Reintroduce the full mortgage interest relief

[Mossie]

4 hours ago, Beary McBearface said:

Let's get real about things. There are over two million buy-to-let mortgages held by about 1 million people. In amongst that pool of 1 million people there are some people with some very interesting things to say and I want to hear those things.

I want to read about them going under as well.  

1 million or 2 million.  5 million PRS rental properties?  And too many BTL landlords who are totally unsuited to providing housing.

We couldn't get something fixed a while ago.  The landlord didn't even want to have anyone to look.  Something about how no other tenant had ever complained.  Something about how they had a repair done to a similar matter in 2010, and we should just live with it.  Like it couldn't have worsened over the years.   We had to get it sorted ourselves and couldn't push it because we didn't want an S21, even if rules have slightly improved there.   

6 hours ago, Beary McBearface said:

Agree absolutely; this is what I want the forum to be.

A time may be coming when lots of people with a one or two buy-to-lets start doing the sums and find that their buy-to-let investment is losing money. When they look at the price it will command if they sell it they may find that they've made a capital loss. If that moment comes they may find themselves facing some hard choices. They may also find HPC threads cropping up in their google searches.

Should those events come to pass then HPC can do what it does best, gather facts from all corners of the internet and allow people to make their minds up about how to act in response to those facts.

If buy-to-let investors feel marginalised on HPC then they won't read HPC.

Reflect on what's happened so far with section 24. The more astute buy-to-let landlords have recruited less astute buy-to-let landlords to fund their campaigning whilst the more astute buy-to-let landlords have reduced their gearing by selling off property - presumably in some instances selling to the mugs who'd they'd later ask for campaigning contributions in a pointless effort to repeal the taxation changes.

We need to create a safe space for buy-to-let investors here on the forum; we need to welcome them. It's still perfectly OK to argue against landlordism (it's not as if they won't have encountered that idea before FFS), but there is absolutely no merit in excluding buy-to-let investors from the forum.

A few of them are interesting in condemning BTL, but often from position of having paid down debt over the years, in this continuation of extreme BTL, which no one forces anyone to get involved with, although many renters have little option but to pay the 'recruited' BTLers rent.   Astute BTLers and Mug BTLers.  They are all BTLers.

HPC safe space.  What facts do you think you will be able to find, if some BTLers struggle and find HPC forum.  That they have 2 BTLs and their own home, and BTL mortgages...and what else exactly? 

I remember in 2008 how Vanessa was getting PMs from worried BTLers.  She posted about it a few years after the crunch and after all things were pickling back up sweet for BTLers. 

That was a full 10 years ago.  I don't recall many of them coming to HPC forum for advice.  They wouldn't have got hugs from me either.   Then we had more BTLism and in many areas, prices just becoming preposterous.  If any of the BTLers get caught out this time, it's all on them.

Quote

17 December 2015

"Landlords are greedy. They greedily ratchet up the rent at every opportunity and therefore get the consequences," says Robert Stevens. It's his simple answer to the question of why buy-to-let landlords - of whom there are now estimated to be as many as two million in the UK - have, over the past few years, started to become as unpopular as wheel-clamping services or cold-calling PPI refund firms.

But Stevens isn't some aggrieved tenant, housing campaigner or left-wing academic. He's a buy-to-let landlord with eight properties who is exasperated at the behaviour of many of his fellow businesspeople.

Newspaper columnists, activists and politicians regularly brand them as unhelpfully leeching off those who are unable to get a foot on the housing ladder.

According to Stevens, the landlords' poor business decisions are partly to blame for the crushed dreams of their tenants:

So, in Stevens's view, those greedy landlords over-stretching themselves in the past few years have actually resulted in their tenants being trapped in the rented sector.

In England alone, the government's 2014 Housing Survey found that 19% of households were in the private rented sector, occupying around 4.4 million homes. This was a huge increase from 11% in 2003. And the number keeps rising.

According to the Association of Residential Lettings Agents, the average British landlord is 56, owns eight rental properties and has already been a landlord for 14 years - not quite the stereotypical image of a retired couple with a little flat that they let to supplement their pension.

