BTL, vile lowlife business, nobody wants to be living under their roofs

stringsmk2

The_Fox wrote: »

Just polished off a bottle of wine, feeling a little more mellow, but still fuming from what i saw today.
Read all the posts, same s**t, " it's my pension" don't care, "i have two mortgages and am not finding it easy" don't care.

I am at war with BTL, i have started doing my bit already...

1, if you know antone renting a house out without informing the inland revenue, report them

2, if you know there BTL's are not paying taxes..report them

3, do ANYTHING to live anywhere but a BTL for the next year, sleep on a mates sofa, swallow your pride and go back to mums and dads, 4 of you live in a rented rather than just 2 of you, do anything to destroy demand.

4, make sure you deposit is recorded.

5, Demand to know what your MP's exposure to property is, why not!, it could be effecting his decision making on new build in his/her constituency.

There has not been one post on this thread that feel any compassion for when it comes to BTL, i don't care if you hit rock bottom should it all fail, it is ruining decent hard couples lives.

Now you are just raving

By the way I dont pay any tax on my income gained through our place and I am looking forward to using the cash when I do sell up to buy a nice yacht to sail around the Med in

I guess I'll have all those renters to thank for it.


By the way, just to make you feel better I am renting at the moment as well. It suits me for now till we see what the market does and untill we can get more money together to buy another place (in NZ)

dizziblonde

PasturesNew wrote: »

Until I buy a house, I feel unable to join anything. I don't want to put my address down on anything, look into courses/education, join clubs, even buying possessions is all on hold until I buy. I want to have a 'sense of place'. I don't get that when renting, I get a feeling of being watched/judged/owned and petrified I'll do something wrong.

I own no furniture, I wouldn't want to be moving things/furniture about, so I'm like a hobo, a bag lady... floating around with stuff in storage and no sense of direction, no sense of home and no sense of place.

I'm glad I can afford to buy ... because renting cheap 1-bed flats has no quality of life.

I've never felt that badly about it - never really felt badly about renting until the last place we rented that finally did for us completely.

An "accidental landlord" (translation - he was asking what is still effing ridiculous money for the house and was never going to sell)... neighbours viewed with suspicion the To Let board going up - and our arrival. Took time, but we worked our way into the street and the community - hell we must have done something right since we ended up choosing to buy in the same street - mainly because of the close knit feeling and cracking neighbours in the end! But yes, they viewed us with suspicion to start with - I guess the logic that we had no stake in the upkeep of the street and the fear we'd be off into the sunset in 6 months - I can fully understand that.

I've got no real truck with buy to lets (I DO have issues with half of the prats on Homes under the Hammer... magnolia paint doesn't cure damp, crap insulation, subsidence, cancer and everything else they seem to think it does)... but I think there needs to be MORE done to compel landlords to actually properly maintain the properties they rent out (sadly I suspect we'll get LESS tenant's rights and not more protection). It's hard to explain unless you've been there - but if you do unluckily land a landlord who is reluctant to do repairs - it's a constant soul-grinding source of stress. You're either fighting to get something that's gone wrong fixed, or worrying about something ELSE going wrong that you're going to have the next battle about. I didn't actually appreciate that until we ended up in muppet-boy's house (I'd had utter gems of landlords until then). It really does wear you down. I've had posessions ruined because he refused to fix a small water leak I reported the second I mentioned it - it became very quickly a deluge that trashed half of my clothes - no right of redress because if you rock the boat - you're out on your ear and people get scared at the thought of losing the roof over their head. I've been made to feel unreasonable for ringing in with a "it doesn't directly affect us - but I thought you should know the render on the outside of the bay window's starting to crack and you might want to keep an eye on it"... you try to be decent and protect the LL's investment - and you're made out to be a villain for it.

