contingency and a buffer, I might have had to been forced to put the rents up more, or I might now be losing money. So, look, I want a tenant for a long time. I actually want to charge my tenant the fair amount of rent, which means they will stay and I won't get voids or a bad tenant replacing them. But of course, I still need to make money. And I actually think the big problem here is not the landlord or the tenant, it's actually the government. The government removed interest rate relief, which essentially means now we're paying tax on debt. And so we used to be able to offset the interest rate and essentially reduce our tax on that, and now they've changed that, which means we can't— essentially it's cost us money. Massive inflation is costing the tenant a lot of money in increased rents, but it's also costing the landlord money because all the repairs and the maintenance of the conversion costs have gone through through the roof. Now we've had to move all of our properties into a limited company at the cost to me of tens of thousands of pounds, and unfortunately all of that cost has to be passed on to the tenant. I don't want to, but I have to, otherwise I'll have to just give or sell my properties away, go repossessed, or just give them or sell them, and then of course my tenant's going to get hurt in that as well. Now I didn't put my rents up for 5 years, by the way. And now I have had to put up my rents 25 to 30%. I'd have rather put them up 5% a year. That would have been probably better for me and probably better for the tenant. But unfortunately, what we've got is the government not intervening as much as they should when they should, and then over-intervening when I don't believe that they should. So for example, and the governments I think should have put interest rates up much sooner but much more steadily and progressively, which would have meant that there could have been a much more fair and small and incremental rise to the tenant. And it would have meant that my, you know, my rental profit isn't going from £1,500 to virtually zero overnight. Now again, those that are tenants might be like, oh Rob, poor you, your profit's gone down. But I am forced to pass that on to the tenant because the only way that I can make any money You know, being a landlord isn't a charity, and a lot of, a lot of tenants think that being a landlord should be a charity. Someone said on one of my TikTok Lives, oh, you know, having housing is a right. I am a tenant, I have the right to have a house. Well, no, I think you have the right to have air. I don't think it's fair that, um, you should be charged for air, but anything that has an inherent cost— production, management, maintenance— like giving a tenant housing, that has a cost, and that, that is not your right for that to be free. It's not free for me, shouldn't be free for you, in my humble opinion. So let me know what you think in the comments. Um, look, I don't— there's a load of landlord bashing, but, um, the government aren't solving the housing crisis. The government aren't building the 100,000+ houses a year for a decade and more that they need to catch up with the, the, um, housing crisis, the undersupply of houses, the lower quality of living. And so basically landlords and house builders, they're the ones that are solving this problem for the government, but the government are penalizing them and not supporting them. And I think that that's absolutely ridiculous. If the government allowed us to offset the interest payments against the mortgage, um, you know, they supported some of the, the vast rising costs. I mean, you know, the heating and the electric— I had a lot of multi-let properties where bills were included, so I had to take the hit on the cost and the tenant didn't, which of course that's good for the tenant, but it's the landlord that's getting hit. But I believe that the government are biting the hand that feeds them. So to me, it's utterly ridiculous. I don't think that the hate on landlords is fair. Yeah, there's the odd slum landlord, but there's also the odd slum tenant. I've had tenants trash my properties that's cost me 5, 6, or 8 grand, I've had tenants that have gamed the tenancy system and squatted for 12 or 18 or 24 months, and all that lost rent I never get back. But then of course I've got loads of really good tenants as well. So here's what I actually think is the solution, and I think that what we need to do— tenants and landlords need to work together and not bash each other, and we need to force the government into change. You know, maybe there should be a cap on rents. But maybe the landlord should have some kind of subsidy so they're not hit by the cap. So the cap helps the tenants, but also the landlords are able to make their fair profit. You shouldn't deny the landlord making a fair profit because, you know, at the moment many landlords are losing money or selling up their portfolios, and that cost is just getting passed on to the tenant. Now, you know, I agree with Dorian, renting is a waste. I would say to any tenant that's unhappy, Why don't you try and get yourself to the point where you can buy a house? You know, save some money. Rent is dead money. Now, look, you know, I need my tenants to fill my properties, but you know, those people probably maybe can't buy or don't want to buy. But if you are a tenant and you don't like it, I would encourage you to buy a house. I'd maybe encourage you to start investing and become a landlord. Because even though I'm saying all of this, you know, I have benefited greatly from being a a property investor and a landlord. I have 340 tenants now. I have 340 rental units and 1,350 tenants in my management company. Um, and you know, it's been very good to me being, you know, landlord. It's made me many millions of pounds. Now I've got tenants that have been with me 15 years, and I actually don't want to put the rents up on them. Yeah, I want them— because by the way, voids