Appalled Landlord

Shelter Birmingham have issued a denial about Robert Jenrick’s alleged visit on Christmas Day where “hot food and drinks as well as entertainment, services, clothing and a safe and warm place for vulnerable people to sleep” were allegedly provided.
https://www.property118.com/jenrick-spends-christmas-evening-at-birmingham-shelter/#comment-119823

A spokeswoman said “The people who donate and bequeath £40 million a year to us (minus the £12 million cost of collecting it) do not expect us to squander it on providing accommodation to homeless people. They expect it to go on the salaries of its 7 directors and 1,300 employees, who only offer advice, with a bit of anti-landlord lobbying on the side. This story is extremely damaging to us. If people lost trust in what we do with their money, and stopped giving it, 1,307 people would lose their jobs, and may become homeless.”... Read More

When I saw Mr Jenrick’s tweet last week about his visit I was shocked. Had Shelter Birmingham started to provide, er, shelter?

Google put my mind at rest. Mr Jenrick went here https://www.birminghamchristmasshelter.org/ , where accommodation was provided, not here where only advice is provided: https://england.shelter.org.uk/get_help/local_services/birmingham_gateway_house

I wonder how much credit Shelter England gets for the real charitable good deeds done by real charities that have its name in their title.... Read More

“Analysis by IPSE (the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed) shows that there are over 180 seats where the majority is smaller than the self-employed population. This includes 48 seats where the majority is less than 1,000 votes, and 111 where it is less than 5,000.

Of the 186 seats, 66 are Labour-held, and the list also includes a remarkable 39 of all 59 Scottish seats. The self-employed could be the difference everywhere from some of the tightest marginals in the country, such as Southampton Itchen and North East Fife, to key Labour targets including Iain Duncan Smith’s Chingford and Woodford Green and Boris Johnson’s seat in Uxbridge.

In short, the self-employed could be vital for Labour this election.”
https://labourlist.org/2019/12/why-the-self-employed-are-vital-for-labour-in-this-election/

Do they know what McDonnell plans for those who operate as companies?

IPSE has published its own manifesto: https://www.ipse.co.uk/uploads/assets/uploaded/249ef707-874b-468b-85c72415566d32a1.pdf

One of its tax recommendations, on digital page 16, is “Commit to no new tax rises or National Insurance Contribution (NIC) increases on the self-employed.”

Well, those self-employed people who are operating as limited companies will suffer considerable increases in tax if Old McDonnell gets into number 11 Downing Street.

The Tories have an open goal. Why don’t they shoot?... Read More

Yes, you are wrong. Like the people at the Telegraph you have forgotten corporation tax. 21% of £1,368 is £287.

But you are extremely quick off the mark with your comment, 15 minutes after it was published. You must be very interested in this forum, Forever Tenant.... Read More

Yes, it is and yes, it does. It is not a sample, it is an example. It is a photocopy of a real letter, with identifying data covered up by blank paper.

On 2 August it was sent to “The Occupier”. Below the latter you can see the top line of the paper that had been stuck over the address.

Below the date you can see the top line of the paper that had been stuck over the Reference.

At the end of the second sentence you can see where the paper has been stuck over part of the last letter.

I fail to see how putting Sir or Madam on the template would make it less complicated to auto-populate the letter with specific data. Do you think putting a specific date on a template would also make it less complicated to put the new right date every day?... Read More

No Paul, I accept you are a landlord because you joined Property 118 in 2013, a few months before I did.

Disabled Tenant popped up at 11.12 on 20 November and started by giving advice to landlords, presumably from Shelter’s manual
https://www.property118.com/member/?id=32712

Having eased himself into Property 118 he started to post nonsensical propaganda the next day.

Do you think it likely that a tenant would move into a dilapidated property and start to look for tradesmen to refurbish it, and deduct their bills from the rent?

Ignoring the cost of materials, how many days’ skilled labour would your monthly rents cover?

You are clearly angry about what spivs have done in your street, in the overcrowded South East. But none of your examples, however exploitative, has anything to do with Section 21, which is what this thread is supposed to be about.... Read More

Alison’s first video s called advice for landlords and tenants, but there is no advice in it for tenants. The advice for landlords is - indulge tenants.