Teacher Helen Kinsey, 50, recently had to leave her home in south London, after living there for 21 years, when her landlord demanded a 30% rent rise. "I think people feel this animosity towards landlords because there are so many stories like mine," she says. "Property prices have risen drastically in London because all the new-builds are being advertised throughout the world for investors who are leaving them empty. That's putting pressure on prices. Greedy landlords and greedy developers and greedy agents are seeing an opportunity to keep pushing the rent up. So normal people like me are being pushed out."

But there's probably another factor at play. David Savill, a 39-year-old lecturer from London who is married with two children, has been renting since he left university nearly 20 years ago. "If I'm being honest, as one of the new middle-aged tenants who had thought that by now in his life he would own a house, there's lots of resentment there towards people who own and let houses, and seem to be sucking all the equity out of the economy

Alison Wallace, an academic at York University, has researched the buy-to-let sector. She says some of the public animosity is a result of the financial sector stacking the odds in the favour of landlords, and that makes the property market dysfunctional for everyone. "Interest-only mortgages are offered to buy-to-let landlords but not first-time buyers, so landlords have lower payments and that means they can outbid the first-time buyers. And that makes the whole market more frothy," she says.

But behind the economics, there is probably something more basic - our need for a home. 

As Dan Wilson Craw, from campaign group Generation Rent, which speaks for young tenants, says: "Most people just want a place to live, whereas buy-to-let landlords want a place to make money." Landlords are fundamentally abusing what housing is, he claims.

Kinsey agrees. "A home is really vital to your mental health and there are times when I've nearly gone under with the pressure and instability of it all," she says. "The law puts all the power in the hands of landlords. It's just wrong. It's immoral."

And all BTL landlords made their active choices.

[spyguy]

1 hour ago, Mossie said:

I want to read about them going under as well.  

1 million or 2 million.  5 million PRS rental properties?  And too many BTL landlords who are totally unsuited to providing housing.

We couldn't get something fixed a while ago.  The landlord didn't even want to have anyone to look.  Something about how no other tenant had ever complained.  Something about how they had a repair done to a similar matter in 2010, and we should just live with it.  Like it couldn't have worsened over the years.   We had to get it sorted ourselves and couldn't push it because we didn't want an S21, even if rules have slightly improved there.   

A few of them are interesting in condemning BTL, but often from position of having paid down debt over the years, in this continuation of extreme BTL, which no one forces anyone to get involved with, although many renters have little option but to pay the 'recruited' BTLers rent.   Astute BTLers and Mug BTLers.  They are all BTLers.

HPC safe space.  What facts do you think you will be able to find, if some BTLers struggle and find HPC forum.  That they have 2 BTLs and their own home, and BTL mortgages...and what else exactly? 

I remember in 2008 how Vanessa was getting PMs from worried BTLers.  She posted about it a few years after the crunch and after all things were pickling back up sweet for BTLers. 

That was a full 10 years ago.  I don't recall many of them coming to HPC forum for advice.  They wouldn't have got hugs from me either.   Then we had more BTLism and in many areas, prices just becoming preposterous.  If any of the BTLers get caught out this time, it's all on them.

And all BTL landlords made their active choices.

HPC and 118 are forums - collections of opinions.

My opinion of IO BTL - which is the root cause of most of reposnes - is that it should never have existed. IO BTL is a total fuxup of the hihest order. A clever little wheeze by ARLA and the banks getting their risk model model wrong.

Before 2000, if a LL wanted to buy a property to let out he'd have to put up 50% and pay commercial rates on the loan. This is correct - non )) property lending is a commercial activity.

With IO BTL youve had banks and building societies lending lending several 100Ks to individual for non amortising loans, atthe same rate as an OO!

That is nuts!

Why? All part of Browns massive credit boom and light touch regulation. No economy has ever come out well from light touch regulation.

Whats going to happen?

Well, IO lending of all sorts  is being banned. Not just in the UK, worldwide.

An IO BTL is, basically, a commercial bridging loan. These are expensive - 2-3%/month, compounding.

The ability of individuals to offset mortgage payments against rents was not so much allowed as ot considered by HMRC as they never had banks stupid enough to do BTL lending.

Thee's no point 118 complaining - the HMRC rules are clear on the difference between trading and investing. Trading requires you to be doing an activity on 40h/w basis.

Investing you cannot offset the costs, normally fees. In IO BTL, the mortgage costs. Any income is taxed at your highest tax rate.

