Summer Budget 2015 – Landlords Reactions

#TenantTax I think it's an amatuerist attempt on spin and I don't like it.

Am I the only one?
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Reply to the comment left by "KATHY MILLER" at "27/09/2015 - 10:00":

Great find Kathy... Seem like always, having all the rights dots in all the right places and then linking them is not a thing government is good at..

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "27/09/2015 - 10:26":

Mark. I happen to think it is the only honest thing in this debate. I cried in my beer for a while, gazed at my navel and stared at the abyss and in the end I realised that I have no option but to increase rents and use that money to pay the tax.

I have written to loads of people and tenants and told them what was afoot and asked them to sign the petition. I even know king Cnut met the man from the treasury... None of it made a huge difference.

We had a chance to inform the Public Bills Committee. 28,000 others would have got the e-mail i got from the petitions team and only a few good men and women did so

Rents will rise significantly and still I find people who don't get it. slowly but surely everyone is coming out and saying it is going to increase rents. - Tenants pay the rent so tenants will pay the tax. = Tenant Tax.

I am wide open to better suggestion... Anything?? But, I do think we need a single strand strap line that works for itself.

#TenantTax

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Brown" at "27/09/2015 - 13:25":

I don't agree. The reality is that with a few interest rate rises, many landlords will go out of business and they will not be able to just keep increasing rents. When you raise rents you annoy and de-stabilise tenants. The only way I generally get any rises in - and I have definitely started doing this more - is when someone leaves. I can then advertise at an increased rent. But if you increase it too much, you just end up with a void for longer. Yes, Clause 24 will lead to an increase in rents; but no, nothing like the level needed to keep landlords in business. So I'm not comfortable with the term 'tenant tax.' I see it more as an attack on landlords than on tenants - although both will suffer.

The Daily Mail is slowly playing catch-up regarding the tax bombshell:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/buytolet/article-3250126/Why-investors-fear-buy-let-bonanza-coming-abrupt-end.html

I'm afraid 'Paul and Gale,' who are profiled, haven't quite understood what they're getting into.

And of course the Mail had to end on an upbeat note, as though BTL mortgages are still viable.

50% of landlords have no mortgages, large landlords will incorporate, smaller landlords will sell to FTB's and BTL will become a less attractive form of investment.

As demand increases rents will rise but that will come after the mayhem, not before.

Only when landlords have their pick of the best tenants on high incomes will rents increase significantly. Before we ever get to that position there will be carnage with hundreds of thousands of tenants being left homeless.

This is an attack on both landlords and tenants but to think the solution is simply to pass on the tax to tenants and that the status quo will remain is naive in my opinion. I also agree with Ros, it's not just tax that will hurt the PRS, interest rates will rise too. mass homelessness will become a problem well before rental inflation kicks in, especially if demand for homes continues to grow.

It is for these reasons I'm not happy to badge this as a tenant tax. I will sell a large chunk of my portfolio to owner occupiers or cash rich landlords if they want them. I will retain the rest mortgage free. When the market facilitates higher rents from better quality tenants then that's what I will provide. Meanwhile, like other larger landlords, I will be restructuring my tax affairs to ensure that I am under minimal pressure to divest and and gear down, thus able to do things in my own time.

Those landlords proposing to put rents up by 5% per annum will have a big shock and find they have significant void periods before realising that rents are set by market forces and then have to settle for what the market rate is after having already lost a lot of money due to rental voids.

That's just my opinion, some will disagree but life would be boring if we all had the same opinion.

Having said all of that, I still haven't given up on the notion that common sense will prevail at Wedtminster proving we continue with our lobbying efforts.
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Reply to the comment left by "Ros ." at "27/09/2015 - 14:13":

Thank you Ros. Input greatly appreciated.

I am not being facetious... so whats the alternative to #TenantTax? Still wide open to alternatives......Anything??

Ask your tenants... "Would you rather be slightly annoyed and uncomfortable or... Homeless?" I think you may not be surprised by the reply... Would they rather be left alone? "YES OF COURSE" but that is not an option for them now... is it?