She claims to be a landlord, but this is most of what she says:
“No-one wants to make someone homeless and end a tenancy.”
“We all want to help people who are struggling”
“From a tenant’s point of view I think it’s important that [a landlord’s] income is fair, and not disproportionate.”
“It’s important for the landlord to appreciate that this is a home not just a financial transaction.” The second half of this comes up in big red letters
“I’d like to think that as prices go up the impact of that can be shared between the tenant and the landlord (note the order of priority) so it’s not only the landlord who is benefiting from rising prices.” The bit after my brackets comes up in big red letters.
“Tenants should have a stable and secure home, be able to redecorate, keep pets.”
“Landlords should take this seriously and bring as much integrity as they possibly can.”

This is not advice it is ludicrous pro-tenant propaganda.... Read More

The title and the first paragraph of the discussion between CIOT and HMRC indicate that the letters are only going to a specific group of people - those who are tenants of corporate landlords which are based off-shore.

The sample letter from HMRC confirms this, in the first paragraph:”This property is legally owned by an overseas company called…..”

https://www.tax.org.uk/sites/default/files/Corporate%20NRL%20sample%20compliance%20letter.pdf

The first sentence is “We are writing to you as we hold information that says you live in the property shown above.” This implies that HMRC knows the identity of the people living in the property.

But the letter is addressed to Dear Sir or Madam. This means that HMRC doesn’t hold the information it claims to hold. It probably does not even know whether the property is occupied or not.

The letter goes on to say that only tenants who do not pay rent to a letting agent need to deduct tax from the rent.... Read More

The press release is also incorrect where it claims “However, these figures illustrate the huge gap between DWP funding, and the amount councils need to house homeless households.” 

The £1.1 bn total and the £344m for B&B are NOT the gap between DWP funding and the amount councils need.

The table in the notes for editors shows that the gaps are £280m and £115m respectively.

https://england.shelter.org.uk/media/press_releases/articles/homelessness_crisis_costs_councils_over_1bn_in_just_one_year

The headline of the press release (not shown in the article above) is also incorrect: “Homelessness crisis costs councils over £1bn in just one year”
In fact the cost to councils is about a quarter of that.

So the press release is a pack of lies.

If only Shelter had someone who cared for the truth.... Read More

There is always a reason.... Read More

What made you “live every single day in fear”?

Most tenants end their tenancies themselves, so never receive a Section 21 notice.

Most tenants had never heard of Section 21 until activists like the organisation that calls itself Generation Rent and Shelter whipped up hysteria about it... Read More

In the Daily Telegraph article above, Jeremy Warner wrote “Morton’s insight is that the problem is less that of inadequate social housing – the UK has one of the highest rates of social housing in the EU – but rather that those who would once have been natural home owners found themselves priced out of the market by heavily subsidised buy-to-let landlords. Low interest rates and heavy-handed mortgage regulation have compounded the barriers to home ownership.”

This might look like a quote from Morton, but in fact it is all Warner’s own work. Morton’s report does not claim that landlords are subsidised, heavily or otherwise.

Furthermore, in his report Morton said that BTL only increased prices by 7%. He wrote “One government study in 2008 estimated that buy-to-let demand had increased house prices by 7% relative to where they would otherwise have been.”

It could be that Warner is a member of generation rent, although the photo above his article belies this. He seems to have absorbed David Kingman’s nonsense, however.

According to his profile on the Telegraph website, “Jeremy Warner, assistant editor of The Daily Telegraph, is one of Britain's leading business and economics commentators. A serial winner of awards, he has also been honoured for an "outstanding contribution in defence of freedom of the media" by the Society of Editors for his refusal to reveal sources to Government inspectors. He is @jeremywarneruk on Twitter”

If this is the intellectual calibre of a middle-aged Telegraph assistant editor then the decline in the UK is more desperate than I imagined.... Read More

In the Executive Summary of the report “From Rent to Buy”, Alex Morton wrote “The fall in owner-occupation was accelerated by a series of decisions by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s Governments: scrapping pension dividend relief and allowing interest deductibility for landlords but not owners”
https://www.cps.org.uk/files/reports/original/181015101703-FromRentToOwn.pdf

“Alex Morton is Head of Policy at the Centre for Policy Studies. He was previously a Director at Field Consulting, but before that was responsible for housing and planning in the No 10 Policy Unit under David Cameron, including working on key policies in the 2015 manifesto. He was previously Head of Housing at Policy Exchange”.

If this is the intellectual calibre of the Head of Policy at the Centre for Policy Studies then the decline in the UK is more desperate than I imagined.