I mention HMRC rules on trading v. investing as banks really do need to understand these. They dont, or didn't, as previously they only lent to OO. The risk, the change from OO->commercial. These are all areas where banks have a total blindspot and were too far up their ar5e oftheir new magic model to realise how much theyd fuxed up.

The confusion on the different between OO + commercial lending. And investing v. trading gets me, personally, the most on holiday lets. At mo. a small number of BTLer type are pouring money into holiday lets. Now, banks have some experience of lending to holiady lets - they know its risky, so only a fee banks do holiday let lending. There's a few finance compnaies that lend.

However, there's a few cases going on where the HMRC is clarifying that holiday lets are investments - so they can remove the allowances.

Theres so many p1sspot advisors saying 'Buy a holiday let! No tax to pay!!!'

The reality is any activity that does not see you pay 30% of the cash in tax is going to attract HMRC.

 

 

[Quicken]

On 26/05/2018 at 07:55, spyguy said:

'Using actual self-assessment data, HMRC estimate that only 1 in 5 landlords will pay more tax '

I think HMRC is using a very broad description of LL on this.

*All* leveraged IO BTL will be hammered.

I think HMRC are countin pub land lords, commercial ll etc etc.

 

 

Or perhaps it is 1 in 5 of the landlords who have been declaring their rental income to HMRC. Tax dodgers hoist by their own petard? Hehehe

[spyguy]

3 minutes ago, Quicken said:

Or perhaps it is 1 in 5 of the landlords who have been declaring their rental income to HMRC. Tax dodgers hoist by their own petard? Hehehe

Post 2000ish IO BTL is such of clusterfux of dumb that nothing would surprise me.

[Ah-so]

9 minutes ago, Quicken said:

Or perhaps it is 1 in 5 of the landlords who have been declaring their rental income to HMRC. Tax dodgers hoist by their own petard? Hehehe

50% of the private rental sector is owned outright for starters. So this means that 2 in 5 BTL landlords are affected. This makes more sense. 

However, a large proportion of the lending covered by BTL is to a small proportion of landlords. Estimates are that more like c.70% of actual BTL lending will be caught by the tax. 

The impact will be felt most by the leveraged portfolio landlords. Hence the outrage on landlord forums. 

[thewig]

This is the only forum I’ve seen where the DEBTjunkie scumbags get called out for being DEBTjunkie scumbags.

Impossible to respect and admire the type of character who farms their fellow man, it’s sociopathic behaviour imo. Cats or no cats.

I’ve never met a DEBTjunkie who wasn’t a complete scumbag under the thin veneer of societal acceptance/ presumed reverence at their chosen MO of human exploitation.

 

“Ah but he’s a nice guy really, basically an entrepreneur, never put the rent up unless he really had to, only kicked that family out so his own children could move in, he always gives to charity, top man, not his fault if his scumbag tenants can’t afford to buy is it?”

 

[spyguy]

1 minute ago, thewig said:

This is the only forum I’ve seen where the DEBTjunkie scumbags get called out for being DEBTjunkie scumbags.

Impossible to respect and admire the type of character who farms their fellow man, it’s sociopathic behaviour imo. Cats or no cats.

I’ve never met a DEBTjunkie who wasn’t a complete scumbag under the thin veneer of societal acceptance/ presumed reverence at their chosen MO of human exploitation.

 

“Ah but he’s a nice guy really, basically an entrepreneur, never put the rent up unless he really had to, only kicked that family out so his own children could move in, he always gives to charity, top man, not his fault if his scumbag tenants can’t afford to buy is it?”

 

I think youll find its 'Socialist worker, fighting the evil capitalist scum'

One of the of first 5+ IO BTL LL I met was a train driver and local union bigwig. Always ranting about tories, banks, capitalist leaches.

I guess irony is something his tenants have to do when they go for an interview to pay his rent - its a market innit.

 

[oatbake]

Not sure who "James" is (and no it's not me) but he's going to get banned from property118 going 'off message' like that...

https://www.property118.com/10000-signatures-government-respond/#comments

"I am quite worried about this legislation. With my current portfolio all of my properties will be underwater come 2021, so I think I need to liquidate them immediately - though this is going to be tough given current falling market conditions in London (where they are). I keep reading that we are going to be able to raise rents to compensate for this tax, but I am not sure that we will be able to. Only buy-to-let owners will be forced to raise rents - the rest of the market doesn't have to and so it will be harder for us to find tenants as we are (forced to be) charging more. I am also confused by the idea that selling all the buy-to-let properties will mean that the private rental sector will have a shortage. I'm no economist! but if I sell my properties to someone who was renting then doesn't that mean that supply *and* demand go down? Am I getting this wrong somehow?"

