Rhik Samadder’s view of landlords (Landlords are social parasites. They don’t deserve any awards, 16 April) does not reflect the true situation and is not the balanced reporting normally associated with the Guardian.
We agree there are certainly many bad landlords, but there are also good ones. Bitter experience taught us that when landlords have bad tenants there is little true protection for the landlord. Not all landlords are raking in money from poor quality housing.
We moved for employment reasons and, unable to sell, became “reluctant landlords”. As caring, responsible landlords, our property was in immaculate condition with appliances, heating, emergency cover insurance and high-cost landlord’s insurance (based on insurance companies’ view that tenants are more likely to cause damage). We paid a substantial letting agent fee for management of the property so the tenant always had a local contact if necessary.
Over five years of tenancy some tenants did not pay their rent and caused thousands of pounds’ worth of damage – examples illustrating that tenants are not always innocent hard-done-by victims of unscrupulous landlords. Meanwhile we lived in rented accommodation from a good landlord who courteously wrote to us after we left and thanked us for caring for her property.
Finally we decided to cut our losses, sold our property at below market value and vowed to never again be landlords. We suffered substantial financial losses and are not surprised there is a shortage of good rented accommodation when decent landlords have no recourse against bad tenants.
Dr Lorraine Hewitt
Newcastle
• What a silly article to publish. Some landlords are indeed social parasites but most are not. It is just not true that most buy-to-let opportunists make their tenants’ lives hell. I am sure that far more tenants are grateful for the security and comfort that their homes provide than live in hell holes, and that some do is the consequence of inadequate regulation.
Rents are ridiculously high but this is much more to do with government policy of not permitting councils to build sufficient homes and letting land speculators control the market, stopping construction when their excessive profits are threatened. The evidence for this is the multimillion-pound bonuses given to directors of housing speculators last year, even though there wasn’t a corresponding increase in supply. It is also the fault of banks which value property too highly. If they, rather than councils, were obliged to find alternative homes for residents who default on their mortgages they wouldn’t lend so much in the first place, homes would be cheaper and rents lower.
Many landlords are self-employed and have resorted to providing homes in order to secure a pension, after the collapse of returns on traditional investments.
Martin Cooper
Bromley, Kent
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