Private renting is basically a crap existence - you never really get the chance to relax and enjoy life. You're always on the watch for if the LL is going to want their place back, are you going to get renewed for another few months, what stunt is the letting agent going to pull next (ours had a somewhat "relaxed" approach to tenancy law - I'd regularly get impromptu "we're just in the area and want to check on X" visits, and when it was exterior work - they wouldn't even knock - I'd just find three blokes in the garden and it scared me witless on one dark morning when I found the three stooges out there!). You're constantly worrying about keeping your deposit - I became an utter tyrant with the hoover and carpet cleaner... it's often not helped by the cheapest of the cheap fittings like carpet so cheap it looks threadbare and crud within months anyway... and of course - who gets the blame for that and loses their deposit - the tenant. I've lived with a patchwork of rugs that looked downright ridiculous to try to protect one of these carpets - it's still ended up looking naff and no doubt we'll get hammered for the deposit at checkout inspection in a week or so.

If you've only ever had good landlords (and my previous one was an utter utter gem) then you do tend to focus on the freedom aspect of renting - but a bad landlord and letting agency (and our bad LA was one of the real big boys in the East Midlands) can really really grind you down.

We've since bought - and since we bought we've had a massive run of things go wrong with the house (the weather has NOT helped), yet still the freedom from the worry of "what's he going to refuse to fix this time" is better than the worry of ownership.

Cleaver

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Do you sit there with your pants around your ankles and a box of kleenex next to you, celebrating rental and house price increases?

If so. Yes.

If not. No.

Oh, okay. I don't 'celebrate' house or rent price increases.

Graham_Devon wrote: »

It's the BTL landlords who see it as a pension vehicle....yet proclaims its all about the yield. It's nothing to do with the yield. It's all about rising house prices, which involves alienating more and more of the generation below them, while watching the cost to the taxpayer rise and rise due to ever higher rental and housing costs.

I agree. I'm not sure what we do about it though, and whether it's the landlords that are the problem. If house prices are rising, and we have a government which encourages that by not building houses, can you blame people for wanting to make money out of it? I think we should focus on the culture and situation that allowed landlords to thrive, rather than the landlords themselves.

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Now, we have lax regulation in terms of letting in this country. I think we all accept that if tougher regulation came in, like other countries, many landlords would dump their houses ASAP.

I guess so.

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I can't remember where I read it, may have been on here, may have been totally untrue, but in some other countries, the tennants don't pay the council tax, the landlords do.

I think that's an awful idea personally. The person living in a council area should pay the council tax for the services that they are receiving from their local council.

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Afterall, you don't go into Sainsburys, and pay a levy on top of your shopping bill for their business rates.

That's not the same though is it? If you live in an area and get your bins emptied and your road gritted (or not) then you pay a tax to the council for that.

Graham_Devon wrote: »

The whole letting scene is a bit bizzare, and really needs some proper regulation applied to it A) to reduce the massive and rising tax bill we all pay for it to give tennants more security and C) to stop it being used as a speculative pension scheme.

I agree to an extent. I think a few tweeks to the system would be good, but most of the regulation required is there in my opinion. You can't stop anyone using something as a pension scheme if that's what they want to do.

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Do the above simple steps, and we'd be left with real people, real companies doing the letting. My sister has a place with a real company, and she pays one fee. She doesn't pay council tax on top, it's all part of it, and the fee she pays per month is actually lower than the average. Probably because it's a letting company, rather than someone using it as a pension scheme squeezing as much blood out of the stone as they can.

But you do know that there will be just as many people who have excellent experiences with private landlords? Regulation wouldn't automatically mean you have a perfect letting system.

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Massive problems in this country surrounding the BTL scene. However, as half the cabinet are involved in it, nothing much is going to happen quickly.

I think the other reason that it won't change is that this forum doesn't represent the real world. Out there people don't really moan that much about renting a place as they aren't that bothered about it all (certainly not as much as we are on here). You either rent or buy and a certain percentage of your salary goes on living costs. Then you get on with your life. It's why this board often has about 13 people reading it whilst the housing board has 113 people reading it, as most people just see rent or mortgage as a fact of life, may have a bit of a moan about it, but don't really think too deeply about it.

