Summer Budget 2015 – Landlords Reactions

Reply to the comment left by "Lorraine W" at "23/07/2015 - 22:43":

I worked for a council housing department just after Right to Buy was introduced. This sounds exactly like what happened in the Council. Houses sold for peanuts, not allowed to use the money to build new ones. Unable to house prospective tenants etc.

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "24/07/2015 - 09:29":

Hi Mark.
Can you give me the link to the article as I want to send it to spareoom. I've had an answer from this morning, which is as follows:

Thanks for your email - our customer services team passed it on to me.

We did indeed raise money for Shelter but it was strictly ring-fenced for their free advice line, which is available to both tenants and landlords, rather than any of their campaign work. Our intent was to help people who need housing advice, rather than push any specific agenda. We overlap with Shelter on some points - such as their support for our Raise the Roof campaign, which was included in this month's budget - but we also differ in many ways so didn't want to support campaign work.

That's largely because SpareRoom is different from most property sites. Rightmove and Zoopla (for example) are focussed solely on agents as that's where they make their money. The overriding majority of SpareRoom users are tenants but we also work with large numbers of homeowners, landlords and agents so we have a much broader interest in the market as a whole.

It was as much of a surprise to us as to you that the Conservative government decided to make such bold changes to their policy on Buy to Let. When I interviewed representatives of the five main UK political parties before the election the overriding feeling was that the Conservatives were by far and away the party most likely to have landlords' interests at heart. Labour, Greens and Lib Dems all had a host of policies relating to rent control, longer leases and better terms for tenants (as well as taxing landlords more heavily) but the Conservative MP we interviewed - Bob Neill, who has worked at DCLG alongside the housing team - didn't mention anything along those lines.

We're currently re-vamping our landlord newsletter (previously Multi-Letters) into a more readable email format so we'll definitely be looking at any changes to legislation as part of that and inviting comment and opinion from landlords who, after all, are the people dealing with the legislation day in, day out. I think you're absolutely right that a lot of landlords don't fully understand how things work and, therefore, what the implications of any changes could be.

Thanks for taking the time to get in touch.

Reply to the comment left by "Ros ." at "24/07/2015 - 10:18":

Hi Ros

James Tallis posted the link earlier today on page 112 of this thread.

Here's the link >>> http://www.cityam.com/220861/bashing-buy-let-landlords-will-push-rents-and-hit-uk-economy-hard
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Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "24/07/2015 - 10:39":

Thanks Mark. I'll sort it this afternoon.
I'm wondering if a new thread could be set up into which the most convincing and accurate posts could be cut and pasted - from all the relevant threads here? To include good arguments, good explanations of how it would work, well-written letters, personal stories, some calculations for individual cases - etc? The reason I ask is because I'm worried that when we refer people to this thread - as I have done several times - the first thing they'll see is how confused we were, and how some people explained in an authoritative voice, as I recall, things which were actually inaccurate? I know it's a tall order, but it would be a brilliant resource and could form the basis of a report (which I would be very happy to help compile). Let me know what you think. I don't know Neil's job description with you, but I'm thinking NEIL!

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I just found this article on the Telegraph Website. At least it supports our point of view,

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/investing/buy-to-let/11697865/The-single-reason-why-buy-to-let-investors-must-keep-their-5bn-a-year-tax-break.html

I just wish commentators would stop calling offsetting our costs a "Tax Break". It's just offsetting the cost of doing business against the income..........

Reply to the comment left by "Stewart Jackson" at "24/07/2015 - 12:34":

Agreed, good article. I have contacted the author.
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Quick report back to the campaign group:
1. I've sent questions to my MP to pose to the Treasury.
2. I've sent the director of spareroom, Matt Hutchinson, the link to the Alan Ward (or his PA) article.
3. I've written to the City and Finance part of the Daily Mail, urging them to do an article.

Reply to the comment left by "Ros ." at "24/07/2015 - 15:47":

I have spoken to the business editor of Eastern Daily Press and also to The Telegraph today - both seemed very interested in what I had to say and both were unaware of the IFS commentary so that could bode well for us too.
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Great article Stewart...general consensus amongst property professionals is that, forthcoming tax is unlikely to be implemented due to fundamental issues it exposes buy to let business to...

I personally think there would be some tweak as devil is usually in detail but when it comes to Tories nothing surprises me!