To think that anyone could have watched Panorama tonight and still believe in the Right to Buy?

There are some good student landlords. My GD, while a student, was lucky to share a nice property with six other girls. During the summer, she worked for the landlord doing cleaning, decorating and maintenance of his properties. Her accounts of the state in which some students left the houses were horrendous, especially, I'm sorry to say, when the tenants had been young men. What had their mums been thinking of?

Absent - of course we know there are good landlords but we really can't have a situation where the provision of a decent affordable secure home to rent depends on people being 'good'. Many choose not to be and it's simply not a choice people should be able to make ( to be a good landlord or not I mean). We still have a modern day version of Rachmanism don't we? Just a bit more subtle these days

My dad had a bad landlord and then a good one as a student. The bad one put her life at risk by a faulty gas boiler until I powered up to Newcastle and sorted him out - I reported him and I believe he was eventually prosecuted. Well that's a good way to run a system isn't it , relying on a stroppy mother?

My elder son had a very good student landlord anno. He also had a tenancy that was for the academic year only and the landlord decorated and did maintenance on the property during the summer break. However that was ten years ago and my younger son has had no such luck, nor have any of his friends. It is now the norm for student tenancies, in this area anyway, to run for a full 12 months so that students have to pay for months when they are unlikely be there and there is no break for landlords to do anything to the properties between lets.

Not dad obvs<sighs>

we rented when first married , a pre Georgian house , very picturesque , floor length windows , lovely stairs big entrance hall . Add in bats in the shutters , rats in the basement and crows coming down the chimney , and we found that it a myth that rats and mice don't live in the same space ... we stuck it out for 9 years with no other option , when we left the new tenants stuck it for less than a week and reported it to the council , they got a "council" house and a grant to move and the house was condemned , wish we had done the same . Nowadays I doubt that it would be any good reporting it . When Maggie sold off the council houses it was assumed that the money would go to build more council houses , my Parents were House owners most of their friends rented , private or council , the council houses were definitely much better

Ihave googled the german system.
The only thing I would say is that a landlord has to give up to 9 months notice for someone to leave. That seems excessive.

www.theguardian.com/money/2011/mar/19/brits-buy-germans-rent
This is interesting.

Trouble could come when many are still renting when they are reaching retirement, and in retirement.
Not sure what the Germans do then.

Why is 9 months excessive when you have to possibly turn your lives upside down? My guess is that the 9 months is a reflection of the fact that the whole attitude to a landlords responsibility is completely different in Germany. You take it on knowing that you can't just willy nilly play fast and loose with people's lives. That's why you get socially responsible landlords in Germany whereas here you get people turfed out of their buy to let with practically no notice because the landlord has over reached himself and has defaulted on the mortgage. No one has to be a landlord - what's that lovely phrase - oh yes it's a lifestyle choice!

Why should retirement be a problem in Germany with their excellent pension provision?

Sounds like they have retirement sorted in germany in that case.

Agreed about being a landlord. Many less people would do it. If you decided you want to live in the house yourself, or sell it or whatever, you would think several times about becoming one.

I would hate to be in a house with the sword of Damocles hang over me . How can anyone rear a family with doctors , schools and relations in the area then have to move after 9 months , 3 months is impossible . As some one has pointed out , students have to rent for a calendar year . My Mums friends stayed in the same rented house till they died , rent increases didn't seem to phase them , their children were all brought up and scattered so they didn't want or need a family house .

My friends are 50/50 owners and renters

There were lots of prefabs built in newtowns in the 60s to 80s. They were called timber-frame houses, with good insulation. They had to be designed to particular u-values.
People complained about them because they were not brick houses, although the external skin was usually brick. All brick- or stone-built houses cost more and take longer to build.
Architects can never win.

If we had had enough money and time to build our own house, it would have been timber frame.

my DH has a statistic about the Uk housing stock - at the present rate of replacement a house built today will have to last --- whatever it was, about 600 years (where is he when i need him?)
when i am not at all in favour of right to buy. Tory ideas are disgraceful. Just saying that for some tenants it may not be the great deal it looks.
For people who got the house when they were quite young and have a good career with a predictable income it is indeed like giving them (or their kids) a minor lottery win.

My sister lives in a rented property in Germany, she has been in the same one since 1968. She and her DH are both retired and don't seem to have a problem.
A deduction is made from their pension to pay for possible care home fees in the future, this is non negotiable and no refund is given if care home place is not taken.

My sister lives in a rented property in Germany, she has been in the same one since 1968. She and her DH are both retired and don't seem to have a problem.
A deduction is made from their pension to pay for possible care home fees in the future, this is non negotiable and no refund is given if care home place is not taken.

How did that happen ? sorry post went twice.

I think it is ridiculous to sell social housing at reduced prices, below market value, to the tenants who are living in them. Surely, the whole point of social housing is to provide some where for people to live, at a reasonable rent, because they can't afford to buy.

If and when they decide to sell, they wont be doing so for the reduced price they paid. This was done in the 80's under Margaret Thatcher and the promise to build new properties for social housing was never realised.

If tenants in social housing wish too and can afford to buy they should do what the rest of us do and free their social house for someone who really needs it.

a house built today will have to last --- whatever it was, about 600 years

I suppose we still have some that were built about 600 years ago, lovingly maintained, but I think those built in the 1960s have not withstood the sands of time .....

I live in one built in the 60s. It's okay, still standing and no major problems, touch wood. As now, it depends on the pride the builder takes in them.

Forgot to say, I have just watched last night's Panorama.
The rules on housing benefit need changing so no landlord can take benefit for a greater number of people than his house is registered for. When housing benefit is paid, they must have an address to send it to. They must know how many people are claiming at the same address. Some of those houses should be condemned.
It made me feel ashamed to be British.

Something that would help restore the balance is stricter application of the laws about rented property that already exist. An annual Gas Safety check is mandatory, for example, but people are still living with potentially lethal gas boilers. I think that there should also be laws – and laws that are strictly applied – about electrical safety, smoke alarms and damp. When I was looking for property to buy I was horrified by some of the houses I viewed with electrical cables draped droopily across the ceilings and dripping wet walls.

Exactly Absent . I totally appreciate that there are some excellent landlords providing homes that are kept up to a high standard of repair, well maintained etc. but sadly there are many more who's only aim is to make the most money for the least amount of outlay.

I know of someone who owns quite a few flats and bedsits in this town. He is quite notorious. They are almost all converted houses and quite frankly they are dumps. I often pass him on my way to work whilst he collects rent on his various properties. I pity any of the people who have the misfortune to live in these places and I pity them more if they were ever not able to cough up when he knocks.

I can't see how hard it would be for constant checks to be carried out, and this would be especially easy if the tenant was on housing benefit. Surely it's only right that someone, somewhere should check what the housing benefit was actually paying for.

I thought housing benefit was claimed by the tenant and paid to the tenant, not the landlord, durhamjen.

I do not understand your point, Ana. The tenant lives in the house, not the landlord. The tenant applies for housing benefit for a particular address. It must be easy enough for HBOs to connect the addresses with the tenants.
If you had watched the programme, you would have seen that one landlord was charging over twenty tenants in a house that should just have had thirteen.
HB being paid to the tenant has only just been brought in by this government over the last year, I believe. It's to make universal credit easier to administer.