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Landlords Are Embarrassed to Admit They Are Blood-Sucking Sub-Humans, Apparently

Landlords, the worst people on earth, have a secret: they are ashamed to admit they are scum.

'Well of course it's mouldy, you all take showers!' (Photo: Bart Everson, via)

One in five landlords, sentient hellbeasts sent from the gods to wear mum jeans and punish us for our crimes on earth by taking three to six months to replace a defective boiler and then immediately hiking the rent up afterwards, are apparently too embarrassed to admit they are landlords to other, non-lizard persons. I weep for them.

One in five landlords are too embarrassed to admit it, according to a recent poll of almost 800 residential property investors.
National Landlord Association, quarterly landlord panel, 2016

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I mean I too would be embarrassed to admit I skim the cream off one of the most basic human needs, that of shelter, to make my pockets fat and rowdy, and then spend that money on either the ugliest fireproof doors in christendom or Ferraris, I too would be too embarrassed to admit that, in front of people.

The findings show that on average 21 per cent of landlords have been too embarrassed to admit it before. Across the UK, more landlords in the East of England and the East Midlands said they were embarrassed to admit it compared to any other region (29 per cent and 28 per cent respectively).

I know it's a non-sequitur but: if you give me a free punch at basically any landlord on earth, I'm just not ever going to stop punching. I'm going to punch and punch and punch until my arms shatter. Entire squads of police having to drag me away from the burger-human I just created. Hitting me with batons. Mace. I just won't stop. I just won't stop punching, them.

At the other end of the scale, the English regions with the fewest embarrassed landlords were the South East and Yorkshire and Humber (18 per cent).

Just 13 per cent of landlords in Scotland said they had been too embarrassed to admit it before – the lowest across the UK (see full regional breakdown below).

So I mean yeah maybe it's best one doesn't come up to me at a party and be like, 'Sup my buddy! Heh: I'm a landlord. I legitimately think it costs £150 to print four sheets of paper out. Hey: do you know how many keys I have on this keyring? A thousand keys.'

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Here's a really sad landlord who's finding it really bloody tough actually to tell people he is a fucking vicious leech who probably sucks 65 percent of your take-home pay away from you before you've even had a chance to look at it:

[One landlord], who lets property in London and the East Midlands, says he hasn't always been truthful when it comes to admitting he's a landlord:

"Before becoming a landlord I thought long and hard about it because I had always disliked landlords as a student due to a bad experience I had over my deposit.

"These days I'm more upfront about it, but I tell people I work in property instead, because I still assume people won't like me if tell them what I do.

Reminder: the most dangerous landlord is the landlord who thinks he's 'alright'. Here's the NLA's chief executive officer completely missing the fucking point about why people hate landlords:

"The number of people looking to invest in property is rising all the time yet the stigma attached to being a landlord never seems to diminish.

"It's the minority of rogues and criminal landlords that make the headlines, and this has a negative impact on everyone else.

Gonna have to go ahead and correct you there, because it's not the minority of rogues and criminal landlords who give landlords a bad name, is it? It's the every day landlords who come over to your house in the dick-middle of December and go, 'if you opened these windows you wouldn't have mould'. The ones who e-mail you to ask for your other housemate's email addresses (why are landlords so inept at holding onto email addresses? Your email client saves them for you automatically) only to send you all a CC: saying that, unfortunately, for the third time in 18 months, they are going to have to raise rent in line with the market rate. Landlords who finally concede to making the slim changes you've been asking for in the house but get the worst possible low-rate handyman in to do it, who sprinkle paint flakes everywhere and drill enormous holes in your walls, and then two years later when you turn to move out the damage is attributed to you and taken out of your deposit. Landlords who just fucking let themselves in and then tell you you should maybe keep the kitchen a bit tidier. Landlords who leave a load of fucking planks in your hallway for two-and-a-half months before getting someone in to fit them. Landlords who come and squint at your broken tumble dryer and say 'well if you just pull it away from the wall while you're using it, it won't overheat'. Landlords who expect you to find the next set of housemates. Landlords who hire deep-cleaning firms whose services always, eerily, cost the exact amount as your collective deposit. Landlords who call you up frantically, the first time you've heard from them in eight months, asking if you can stay off work and let a handyman in. Those are the ones who give landlords a bad name. Those i.e. every landlord currently alive. No wonder they are embarrassed to admit it.

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My modest proposal is that we round up all the landlords, in a pen or in a prison, and then drop on them from above a bomb, and all around them will be destroyed, the savaged earth shall be nothing but bone and ash, and a single hand will spring from the dust, and out will crawl a landlord, and they will look to the sky, grey and flecked with pollution, and they shall whisper: 'This is coming out of your deposit, you know.'

@joelgolby

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