I've rented four properties (as a tenant) in my life and had good and bad landlords, just like any other industry I've used (I've had good and bad plumbers for example). I don't think that out there in the real world there is a mass push for the letting industry to be changed that much, but that's just my opinion.

System

9/10 for this eBreakdown, nearly as good as some of carols episodes

IveSeenTheLight

The_Fox wrote: »

But if you are speaking the truth then you come under the minority that should be catered for by a smaller BTL market.

In historical terms, pricate rental is now a fraction of what it was previously.
It's only since the government started selling off social housing that private rental has increase.
This increase is still smaller as a percentage than the reduction in social housing meaning there are now fewer people renting (in percentage terms) than there were 30+ years ago.

chucky

Cleaver wrote: »

I think the other reason that it won't change is that this forum doesn't represent the real world. Out there people don't really moan that much about renting a place as they aren't that bothered about it all

the problem is that most of these people think that this forum does represent the real world.. as you say it doesn't

they rejoice a 1% fall in average house prices. they don't understand that it means very little in the overall scheme of things, but they still rejoice it without understanding...

chucky

Shakethedisease wrote: »

Millions of us grew up in them in the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and 90's.. and it was the 'norm' then not the ( rock-bottom ) exception..

The balance today is all completely out of whack, and is storing up a LOT of problems..

yep i see where you're coming from.

poverty was never an issue in the 1950s
neither was the large numbers of people living in the same room.
the quality of property for everyone was much better then too.
life expectency due to these fundamental issues wasn't an issue either.

you're right it was much better then

wotsthat

The_Fox wrote: »

I watched today as a working single woman was brought to tears by one of these heartless worms who for the first month had money problems and was asking for help.

Oh dear. What did you do to help? Did you offer to pay her rent? Did you offer a kind word? A cup of tea?

The_Fox wrote: »

It's the nearest i have ever come to sticking a mans head through a wall, i walked off the job before i did.

Oh you walked off in a marked manner and started a thread on an internet forum - I'm sure that woman's faith in human nature was suitably restored.

wherediditallgothen

Well thought out rants are always the best ones.










Does anyone know where I can find any?

IveSeenTheLight

PasturesNew wrote: »

On the other hand, many have no profit and are paying no tax. They'll pay CGT when they sell, if they can't find a way to "hide" the property as a BTL anyway.

CGT would be appplicable for any gains made after allowances are taken into effect.

there are processes in place which make it nigh on impossible* to "hide" a BTL nowadays.

*I'm not aware of how to do it. The government has the means to know which properties have been utilised as a BTL.

PasturesNew wrote: »

How would anybody actually know if I was trousering rent money and paying no tax? I'm sure a lot do, for reasons from stupidity/cluelessness through to intent to evade.

In Scotland, LL's have to register and there are heavy penalties for not doing so.
Other simple things such as the voting register, records the inhabitants of properties make it hard for someone to claim they were there when they were not or that a property was empty.

PasturesNew wrote: »

Also, if I buy one at £50k, then a year later MEW £20k out of it, is there any tax to pay? How easy is it to hide that? How does it work?

for tax purposes, you can only include the interest on the loan up to the original purchase valuation.
that means if the price increases over time from say £100k to £200k, you can still only deduct the tax from the first £100k.
Mewing beyond that means that you cannot deduct the tax on it (essentially it's just like a personnal loan).

When it comes to CGT upon selling, it disregards the mortgage amount and simply calculates the differeance between the purchase price and selling prices deducting the allowances and expenses.

PasturesNew wrote: »

Lots of opportunity for cash dealing and ducking and diving.

As with any business, having the accounts in order can assist with ensure that the business is paying the correct tax amount and not any extra.