The Wilsons - 875 buy to let property empire

LisbonLaura

"We were going to be, to put it bluntly, stuffed. The reason we were saved was the drop in interest rates," Fergus says.

"We recognise a lot of people are upset that we own so many properties. Some people say no one should have more than one property, but I thought communism was out of favour.

Not it seems when it comes to saving you Fergus.

sjaypink

leveller2911 wrote: »

Its a bit of a kick in the teeth for the British taxpayers knowing they have saved his fat,arrogant,patronising a r s e .......

I don't think they are 'saved' yet, just been given a few more inches of rope :cool:

Pimperne1

brit1234 wrote: »

Just put Chucky on ignore, its nice and refreshing on this forum without him. He is just a nasty wind up merchant not worth the time.

Your signature is out of date.

Turnbull2000

Now is probably one of the best times ever for existing landlords and buy-to-letters. Thousands must be on rates of 3% or less whilst rents have gone upwards - so the scope for portfolio expansion is getting stonger month by month. Even my sister's copper boyfriend is looking for his first BTL, such is the conviction that ultra low rates are here to stay and rents will rise massively on the back of chronic shortages.

I expected BTL to replace a large proportion of your average earning and below first-time-buyers or those with parental assistance, but not as rapidly as this. It's not gonna be pretty when young couples settling down with children find an S.21 through the door because they've annoyed the landlord! Tenants having children also provides huge collateral for large rent hikes, as an extra £100 per month may be a better alternative than having to seek another house.

julieq

Time for one of my periodic "I told you so's"

From May 2009

julieq wrote: »

At the risk of repeating myself endlessly, everyone has to live somewhere, there isn't a lot of empty housing stock in this country, and yields for debt financed landlords are up significantly because interest rates are down.

It's a pretty good time to be a BTL landlord I'd say. Had we not had the banking troubles, a long period of stagnation at 4-5% interest rates would have wiped many of them out. As things are there's some breathing space.

I don't know why there is so much moral outrage about BTL. It's really just another form of investment, in common with a lot of popular investment it formed a bubble via a feeding frenzy. If you're of the STR brigade, the BTL people are doing you a favour by renting you somewhere to live. For quite a number of years they were doing everyone renting a favour by accepting rents below the levels of a mortgage on equivalent houses.

Yes they were generally clueless, and bears of one idea, but on the other hand that's true for many of the regular posters here too, it's just that the idea is the opposite one

In other words, just as the Wilsons are saying, BTL investors were largely rescued by the recession despite the price correction rather than being wiped out with it, and that was obvious 2 years ago when, well... I pointed it out.

Meanwhile, as usual, the bears were getting it wrong. Mewbie was one of the bear cheerleaders at the time, and his take on what was about to happen was:

mewbie wrote: »

Wilsons - 800 properties to sell.
Abbey National - gone. B&B gone. Alliance & Leicester gone.
Northern Rock.
Paragon.
Insidetrack - oh my aching sides.
1 million more unemployed coming this year. That's a lot lesss young professionals renting those oh so desirable cardboard boxes in every town centre.

Apart from the very dense on here, it is quite clear that for several years before the end of the boom the FTB's had been replaced by BTL's mewing the !!!!!! out of their own properties. They gambled and borrowed and gambled some more. Now take a typical twit with a 200k mortgage on a town centre flat bringing in 500 a month, with property dropping 10% minimum per year.

Time for tea. I'll enjoy mine.

Schadenfreude returned with interest I fancy.

You can enjoy the entire thread here:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/1716249

It ought to be chastening reading for the bears, but of course it won't be.

Turnbull2000

Yup, the 2009 price 'crash' has not only sown the seeds of a new BTL boom, but left both the established landlords and the amateur BTLers of the noughties in a stronger position than they could have ever wished for. The next stage will be the mass loosening of lending criteria, bringing with it the capital gains they've had to do without lately*.



*London, parts of SE apart of course, where BTLers have had ultra-cheap mortgages, rising rents and rising values.

julieq

And with that the ULTIMATE TRIUMPH of the Bilderberg group muahahahah

leveller2911

julieq wrote: »

And with that the ULTIMATE TRIUMPH of the Bilderberg group muahahahah

If you are right ,its a bit sickening to see posters like yourself jerking off when the bigger picture is the gap between those who have and those who have not widens.

Thousands upon thousands of young people who will be forced to pay more to rent a home and little or no chance of ever owning their own home.They will have no chance to stamp their identity on a home and then when the day comes (if ever) they are in a position to retire from a life time of grafting they will still be forced to pay an ever increasing rent to a rich greedy scumbag landlord....Shame people see a house as an investment vehicle rather than a home.......

Well done you Julie .....:T congratulations....

What good to society do people like the Wilsons do??... I mean how does Society as a whole benefit from people like them, people who get into massive debts, charge high rents,carry out little or no maintenance and they rely on the tax payers to bail them out?

Oh and I live near Ashford and see what they have done to the local FTB housing market..

julieq

The first step in solving a problem Leveller is to understand it. I'm not "jerking off" in the least, I'm simply explaining the mechanisms that are operating.

Individual BTL has had a marginal effect only on HPI anyway. It's an easy target for rabble rousing, but the actual problem is undersupply of housing for purchase and rental. Fix that and you fix the problem. Derv has a good solution to that, but it does involve unwinding some of those bear staples such as lending restrictions.

Incidentally there have always been people who can't afford to buy. We're at historically high levels of owner occupation. If you remove funding for house purchases you just favour those with cash, obviously, and return to historical trends. Again, it's lending restrictions excluding first time buyers, not prices specifically.

leveller2911

julieq wrote: »

The first step in solving a problem Leveller is to understand it. I'm not "jerking off" in the least, I'm simply explaining the mechanisms that are operating.


Incidentally there have always been people who can't afford to buy. We're at historically high levels of owner occupation. If you remove funding for house purchases you just favour those with cash, obviously, and return to historical trends. Again, it's lending restrictions excluding first time buyers, not prices specifically.

So the banks lending 100-125% mortgages again is good, even though they believe house prices will fall further? What the country really needs is a massive building programme of 2-3 bedroom houses for young families , houses that are not built for profit but sold to families at cost price.Houses with covenants on to restrict re-sale values to stop this rediculous HPI thats killing the country.

Many councils and the government still have massive land banks so it can be done and don't forget the Construction companies currently are only obliged to build 30% of their total builds as low cost houses and many build fewer than that.They should be forced as a condition of planning permission to build at least 50%....

So any chance of you answering my question in my last post?