The 'quick buck' mentality
I HAVE just finished going round the streets of my Swansea neighbourhood, counting the number of properties to rent and for sale.
The numbers are 157 and 36 respectively.
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Those to rent will almost all continue to remain empty, since the students who would take them are already fixed up for the coming academic year.
Those for sale are unlikely to sell in the near future because of the mortgage squeeze and because the area is now predominantly seen as student-land.
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Quite simply too many 'get-rich-quick' landlords have bought too many properties which they cannot now let. The market is oversupplied.
Serves the landlords right, we may say. But in the process the whole area has been blighted — with highly negative effects for the non-student residents living there. Their properties have been devalued and there is little chance that this will be remedied by families coming along and buying surplus properties, especially as most of these have been converted to suit student occupation.
In addition, if the university's second campus beyond the docks comes to fruition, this will only mean an even bigger surplus of student lets and further decay for the area.
Whose fault is it? We can hardly blame the students who are just looking for decent accommodation. We can hardly blame those residents who have sold their homes as they saw which way the wind was blowing.
What we can blame is the 'quick buck' mentality that our society of institutionalised selfishness encourages which makes people see houses as commodities to make money from rather than places to live in.
We can also question the actions of successive local councils and Wales Government officers in handing out Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO) licences willy-nilly to quick buck 'developers' without proper consideration of the consequences to communities and the people who live in them. In Brynmill — and other areas of the city — we now see those consequences.
Howard Moss
Brynmill, Swansea
Comments
by mw0cnd
Sunday, September 09 2012, 12:51PM
“The problem with property developers is that they shouldn't exist at all. My own view on this subject is that it should be peoples human right to have a place a house to live in and call home. like being able to breath air. In my honest opinion property developers buying houses to rent out should never have been possible. Making money buying up properties then charging over inflated rents is morally wrong .This all started with the Tories selling off all the council houses for a song! and then not building houses to replace them. This led to a lack of houses to rent and then the over inflated house prices .this is the problem the lack of places for families to live in these days. I still believe its morally wrong that one person can have a portfolio of ten or more of houses when a working family cant afford to rent let alone buy one its what's morally wrong with society these days and what needs putting right..”
by sweetiepiedav
Friday, September 07 2012, 11:45AM
“Swansea Jock may be right that we don't know the circumstances behind all the houses to rent. But what we do know is that the vast majority are to rent so that people can make money out of them and that most of them are owned by 'career' landlords. This is quite different from residents who have sold their houses to landlords. The residents haven't done it for the 'quick buck', as Swansea Jock suggests, but to have the wherewithal to move to a different area where they won't have all the problems (noise, rubbish, parking, etc.) associated with an area where so much of the property is rented, whether by students or others.”
by swanseajock
Thursday, September 06 2012, 7:24PM
“Mr Moss, you make wild sweeping statements regarding the properties but in reality you have no idea why they are for sale or for rent. You also ask who is to blame, but then absolve the residents who sold their houses. Surely that is another example of the "quick buck" mentality you speak about.”