Summer Budget 2015 – Landlords Reactions

Could this be the reason the Government want to tax Landlords more? (just saying)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3182519/Welcome-soft-touch-UK-Outrage-immigrants-illegally-entering-UK-free-hotel-rooms-cooked-meals-35-cash-week-days-arrival.html

The Government pays private companies £150 million to accommodate would-be asylum seekers after they have been caught by the police entering the country illegally.

Reply to the comment left by "Connie Cheuk" at "01/08/2015 - 18:42":

Hi Connie - Here is an excerpt of a post I made recently on another forum:- "My portfolio of 20 are all up north in various locations, bought between 2007 and 2014 and nothing I have is valued higher today than the price I paid - prices static and very little movement in sales of property. No CGT for me and no SDLT either."

The petition is now up to 6000 signatures!!!

Reply to the comment left by "Connie Cheuk" at "02/08/2015 - 03:22":

Hi Connie. I would like to thank you for your immense efforts and energy - I know you have said you do not face the catastrophic consequences some landlords do in the face of this gross injustice; and that makes it all the more commendable and selfless that you should helping others so much.

Ros....once a house is repossessed what do you think a bank will do to it? Sell it ....correct? Most probably at an auction. ....Most probably another investor operating through a limited company. Markets are generally efficient and respond to new opportunities that result from economic or regulatory change. I simply do not see the doomsday scenario for the rental sector that many depict....I apologies if that view is different to yours.

Reply to the comment left by "James Tallis" at "02/08/2015 - 10:29":

So the banks will lose out as well big time - houses repossessed and sold at auction will not recover the value of the loans!!

Reply to the comment left by "James Tallis" at "02/08/2015 - 10:29":

James. We have been working to build our business for 15 years plus and our opportunity, pension and children’s future have been wiped away in the stroke of a pen, if we give in to this move.

The doomsday scenario impact is very real for the rented sector. The convoluted market adaptation to which you allude is nonsensical. The simple and only thing to do in this instance is simply to hold your ground as a landlord, & increase rents. Rents will increase so drastically, the increase will engage the public and press and maybe then things will change but by that time higher rents will be in place.

Given the choice to cry my beer, hang myself or jump off a bridge, find £1m I don’t have to re-buy my own properties from ME - or simply put up rents, then… Doooooh! It’s is a no-brainer! My calculation is I need to increase my rents by about 22% just to keep the same amount of income coming into my home so I don’t go bankrupt. If someone else locally needs to increase by 25% I will follow their lead - People need to live somewhere! Of course, rents will rise again if interest rates go up. The tax relief restriction is immoral, lamentable, unfair, disproportionate and all the other sad emotive adjectives but the solution it is Route 101 economics - you hit me ill hit him…The notion that I will default and hand over my business, throw in the towel or pay extortion monies to HMRC is ludicrous I will simply put rents up. Markets, as you say, respond and any other landlord, mortgaged or debt free, will simply follow suit and increase their rents inline with what we have to do.

I wonder" BTL investor Scotland", if we can influence the "SNP" to join us in our fight against this unfair ....unreasonable.....unjust Tax. They are already angry about the " Shameful changes made by the UK Government to Tax Credits" which they say will impact upon 197,200 families in Scotland, Perhaps......they might be just as angry about the possible affects these Budget proposals will have on even more Families.

Reply to the comment left by "John McKay" at "01/08/2015 - 18:54":

Hi John

I posted something on one of the earliest threads, possibly the one about house-builders’ share prices going down 5% after the budget announcement.

I did not know the statistics then, but I knew that BTL landlords had played an important part in increasing the supply of housing.

I also knew the importance of the construction industry to the wider economy, having experienced several recessions.

I agree we should make our views known to house-builders, so that they do the same to the government.

I have edited the original posting slightly:

“George Osborne was on the news this morning [9 July] in connection with making planning approval automatic for building on brownfield sites. He wants to make it easier for developers to build the houses and flats the country desperately needs.

This comes two days after he attacked the sector which has done most to encourage new-builds this century with his iniquitous tax on something that is a cost rather than an income.

It was the commitment of BTL landlords who bought off-plan who enabled developers to build many of the hundreds of thousands of new flats and houses on brownfield sites since the millennium.

We did not take existing properties away from first-time buyers (FTB’s). On the contrary, we facilitated the construction of new homes, some of which were bought by owner occupiers who thereby freed up properties in purchasing chains which ultimately allowed FTB’s to get a foot on the property ladder.

In addition, the developers had to build affordable housing on the same sites, for housing associations, in return for being given planning permission..

If BTL landlords had not made this commitment, developers would not have sold so many properties, or so quickly. Therefore they would not have been able to start their next projects so soon. There would have been fewer homes today, and rents would be higher.

George Osborne wants to encourage new-builds. He will have to do so without our help. Anyone who buys property, either off-plan or finished, in his own name, is volunteering for the levy of up to 25% on the finance costs.

Those who have paid a 15% deposit are stuck with their purchase, but those who have only paid a few hundred pounds as a reservation might consider sending a clear message to the big house-builders by cancelling, asking for money back, and saying why.

In January 2007, well before the sub-prime scandal stopped the property market in its tracks in the following August, an RICS surveyor told me that developers were cancelling projects, mothballing construction sites and laying off workers. The recession had already begun. This was because landlords had stopped buying property because the Bank Rate was so high.

This shows how important BTL landlords are to the construction industry and thus to the wider economy, not just to the stock of property.”

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Brown" at "02/08/2015 - 11:16":

Well put Mark