dgul

I think this is actually quite clever - The move won't affect (much, if at all) those with middle incomes who have bought one or two BTL as part of their pension. It probably won't affect pensioners who have a small number of BTL as most of their pension. But it does massively affect those who have a large BTL portfolio leveraged up to the hilt - and there aren't that many of these. I don't think the conservatives will lose many votes here, and they'll gain a few from right-of-centre younger voters.

Fiddling about with the numbers it looks like the breakeven interest will be 75% of income-after-costs for a higher rate taxpayer. ie, income 10k, interest 7.5k gives 2.5k profit now (before tax). After the change that would give no profit (for a higher rate taxpayer). I think lots of BTLs are working at less than 25% profit. The loss of the 10% allowance is a big deal - I would imagine w&t costs to be about 5% or so at best.

Having lived and worked in (non-tourist) Greece I can assure you that a hatred of Germany is quite common in the country, especially amongst the older generations. This attitude pre-dates the current crisis.

I think we're getting close to having to have an 'internet license'.

Hmm - it has been said that Mercedes has turns into a store of wealth before a crisis -http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-05-13/forget-mattresses-greeks-are-stashing-their-cash-cars... Perhaps Mercedes will now be waiting for the Italians/Spanish to start buying their cars as a store of wealth... (this isn't stupid behaviour - even losing 20% driving out of the showroom will be good compared with the rapid reduction in value of the neo-drachma...) But that is zerohedge so as likely to be wrong as right... Could be a wealth-inequality effect - and those 2,000+ wealthy Greeks will likely have moved their wealth offshore some time ago...

I think they think it is a crowdfunding investment - nice and simple, pretty much unregulated, nearly all risk on investor. But it looks a bit like a collective investment scheme that should come under the FCA rules. I imagine that this is one of the aspects that the lawsuits will be arguing about in 5 years time.

They're set up as shares in a company - so to sell your stake you 'simply' sell your share to someone else. A bit like how you'd sell your share of a listed company, but without the scrutiny - a bit like a timeshare, or selling your park-home. I could imagine the shares will be very liquid up to the point in time that the value of the underlying asset starts to drop, at which point they will become illiquid and more or less worthless. I can also imagine that there will be additional costs (beyond the 12.5% + vat (ie 15%) management fee) invented at some point... At the five year point there will be a formal opportunity to exit at market rates, but only if someone wants to buy at those market rates (ie, completely useless as it is the same as putting up your share at any other point at 'market rates') - if no-one wants to buy then they simply sell the property (it is not clear what happens if there is a majority that want to stay invested but the small minority can't sell their stake at the 5 year point). Of course, if they can't sell the shares at market rates then it might simply be because there is little interest in such investments, which might be because at that point in the market there is no interest in letted property investments - so perhaps the simple sale of the underlying asset might take a considerable time. And it goes on. This is a nice simple investment so long as everything is fine and dandy. At the point in time where things are not fine and dandy this becomes a crazy investment. I wonder what will happen? Anyway, the investment reappraisal point is 5 years from now - so I imagine that by 5 years time there will be lawsuits.

If you think your daughter might want to go to college (bit early to tell at the moment I suppose) then she could save money by studying in France or Germany compared with the UK in 10 years time. This presumes that we'll still be in Europe (find out in 2017) and whether France or Germany starts charging for higher education. Anyway, you could see the cost of teaching her the language as an investment, potentially repaid through reduced college fees.

Actually been flicking through and a common arrangement seems to be shared ownership of a 'vehicle', one per property. I think quite a few people would be satisfied with this - even though it is the opposite of the 'safe as houses' view... I think these arrangements have been around for a while, but I was surprised by how many there were now and the supposed investment numbers - they seem to have escalated recently. They do remind me somewhat of the timeshare arrangements in the early 2000s - these fell apart when i) management costs escalated and ii) you found that you couldn't actually sell the 'share' easily (or at all). I guess in about 5 years or so we'll know...

Used to be the case (sort of) - Gambling act 2005 changed things. For most people most of the time gambling debt is now enforceable in the UK.