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Council estate capitalist

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  1. Very laggy. Looking through the March Price Paid Data release. The file contains 87085 transactions. Column 3 of the file gives the date the transaction occured i.e the actual date of completion. Solicitors can then take about a month to put the application in & then it's probably another 6-8 weeks before the price is recorded. Out of 87085 transactions only 1435 actually occured in March March 2021 = 1435 transactions Feb 2021 = 9299 transactions Jan 2021 35283 transactions Dec 2020 15927 transactions Jan-Nov 2020 20415 transactions 2019 - 1995 4726 transactions (Yes. the March 2021 data release includes some really old applications that were never registered at the time)
  2. Yes, My housing rate was based on the LHA rate for that part of Rochdale. My understanding that in a private rental the DWP will pay the rent up to the limit of the LHA rate for the area based on how many rooms you need. LHA being the 30th percentile of rents in the area for the relevent size of property. There's mixed opinion on LHA/Housing benefit rates. I think previous it caused rents to go up considerably however now LHA rates has been reduced I think it functions to create ghettos by driving people to the "bad parts" of town where properties in the 30th percentile actually exist. In social housing the DWP will pay the full rent. less "bedroom tax". a 14% reduction for 1 spare bedroom, a 25% reduction for 2+ spare bedrooms.
  3. Nice to see an accounting, I couldn't work out what year these are from (the article is old + quotes a Daily Mail article I couldn't find). But assuming one were a couple both 25+ living in Rochdale with 2 disabled kids in 2021, renting and wanted to claim benefits. I calculate that one would be entitled to: min max UC Main element £596.58 £596.58 Child A UC element £282.52 £282.50 Child B UC element £237.08 £237.08 Carers UC element £163.73 £163.73 Disabled child premium UC £128.89 £402.41 Disabled child premium UC £128.89 £402.41 Housing element UC £458.33 £458.33 Child benefit - Child A £91.65 £91.65 Child benefit - Child B £60.66 £60.66 DLA for child 1 £102.27 £659.32 DLA for child 2 £102.27 £659.32 Limited capability for work-related activity element £0.00 £343.63 Total monthly £2,352.87 £4,357.62 Total yearly £28,234.44 £52,291.44 This is exluding any disability benefits the adults might get + the value of free school means/council tax benefit Total yearly (excluding DLA/Child benefit as these are not means tested). £23,952.24 £34,640.04 The variance between the "min" and "max" amounts is because Disability Allowance Rates vary wildly depending on level of disability + the "limited capability for work related activity" element is very hard to get. "back pain" or "anxiety/depression" won't get you there.
  4. Pathetic punishment if that is the only costs he will face. I hope the tenant brings a civil claim for all the claims he has against the landlord.
  5. Many landlords are also starting to realise how parasitic and useless these unnessesary middle man really are. Charging a 10% of rent receivable fee to "manage" a property but being absolutely useless when it goes sour. My favourite ones are agencies refusing to tell the landlord who the tenant is because "GDPR". Glad their scam of charging "setup" or "renewal" fees has been outlawed. I think many just exist by acting like it's a complicated business only they can do.
  6. Was a laugh seeing left-wing twitter fixate on this all day. Was obvious to me the £535 CCJ (£500 "debt" + the £35 court filing fee) was vexatious. Exposes something all too sinister though, that individuals/companies (predatory parking companies etc) can stop someone getting a mortgage, phone contract, tenancy, sometimes even a job just by filing a court claim which is not checked by a human.