Morton has fallen for the facile and false comparison of the deduction of a business expense for landlords against the abolition of MIRAS for owner-occupiers - which was just bunce for them, because there was no longer any tax for it to “relieve”.

This false comparison was promoted by David Kingman shortly after he graduated in Geography in 2013: https://www.property118.com/landlord-tax-grab-source-document-exposed/

It was repeated by George Osborne in his 2015 Summer Budget speech:
“Buy-to-let landlords have a huge advantage in the market as they can offset their mortgage interest payments against their income, whereas homebuyers cannot.”
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chancellor-george-osbornes-summer-budget-2015-speech about two-thirds of the way down

In that budget Osborne introduced a retroactive levy on the finance costs of individual landlords which means that the income tax on rental profit can exceed 100%, and will even be payable when a pre-tax loss has been made.... Read More

While there is a shortage of social housing it is not sensible to sell it to private individuals. It is even less sensible to give them large discounts.... Read More

So it is just a publicity stunt by the LibDems, for inclusion in their election manifesto?

I wonder who drafted it. A well-known anti-landlord lawyer? An unknown lawyer from Shelter? Civil servants, under the instruction of the Minister? Civil servants, under the instruction of Generation Rent?... Read More

Shelter says that “ just 6% of two-bedroom properties across the whole country were both available and affordable to LHA rate claimants”
https://blog.shelter.org.uk/2019/10/no-budget-means-no-help-for-those-facing-homelessness/

It gives a link to the source:
“In a new and extensive piece of research, the Bureau captured the details of more than 62,000 two-bed rental properties across England, Wales and Scotland that were advertised on a single day. By mapping these against the LHA rates in each area, we found just 5.6% are actually affordable on benefits.”

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2019-10-04/locked-out-how-britain-keeps-people-homeless

So those on benefits could not afford 94% of the advertised properties anyway. But Greg Beales wants to dictate how they should be advertised.

Beales is making a mountain out of a molehill, and a laughing stock of himself.... Read More

A real property expert, Kate Faulkner, has today issued a report which includes:
“Problems for tenants
Policy decisions based on bad data and poor, sensational research will lead to more problems for tenants than any help to them.”
https://www.propertychecklists.co.uk/articles/summary-latest-rental-report-from-zoopla-q3-2019... Read More

In the government’s consultation on 3-year tenancies, question 14 on page 33 was “ Do you think that a three-year tenancy with a six month break clause as described above is workable?” Respondents were also offered the opportunity to provide a comment in a free text box.

Dan Wilson Craw’s reply was given prominence in the result, in Paragraph 140: “11% felt that the current system already meets the needs of the sector – although only ten tenants made this comment. Whilst respondents were not directly asked for their views on Section 21, a small number of respondents felt that the proposal would not go far enough to improve security of tenure (5%), and others, mostly tenants, advocated repealing the Section 21 eviction procedure (3%). Generation Rent stated that it is necessary to remove ‘no-fault’ evictions to improve the model’s viability and deliver improved security of tenure. They argued that the use of Section 21 undermines the Government’s intentions to rebalance the relationship between tenants and landlords”.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/795448/Overcoming_the_Barriers_to_Longer_Tenancies_in_the_Private_Rented_Sector_-_government_response.pdf... Read More

“The first-time buyers were, presumably, tenants and it makes no difference to the raw number of houses.”

This echoes propaganda from Dan Wilson Craw, director of the organisation that calls itself Generation Rent (GR), which was apparently based on a fatuous theorem from one of its trustees.

https://www.property118.com/generation-rent-tries-hoodwink-policymakers/

https://www.property118.com/generation-rents-dream-based-fallacious-theorem-trustee/

Not all first time buyers were renters. According to the English Housing Survey 2015/16, one in three was not. So the properties which the latter bought from landlords were no longer available for rent while the number of renters stayed the same.... Read More

Hyperbole Neate, chief exaggerator at Shelter, said “When I took over two years ago hardly anyone aged 65 or over worried about being made homeless. Thanks to our campaigns and lies we have managed to make 25% worry now, thus improving their quality of life.

But we must not rest on our laurels, there is still much to do. We expect that our campaign for the abolition of Section 21 will drive so many landlords out of the market that this 25% will not need to worry for much longer about being made homeless - they will have achieved it. And as the private rented sector shrinks, the remaining 75% will be shaken out of their complacency, and start to worry. It will do them good.

Shelter would be nothing if there was no homelessness, and I would be out of a job. I might even lose my home.”... Read More