I Have A Dirty Secret…I Am A Landlord.

landlords are scum

*Shush*

Please don’t say it too loud.

I don’t want anybody to hear you.

But, let me reassure you; I have never committed a crime. I have never killed anybody and I have never slept with my own father.

I know, that’s probably not what you expected.

Most people think I’m scum, shit of the earth, a parasite. I, (according to a lady I spoke to at a party recently) am (single-handedly, I believe) responsible for why she will never buy her own property and why the whole property market is fucked.

If only.

If only, I had so much power and control and importance.

Impotence is a better term, but then, that’s a phrase only other landlords who are in this business would understand.

They’re in on it. My dirty secret. Our dirty secret. Of having a rental property.

I think maybe having herpes or gonorrhea or my face covered in weeping pus would be more socially acceptable than admitting I own more than my own house and I rent it out for *shock-horror* a profit.

Profits are not acceptable.

Profiting from somebody else living in your property is not a done thing. It is not an acceptable thing.

Unless you’re talking to the bank, about a mortgage or a loan. Then your profits are never enough, and maybe they’ll just not include them anyway, because, according to their latest too-small-to-read-small-print, property income is not eligible as income.

Not what the tax man thinks.

He wants all of the income, plus doesn’t believe having a mortgage is a valid operating business expense. Unless of course you own the property through a company, then that is OK. Having a property business is acceptable, being a landlord is not. Even in the eyes of HMRC.

That’s how far and deep this hatred runs.

Of course, landlords are big, rich people, so it doesn’t matter.

They’re not people like you. They’re not people like your neighbours or your family, or your friends or someone you know, who may own another property they rent out to fund their pension or lack of trust in the stock-market. No, they’re different. They have their own reasons you fully accept for them doing that.

They’re not proper landlords.

Landlords proper are cretinous beings who feed off other better people. Better people who should be able to live where they want at the price they want to pay.

Not people like me. I am a landlord. People like me don’t deserve to exist. That’s what I’ve read on social media.

Any other sector and you’d call it bullying. But if you’re a landlord there’s no such thing: You’re fair game. Say what you like. Even the politicians condone it.

The hatred is socially acceptable. Encouraged even.

And that’s why I have to keep it a secret: I am a landlord.