  7. I've seen many auction legal packs for shopping centres (usually failing "destination" centres bolted on to an existing high street). The amount of peppercorn/£1 rent leases in some of the lower end centres is crazy. and often the landlord is picking up the rates/service charge.. common theme is that almost every lease granted less than 3 years ago is at £0 or equivalent of £0 (I.e there is a rent but the LL picks up service charge/rates liability such that any rent received is extinguished by costs). It's a dead parrot, a cigar butt. one good puff from the remaining lease terms of the suckers that signed up 10/15 years ago. Of the £0 tenants I've seen: These range from sham "art galleries" that are just a few prints on easels scattered about, run by a CIC/charity to avoid rates. (tenant being paid a reverse rent for such service) up to chain stores like Card Factory, Bonmarche, and others. "bag shops". seems a favorite as selling luggage/baggage only requires 1 employee, no fixtures etc. these tend to move around within a centre as units are rented/when a unit has been empty long enough to incur a rates liability for the landlord. (3 months I think). What will be common is longer and longer "rent-free" periods, or a rent free period where the tenant gets a years rent from the landlord as cashback (towards fit out costs) on day 1. On charity shops. I like them. it keeps stuff out of landfill & you can have a rummage and find a bargain. I don't like the way many have changed to more "boutique" charity shops selling heavily curated stock, mostly clothes at almost new prices. you should see how wasteful these shops really are. I can understand the gripe of local retailers aswell. you have a charity shop come in, get a good deal on rent (dedicated property team), have the balance sheet to support a quality fit out. they get their stock for free, staff mostly for free, pay almost no rates. - that's hard to compete with.
  8. I think there was a really bad backlog when the changed how applications were processed / changed how they were scanned. Most grants of probate I have seen (at work) have been within 2 months of death, some sooner, some later. The government website says "around 4 weeks" which I think is fairly accurate. I'm sure there a some that take much longer, especially "letters of administration" where someone has died intestate. For what it's worth I think some of the delay is overstated, either people including the form-filling stage or *some* solicitors sitting on the application forms before submitting them.
  9. I reckon this is for a number of reasons. 1. higher AUM = higher management salary. 2. it gives the appearance of diversification / makes them hard to compare to other retail only REIT's 3. if they sell they risk selling below book value 4. control over the whole of the development. Given how much Hammersons share price went up on the back of their "convert to rent" announcement it's probably the right call. Most likely, I've seen a load of "mixed use" developments where the shops are empty for many many years, or sold at auction very cheaply. Unlet because landlords want too much, the area isn't great + they are concrete shells. big money to fit out for a small business compared to taking on a "pre-used" shop... lots available right now.
  10. It is good to see dud businesses like Greensill, Footballindex, and buy2let cars going. When the tide goes out you can see who is swimming naked, and the tide hasn't even gone out yet! On buy to let cars, - I like how they advertise "0% default" They are not refering to the underlying leases, but to the fact that BTLcars has never defaulted. This is true of every scheme legitimate or not up until they day of default. Paragraph 4.10 et seq makes for interesting reading. https://www.fca.org.uk/publication/supervisory-notices/first-supervisory-notice-raedex-consortium-ltd-2021.pdf
  11. "Football Index is a UK-licensed and regulated Ponzi scheme" - Wikipedia. I've read the news, and the wikipedia page but I don't get how this is a legitimate business, or why it's been allowed to operate for several years Where do the "dividends" come from?. Football index are running the market, and are also the issuer of "shares" - how is that allowed? You can trade shares in players in the secondary market but that would only account for "matched volume" i.e where the buy side of the order book matched the sell side. This isn't even gambling because bets have to have some end date by which you win/lose.
  12. Gupta furloughs steel workers, death spiral? https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/mar/12/gupta-steel-firms-told-to-retain-cash-as-debt-deal-sought
  13. Solicitors can take almost a month post-completion to put the application into the land registry, which then goes to the back of the current backlog. some solicitors take much longer. Then after about 5/6 weeks (the current disclosed backlog for simple house sales) the data will be captured when someone at the land registry deals with the case and decices whether it's standard/additional price paid (there is a difference). The price paid data is published monthly. The current data release (January 2021) contains sales that mostly completed in October/November/December. TL:DR about 3 months+ out of date.
  14. Yes. 2nd charge behind the main mortgage in priority. Eligibility seems to have no wages for 9 months (atleast with UC). The actual registering of a charge on the property is relatively straight forward. It'd be keeping track of how much is owing, collecting repayments & allowing the borrower to redeem the charge that would be hard for the DWP. + the 1st charge lenders all agree to the charges for SMI (afaik) but if it was a charge that secured benefits paid to the claimant they might feel differently.
