I MUST take some serious exception to the article headed “I won’t shed a tear as landlords face freeze” from Ms Garton-Crosbie (Sep 8).

I, like some other private landlords, became one by accident rather than design. My late mother fell and fractured her hip. After hip replacement surgery and rehab she was unable to cope with the stairs to her flat and had to move to ground-floor sheltered housing.

I was about to sell the house when the daughter of a friend found herself homeless. I offered to rent her my mother’s flat at a rent of £80 a week. The flat has two bedrooms. The rent has remained at that level for the past five years as I have a work’s pension, some savings and a small social conscience.

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I pay landlord insurance on the property and income tax. I pay to register as a landlord (£100 recently). I pay for annual gas and electricity safety checks, an energy performance certificate, interlinked smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, Legionella risk assessments and will carry out any necessary repairs as soon as is possible.

Some years ago I bought another small flat and rented it out to a social care worker for £80 a week. This arrangement lasted for around three years until he sadly passed away and I subsequently sold the flat for very little more than I paid for it.

Clearly I do not know Ms Garton-Crosbie’ s financial situation but I suspect that the rent she is paying would easily fund around a £200,000 mortgage with a 10% deposit. Perhaps the deposit is her problem.

I am sure there are some, perhaps too many, bad landlords out there but please Ms Garton-Crosbie – we are not all the same and it is poor, very lazy journalism to assume that we are.

Name and address supplied

I REFER to the comment article by Abbie Garton-Crosbie and feel that some balance needs to be provided regarding landlords and the rental freeze. I am sorry that she has had such a negative experience as a tenant, but to tar all landlords with the same brush is perhaps unfair.

Research has shown that the most frequent way that rental property is acquired is on the death of a family member. This is exactly my experience. My rent has always been less than market value (and has not risen for many years) and I have a policy of updating and maintaining as necessary. I am currently having new guttering and a new bathroom fitted, to go with the new kitchen fitted just over a year ago.

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My tenants always have my mobile number and have had no hesitation in contacting me if there are problems. I have agreed to rent reductions and holidays during the times that my tenants have experienced hardship. I feel sure that I am not alone in trying to provide a decent place to live.

Most tenants are good people but I have had two over the years that caused considerable damage costing more than £11,000 to repair and replace items damaged – equivalent to about three years rental.

I can’t claim that I have not made some money over the years, but I resent Abbie Garton-Crosbie’s assertion that I am “at it” because I am clear that my main prerogative is not to make money.

Name and address supplied

I COULDN’T agree more with Abbi Garton-Crosbie’s article exposing the spurious anguish of many private landlords at the prospect of a rent freeze. Where renting out a house is an investment, if the owner feels that the returns are not adequate they should sell up and move their capital elsewhere like share-owners in any other business do. Stock-holders cannot load extra costs on to the firms they invest in to improve their takings, so why should landlords have this privilege?

Shedding crocodile tears over not getting enough to cover a mortgage on the property is grotesque. The money someone else is paying is helping them to own an asset whose value keeps on increasing, while the tenant has nothing to show for it at the end of their stay. Even if it doesn’t cover the whole mortgage, it still means they pay far less to buy that house than otherwise.

There are many other issues around private renting that are conveniently ignored by rentiers and their Tory supporters. Firstly, why has there never been a right to buy in the private sector, whereas council housing was subject to this imposition – and at knockdown prices?

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Secondly, the private rental sector draws a substantial part of its income from the public purse through Housing Benefit, so there are no grounds for saying the state has no role to play in this market.

Thirdly, a quarter of all Conservative MPs are landlords, with some letting out multiple properties. Boris Johnson, for example, rents out his Grade II-listed cottage in Oxfordshire for £50,000 per year.

Fourthly, from 1920 until the mid-1980s home ownership and socially rented properties rose in parallel while private renting declined markedly (from 80% to 10%). Since Thatcher’s right-to-buy legislation, home-ownership over those 40 years has ended up at the same level as before, while social renting has halved and private renting has doubled. The net effect has been to reverse the rental trajectories, and in the process driven up rents in the private sector.

Abbi finishes with a call to bring renting “back into public ownership and banish private landlords”. Hands up all National readers who agree with that.

David White
Galashiels