End of the Road

I am an NLA member and think some the things they do are good such as local meetings, advice line and having the benefit of Tax investigation insurance.
However I feel they their for their own profit alone.
I would support the foundation of a Co-op stile landlord organisation that offered the same services but the landlord members shared the profits.

Reply to the comment left by Chris at 15/09/2018 - 19:36
That's all fine in theory, but who is going to run an organisation like that for nothing? Not me, that's for sure!

I bit of more than I could chew when I started Property118, it was a very expensive hobby at first.

Then, despite winning the UK's largest direct public access Representative Action in history, recovering £27,500,000 of overpaid BTL mortgage interest and creating positive case law for landlords, without earning a penny from it, some people chose to attack me for monetising my blog when I decided to come out of retirement and use Property118 to promote my tax planning consultation service.

My perception of running an organisation representing landlords is bit like my perception of politics, i.e. if it doesn't pay good money the only people who will get into it will be those with no sense of the real world, those with a big ego to feed or the outright corrupt.

It was suggested at outset of this post that Mark & Neil might care to set up a proper landlords' representative organisation via Property118 to do the job the NLA etc patently don't perform. Mark has explained quite reasonably why he would not be part of it as anyone who knows him would expect and completely understand. I posted earlier that it was unfair to put him on the spot after what he has already achieved for us. Yet urging the establishment of a new body continues without any of the urgers volunteering at least to do some donkey work. This is not uncommon, sadly, in most walks of life. "My idea now somebody else do it!"

Reply to the comment left by Richard Adams at 15/09/2018 - 21:17
Spot on Richard!

To start an organisation to achieve what landlords want/need would require several 10's of millions of seed capital and a good CEO would want upwards of £500,000 a year plus bonusses.

Just to be absolutely clear, even if that is ever achieved, I will not be applying for the job. My family, my friends and my sunbed are far more important to me than any amount of money.

I agree with both Mark and Richard. To set up such an organisation would be a massive task , apart from the seed capital also in terms of time etc. We all have lives. Having said that I have some infastructure in place ,Office Comms etc.
My concern is Landlord apathy. How quick could we get landlords to take up membership. I remember speaking to Carolyn Uphill from the NLA some time back and she could not understand why they could not get numbers much above 60k out of over 1.5 million landlords.

Reply to the comment left by Larry Sweeney at 16/09/2018 - 10:11
His Larry

I don’t think the NLA actually have ‘60,000 paying’ members do they?

The only way I can see it working is for mortgage lenders, letting agents, deposit protection schemes and insurance companies to insist on membership. Persuading them to to that would be incredibly difficult though, because they would feel they would be giving a commercial advantage to compete who do not have such rules to doing business with them.

If they did, and every landlord had to pay just £10 a year for membership, that would produce a huge budget with which to lobby and influence Government and it would benefit all parties, not just landlords.

Just imagine if 10’s of million of funding was available to fight the following:-

S24
Selective licensing
PRA lending regulations
The ban on tenant fees
The new HMO rules
Etc, etc.

Reply to the comment left by Mark Alexander at 16/09/2018 - 10:38Last week Richard Lambert claimed the NLA had 39,000 paying members, and a gross income of £4.1m last year

Hi Mark.
They claim to have approx 60k and the RLA approx 20k. I would envisage a £90 membership fee. This is similar to NLA/RLA fees. As you said a fund would be built to fight issues such as Sect 24 and to Lobby etc. From the outset I would make it clear that no courses would be sold nor would the organisation under any circumstances get into bed with councils to assist them with schemes which are to the detriment of landlords. The nonsense of having landlord meetings and the council being invited as The NLA have done is pure garbage.

Reply to the comment left by Larry Sweeney at 16/09/2018 - 10:51
Hi Larry

Have you read my suggestions?

I will add to them.

I would want the Board of Directors to be voted in annually by all members. Only representatives seconded by lenders, large agents, insurance companies and deposit protection providers could stand for election. The reason I say this is that it would prevent individuals with other personal grievances from standing for election.

The organisation would need to be not for profit and the organisation sponsoring the Director would be able to expense their salary back to the landlords union, or whatever it is called.

I’ve given a lot of thought to this over the years but I’m at a stage in life which doesn’t suit me to pursue this any further.

Hi Mark,
My vision initially would differ slightly. As the organisation grew ,those options could be revisited. Look at the NLA and their staff step up. Look at the wage bill. I would envisage a lean organisation with the founder as the CEO. The organisation could have say Cotswold Barristers as a legal rep and perhaps a number of solicitors around the country who could defend members against Council prosecutions. The organisation would dispence advise and keep landlords up to date on line. Another benefit of the membership fee would be automatic accredation meaning landlords could produce this to councils and refuse to be bullied in to paying for courses with the councils partners the NLA and RLA. Once we had enough members or Trump the numbers in the RLA at the very least ie 20k plus, nobody could ignore us.