  15. Lets run the numbers So the rate of UC for a couple >25 is £594.04 Child 1 attracts £281.25 of UC Child 2 attracts £235.83 of UC (They are obviously assuming some economies of scale) So a total of £1111.12 UC entitlement before deductions. Now lets say they took the "advance loan" which is basically a loan of your estimated months money on day 1 that is then repaid over 12 months. this would be a monthly repayment of £92.59 That leaves you £1018.53. So for them to receive only £54 a month means that £964.53 is being deducted from the benefit likely for earnings. Every £1 earned (above any work allowance) reduces UC by 63p so we can take the deductions of £964.53 and divide it by 0.63 you get £1531, add to that their "work allowance" (amount you can earn before UC is reduced) of £512 and we can assume they had £2043 of after-tax wages in the month.
  16. Yeah I laughed at that bit. many of those will have exchanged long after it was a known issue to the normies. I.e mid-March The logistics of such a scheme would also be impracticle, how do you seperate those who simply changed their mind/got cold feet from those who genuinely couldn't complete even after hitting up BOMAD, personal loans, friends, fools and bridging lenders to try and make it.
  17. Sad if true, I'm always skepticle of situations where people claim they "had" to do something, or were forced to do something. Often it is only partially true. "I had to quit my job because I couldn't organise child care for 1 day" "I had to buy a new £60/m phone because mine broke" "I couldn't take that job because the bus doesn't go there" (fails to consider walking 0.25 miles from the nearest bus stop) Whether there was any way of salvaging the deal/delaying rather than blowing them up by pulling out who knows.
  18. I think that only applies if the council has served an improvement/prohibition notice on the landlord.
  19. There's a similar thread on Rightsnet (A forum for welfare rights advisers) that describes all kinds of problems with the system. Mostly from perspective of supporting tenants/housing associations 1) Deduction of rent arrears from benefits being stopped without warning. 2) Forms getting "lost"/not processed 3) DWP continuing to pay the tenant the rent in error. 4) If the tenant earns more than their "work allowance" for 3 months in a row then the direct payment of rents stop. seemingly without warning/notification. 5) Random amounts being deducted/money going to wrong landlords/without reference numbers etc. Seems the property118 boys are facing the same issues. I heard a landlord describe UC tenants as "the new blue chip" the other day
  20. P/E boys have already pretty much completely done that. With the pension liabilities in the background I don't think anyone wants to get into a "Philip Green/Dominic Chapell" situation again.
  21. https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-debenhams-owners-draw-up-plan-for-department-store-chains-liquidation-12049794 Hilco Capital lined up to liquidate Debenhams. 14,000 possibly at risk They are specialists in winding-down bust retailers, Ever notice the 50% off signs always look the same? They've had a hand in most of the major liquidation sales. Debenhams options seem to be. A ) Have Hilco wind the stores down, Sack everyone, Sell the assets, IP etc. B ) Have the existing owner pump more money in. C ) Sell to a third party D ) Do some kind of CVA where they exit sites, secure rent cuts, and maybe creditors get 15p in the pound 5 years from now
  22. Next years going to be ugly when the repayments kick in. Good time to be an insolvency practitioner. Average loan size is £30k with an interest rate of 2.5% after the first year. That's monthly payments of £532. I can't see them writing loans off but I can see them extending the term, giving everone a repayment "holiday" or allowing businesses to just pay the interest. "Equity support" makes me laugh, As if there should be investors lining up to take equity in a bankrupt {Nail bar|restaurant|pub|coffee shop|estate agents}.
  23. Not sure if I've posted this before but West Midlands, Entry level job at a council <£20k. 130 applications. My linkedin also has tales of redundancy, There's an accountants facebook group that I'm on. some have been sacked themselves and many more have been tasked with calculating redundancy payouts for staff. Management of many companies must be conducting similar exercises.
  24. I'm pretty sure they find out about most cases because of the tax on the interest. They data match the banks tax sumbissions and can infer how much you have. I.e if you earn more than say £60 interest it's probably that you have more than £6k (Given current crap rates)
  25. I've been following this story for quite some time. Alleged debts of £4.1m but I think the bankruptcy hearings have been strung out as long as possible. The "mansion" is being sold off. I'm suprised (given the debt) that it doesn't have charging orders against it. Or maybe it does.
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