Are you dealing with the possible / potential interest rate rises or the Tenant Tax in your general thinking on your rental business reasoning at the moment? There are a huge number of things, internal and external factors that may happen down the line. Some will help your business and some will make it harder.

Whatever you have to do to increase rents is what you have to do. How you feel about it is personal and unique to the individual. There will be multiple ways and means to increasing rents all of which are not fair, necessary. And I honestly believe raising rents is not what we want to do. BUT the end result is rents will increased and Tenants will pay it. The Tenant Tax is just another thing that will accelerate that rent rise and for no good reason.

You may not like the fact but we can all survive this Tenant Tax by increasing rents to cover the tax. There are more tenants than there are properties almost everywhere. We have a legal right to increase rents and if we consider ourselves businessmen, then we have the moral obligation to increase rents and stay in business. You also have a fiduciary obligation & probably a contractual obligation to your lender...Your lender will foreclose on you if they even slightly doubt your ability to ensure you can pay the loan...

Look at property118; It sees an opportunity and invents a solution and markets it to us. Be that insurance which annoys us could have found or the "£5,000 magic solution to incorporation to avoid Tenant Tax" Hats off to Property118 for business acumen. I am worried that anyone here wants to be considered a business but is loathed to act like one when it counts.

Please don't confuse other elements that will have an impact down the line. We will need to deal with them when they come along.

We are on the topic of the Tenant Tax; the measure bought in, in the July budget to collect tax- just from the tenants of individual landlord,s tenants who have mortgages... It will be paid by tenants.

Be in no doubt If you go out of business then whoever buys your properties or take your place in the market will increase the rents to pay the tax or if they are cash buyers or business landlords they will raise the rents anyway and increase their profits - thats is business. FACT at law you don't even have an earned income, so you aint paying it legally, no matter how you see it. Tenants are paying it = Tenant Tax

I don't like it either but it is a Tenant Tax and if Tenants get that point they may join us in having it stopped.

Lets let George Osbourne or David Gauke have a go at debunking "Tenant Tax" Please don't try to do it for them... unless you have a better suggestion of course...

Wide open to alternatives to Tenant Tax or #TenantTax and "noting" is not the alternative. Please please please get behind it.

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Alexander" at "27/09/2015 - 14:40":

Mark. Your plan is eminently sensible.

I know I am blessed in my location and quality of product and quality of tenant and yes I guess the market. I will put rents up and tenants will pay it or they will have nowhere to live. No one lives in my properties because they are the cheapest available... The guy with the cheapest product is always in danger...

The solution is not , as you say, to pass the tax on to tenants. the solution is to scrap the Tenant Tax, see sense and have a joined up housing think as a country and government. I am not the country or the government but i am working hard to try to make them see sense...

Not the solution...BUT... The necessity is to pass the tax on to tenants. That must have been the government intent as any sensible thinker would have foreseen that if you increase landlords costs, you increase rents - the obvious consequence.

Again.. not being facetious... what are the Market forces that set rents? If I have a house and I put the rent up the tenant either pays it or goes somewhere else... I find a tenant willing to pay the rent I want.... When George, the other landlord, hears I've put my rents up he puts his rents up. When landlords have empty houses they improve them and fill them or if the market is saturated they sell them as they know they'll never let them... what am I missing?

As you say... we need to continue our lobbying efforts and #TenantTax is a part of that toolkit/ Lets let George Osbourne and David Gauke debunk it if they can. Because, as sure as you have to go through diesel to get to petrol in refining oil, Tenants Tax is in the solution chain of this nonsense.

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Brown" at "27/09/2015 - 15:09":

Mark, you can call it whatever you like. It's a free country. But you can't make others call it 'the tenant tax' if they don't want to. I don't want to.

This is simply a rent tax or tenant tax
I have increased 60 rents from £640 to £730 and this has caused me to loose 10 single parent benefit families and replace them with flat share young full time workers .
The conservatives are using this to social engineer our towns and cities