CGT Changes

clutton wrote: »

everyone (except squatters - and i have mates who squatted, and i actually agree with it, particularly in boroughs where there are no social housing schemes available) has to pay for where they live. i really don't understand your view on this.

Discuss: Why.

Well said, andrew8018. clutton, I agree with much of your analysis of the current housing situation re rising prices. You could also add in the growth in second homes, immigration etc.

However, the fact that there are undeniably other factors at play here does not mean that BTL is not an extremely important factor - there are, I believe, nearly a million BTL mortgages around at the moment - that's a lot of properties which would otherwise largely be owner-occupied.

As someone who rents from a BTL landlord, I am afraid you kid yourself with regard to the service you and your like provide. We rent not because we are renters by choice but because with house prices at their current ridiculous levels it is the only sane thing to do - I'm not going to risk all financial security buying at these prices. Along with others in my position, we regard people such as yourself as patronising parasites. You may not mean to patronise your 'single mothers on benefits' who according to you could not cope with the complexities of actually owning their own place, but that is exactly what you do. Far from a win-win situation you fondly imagine, you win by getting a pension out of monopolising essential assets, whilst those whose only mistake was to be born too late to take part in the property feeding frenzy look forward not just to no pension but to paying higher taxes to fund your generation's pensions, and to still paying rent when we eventually reach pensionable age.

The best service BTL landlords could do would be to sell up, en masse, which may happen, with a little nudge from the CGT announcement under discussion, so that prices return to appropriate levels.

The fact that you cannot understand squatnow's insistence on the immorality of what you do is telling - you clearly come from a very different political place to him! If all landlords were like Gorgeous George, then maybe there would indeed be no need for social housing and us happy tenants could look forward to a life of secure tenure in a flat decorated to our specifications...... Sadly, Gorgeous George, you are somewhat of a one-off, and maybe your main mistake is in assuming other landlords operate in similar manner to you....

carolt wrote: »

However, the fact that there are undeniably other factors at play here does not mean that BTL is not an extremely important factor - there are, I believe, nearly a million BTL mortgages around at the moment - that's a lot of properties which would otherwise largely be owner-occupied.....

I put an alternative to you: empty.
I think there's a lot of 1 and 2 bed city centre flats that would never have sold to OO's that have solely been purchased by BTL "greater fools".

clutton wrote: »

house prices went thru the roof in the late 1980's and then several years of minimal growth were experienced - maybe the same will happen now.

Odd I thought there was a house price crash at that time, not simply minimal growth

clutton wrote: »

i provide my tenants with as much security as the law and my Lender will allow. i have single parent mums whose children are just starting school, and who are already talking about them going to secondary school round the corner. Landlords prefer long long term tenants - why wouldn't we ? voids are expensive.

Sorry but that isn't true. You operate the Sword of Damocles that deprives your tenants of even their rights to two months notice. Once they pass month four with you their notice diminishes until once the tenancy goes periodic they have no rights to notice whatsoever. You achieve this by serving a S21 notice early on that expires at the end of the initial fixed term and then leave that notice in place without the tenant realising what that means. Like this:

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=6477944#post6477944

clutton wrote: »

an AST gives landlords the compulsion to provide housing for the term of the agreement and compulsion to the tenant to pay for that full term. i think this is equal rights - in this aspect alone. there are, i grant you, differing terms for notice (landlords having to give twice as much notice as tenants - which i think is only fair, as it takes a while to find new housing).

The landlord running the Sword of Damocles as you do does not have to give any notice whatsoever. In this system the S21 notice will have expired at the end of the fixed term, yet the tenant will have been "encouraged off the record" such that there is no proof the S21 is technically invalid, to ignore the S21 leaving the landlord free to start possession proceedings at any time months or even years after the tenancy went periodic!

It's precarious enough living with two months notice, let alone the way you chose to operate it, you don't provide your tenants with any security of tenure. I would be amazed they would be happy with that if they realised what has going on.

""If all landlords were like Gorgeous George, then maybe there would indeed be no need for social housing and us happy tenants could look forward to a life of secure tenure in a flat decorated to our specifications....""

all my tenants are happy and they all decorate their homes however they wish - they all know that i want them to stay for a long time - and they want to stay a long time and so they shall.

i dont intend to continue defending my business ethics here - i am quite happy that the way i treat my tenants is how i would want to be treated.

When i first started this business, my resolve was that i would personally live in any of my own properties - that is still true today - and long may it continue.

i myself have been a tenant in property where prostitutes lived on the ground floor plying their trade, and were frequently found walking around the hall in the nude; where rats crawled out of the sewage infested cellars at night; where the landlord sent "heavies" round if rent was a day late and where his agent simply let himself into girls rooms unnannounced.


i just noticed this truly astonishing little nugget from earlier on ........

""If no-one had to pay rent or mortgage, how much cheaper would they be to employ? ""


and if no one paid rent or mortgage, so no one owned the properties - who would repair them ?

As it happens, here at 1.30am i have just got off the phone sorting out a problem with a tenants door.


good night all