and tenant changeovers and you know, tenants not leaving my property in good repair, you know, that, that can be very expensive to me. Um, so actually, I, I would rather not put the rents up, but I have had to put the rents up 25% in the last 2 years, maybe 30%, but I didn't put them up for, for 5 years. Um, now if interest rates were a little bit better, then of course I could have, um, you know, I could have not had to put the, the rents up to my, um, tenants. So when you're bashing the landlords, actually, what about if the government controlled inflation? Because they could control inflation. What about if the government supported landlords? Because landlords are actually solving the housing crisis, or at least investors and house builders are, not the government. And what about if landlords and tenants work together? And held the government to account more. Claire says rents very rarely go down. I completely agree, they don't. And you know, it's like salaries, they don't go down, they always go up. But something needs to change in the government, and the only way it changes is if we stand together, stand up, speak out. And you know, maybe you'd want to share this video, maybe you can use me as the mouthpiece, if you like, for speaking out about this. Um, because, you know, a lot of people, they're worried to speak out, you know, they're worried for their, um, being canceled or criticized or judged, you know. I, I don't mind doing that. I don't mind being your, your mouthpiece. Um, but, you know, we need landlords, so let's not bash them. Um, and, you know, we want to encourage, um, fair rents. And, you know, I believe, for example, that my rents locally are very fair, and that's why they were full. Um, now let me ask you this. If you're a tenant, would you like to end up buying? You know, would that be a better outcome for you? Um, and, um, would you like to start making income? Would you like to start being an investor? Would you like to build multiple streams of income? Um, would you like to be able to control your financial destiny better so that you're not, um, a victim to these soaring rents or having— because there is the odd, you know, I'll admit there's the odd scum landlord, just like there's the odd slum tenant. But if you'd like to be more in control and build multiple streams of income and not have all this wasted dead rent money, I recommend that you actually start the process of becoming an investor and you learn how to get into property low and no money down and without a deposit. Or how to better utilise your money, or, you know, how to become a landlord, or how to build the knowledge to become a property investor. And if you'd like to learn how to do that, you can join Rob.team, because Rob.team is my digital financial freedom platform. You can join for less than 22p a day. You can cancel any time. There's no ongoing contract. You can learn how to be an investor. You can learn how to build multiple streams of income. I'll teach you what I know, and I've been doing this now for nearly 2 decades. And stop wasting money, increase your income streams, reduce your tax bill. You can learn all of this in Rob.team, and it's really easy to join. All you have to do is type in R-O-B dot T-E-A-M. That's Rob.team. Just type that in right now. By the way, go now and then come back. Um, Rob.team is all available online, hundreds of hours of courses, resources, and masterclasses. I've got some amazing 8-week modularized masterclasses coming in the future that you can get on how to invest and building multiple streams of income, et cetera. By the way, I see people talking here about the government and the system. If you want to protect yourself from the matrix, the government and the system, and be independently wealthy and in control, rob.team can teach you how to do that. So like I said, type in rob.team. I can see people going now. So by the way, if you'd like a special bonus, You can grab this from me if you go and join right now. So get this, I did a, what, 10-module, 12-hour money mastermind university. All the things that the system doesn't teach you about money that it doesn't want you to know, that if you learned, you could become independently wealthy. 12 hours of content, taught live, recorded, and it's all there for you to claim. So you can get this 12, our Money Mastermind University when you go and join rob.team, but you need to do it now. You can join rob.team anytime, but you can't get the Money Mastermind University anytime. And the stuff that your parents didn't teach you at school, you know, how to overcome all of your limiting beliefs around money so that you can make, manage, and multiply more money. Again, I could see loads of comments coming in from the government meddling and interfering in the wrong areas, like lockdowns and reducing all the tax reliefs and ability to make profit for landlords. You know, they're over-intervening, increasing our taxes. But then in other areas like wars, they're under-intervening. And I think that's a real shame, but we can bitch and moan about it, or you can learn how to become independently wealthy. And I think that's the trick. Decentralize your income streams, protect your own wealth, get your tax bill down, get your income up. Get a defensive wealth strategy so that, you know, no one can wipe you out. And again, all of this is in rob.team. So I'll see you there. You can join for 22p a day, cancel anytime, no ongoing contract. Hundreds of hours of courses, resources, and masterclasses to make, manage, and multiply money, become an investor, build multiple streams of recurring income, go from tenant to landlord to investor to entrepreneur to millionaire to deca-millionaire. I'll see you there. So I'll see you in Rob.team. Just type in Rob.team. Let me know in the comments what your position is, what your thoughts are on the landlord versus tenant debate, discussion. And remember this: if you don't risk anything, you risk everything.