[mrtickle]

If he is real, it's a fine welcome that a new LL poster gets from that lot.

[Lavalas]

Here’s a helpful site where you can view the location of those that have signed the petition (or any other government petition) per constituency. You can view it by number of signatures or percent of total constituents, and you can select any constituency to get the actual numbers.

https://petitionmap.unboxedconsulting.com/?petition=219279&area=uk

I’m on my phone right now so don’t have an optimum view of the map but an obvious conclusion is the concentration in and around London and the South East. Perhaps that’s the only conclusion, I don’t know, but at the least i think it’s great that the data is made open and this is a good use of it.

[Lavalas]

As things stand ther are 40 signatories in my constituency.

?

[Captain Kirk]

I love this comment -

"Sounds like it has been written by someone with a hatred of landlords."

Well doesn't everyone hate landlords? Even landlords hate other landlords.

[Bland Unsight]

On 28/05/2018 at 07:59, Mossie said:

HPC safe space.  What facts do you think you will be able to find, if some BTLers struggle and find HPC forum.  That they have 2 BTLs and their own home, and BTL mortgages...and what else exactly? 

It strikes me as a massive error to seek to exclude a big group of people just because you disagree with them.

Buy-to-let investors are not some homogeneous lump. Everybody who has investment property made a choice at some point but some people chose to hang on to their old flat whereas others, as previously noted, set about snapping up housing like your mad auntie buys fridge magnets till they had literally hundreds of houses (and hundreds of mortgages).

Let me give you an example. I didn't find @RushRoad a particularly pleasant poster but I learned quite a lot by engaging with him. He wanted to make the case that anyone who wanted to buy could afford to buy and he'd picked a couple of areas on the outskirts of Birmingham to make his case. Up until that point I was unaware that in terms of the ratio of house prices to median earnings Birmingham is a bit of an outlier. Was he intentionally cherry picking his data? I have no idea. However, somebody who holds a different opinion - particularly if they can point you to the facts that underpin that opinion - is like the grit in the oyster that is the seed of a pearl; they sometimes prompt the forum's poster to roll up their sleeves and find stuff out.

Also, just think about what you'd want if you were a buy-to-let troll who thought it was within their power to stop a sharp correction turning into a crash by trying to influence the conversation on various online fora. You'd want the less clued up landlords consuming a diet selected by people like Busta on PovertyLater, offering tax wheezes, and the MK Dong on PropertyTripe, banging on about how his property investment just can't fail. You'd want HPC to appear unwelcoming and unreadable. You've emphasised what the we can learn from buy-to-let investors who join the forum, I'd emphasise what some of the more 'accidental' property investors might learn from the HPC forum.

 

Edited May 29, 2018 by Beary McBearface

[Dyson Fury]

On ‎29‎/‎05‎/‎2018 at 17:44, Lavalas said:

Here’s a helpful site where you can view the location of those that have signed the petition (or any other government petition) per constituency. You can view it by number of signatures or percent of total constituents, and you can select any constituency to get the actual numbers.

https://petitionmap.unboxedconsulting.com/?petition=219279&area=uk

I’m on my phone right now so don’t have an optimum view of the map but an obvious conclusion is the concentration in and around London and the South East. Perhaps that’s the only conclusion, I don’t know, but at the least i think it’s great that the data is made open and this is a good use of it.

Most interesting, thanks.

The colour coding is very visual, there seems to be a big arc around the N and W of outer London, I can't immediately think of a reason for that.  Apart from that,  Milton Keynes N and Milton Keynes S are obvious hotspots (the MK Dong has obviously been busy, pressurising his tenants into signing).  Although even MK South has only 0.08% of constituents signing...  There is another hotspot in NW Cambs (73 sigs) which I thought was associated with that very vocal LL from Peterborough (can't remember his name..)  but actually Peterborough is the adjacent constituency (only 40 sigs).  Stevenage has only 30 signatures 0.03% - very poor effort Jamie!!  Ros also needs to work harder in Cardiff.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Dyson Fury

[mrtickle]

and only 19 signatures in Wilson's Ashford