PropertyMania

yes and i guess landlords may be incentivised to lower rents for existing tenants to try and keep them. Am i right in thinking the old fees were only charged upon signing the contract? e.g. if a prospective tenant failed a credit check, the landlord would have to pay that fee

Good to see a clamdown on this obvious scam, but if tenants have an extra £432 in their pocket, market forces suggests rents will rise. Of course, if rents were due to fall anyway, the net effective is zero. As rents are 'sticky' this effectively nudges that fall on quicker

Hilarious, but why wouldn't you? What a crazy system we have created

Guy who's buying property because he wants to paint the door should read this. If you like DIY projects, just build furniture, or anything that isn't attached to the ground that you can take with you, sell etc. I think a lot of this whole "renting is just the worst" thing is imagined psychological stuff, remnants from our caveman days. Also, owning gives a false sense of security a lot of the time. Rents are actually very stable and haven't risen anything like house prices. Just because you buy food, doesn't mean you need to own shares in Tesco.

The big one is opportunity cost, which every Briton should be taught from age 5 because most adults don't get it

are these annual change charts ever useful vs just seeing the actual price? You don;t really see the FTSE etc done like this

The best bit is at the end where she goes "I should apologise.... for Katy's language there"

Yes, the only place this magic money could come from is doing the work yourself, and therfore not paying tax, and possibly shortcutting on regulations, or giving builders cash in hand. I guess neither of these options open to Savills.

Good post. yes, internet has created huge second hand market, and let's be honest most products are not made to last long anyway. You see people going to Ikea to rebuy the exact same product that's knackered after two years - they don't mind, just accept it as price of cheap. On a side note about white goods - in many european countries, it's the norm to have unfurnished rentals with no white goods (yes, you have to bring your own).

Granted, but not quite the same as 15 pairs of shoes, two wardrobes of clothes, a bathroom full of beauty "products", drawers of accessories, multiple handbags etc etc. I wish the stereotype weren't true, but it mostly is.

Most consumer crap accumulation comes from having a wife / longterm relationship. Single men can happily live with not much more than a phone, laptop, some pants and socks. The trend is away from owning, well, anything really . Be interesting to see the effect on houses prices. Obviously such people still need to rent, but they are generally happy to live in much smaller homes.

I guess if the govt owns 40% of your home, there's not much you can do with it. Any improvement that adds value will be 40% lost to the govt when you sell. Less of an issue with new homes obviously, but even so, you're basically not much different from a renter.

Love the Leaver honesty here. At least with Free Movement Brits get to live in 27 other countries. Replacing Poles with Pakistanis gives us nothing in return.

Good point and humans are similar - we haven't yet evolved to cope with a world of high finance and cheap credit (ditto cheap sugar). Even a simple weakness like money illusion is hard for the vast majority to overcome.

Yep, "taken out of tax altogether" is utter ********