Keir Starmer: Not all landlords are evil

Starmer is probably trying to get some last minute votes from Landlords.
Angela has made it clear what she intends to do as soon as Labour have a majority and so far Starmer has not rolled back on anything that she has said.

Reply to the comment left by Jimmy Smith at 01/07/2024 - 12:49
All politicians evil?....Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak should club together and send Donald Trump and Jo Biden a thank you card for making them look good. 🙂

It seems to me that with the exception of Vladimir Putin (who is every bit as evil and dishonest as Adolf Hitler) in politics there are mostly degrees not so much of evil as much as hypocrisy, dishonesty or competence/incompetence.

Keir Starmer has a generous public sector pension that is outside the scope of UK tax....just like investments in offshore tax havens like the Cayman islands, Panama, Luxembourg or Switzerland.

The public sector employs 16.7% of the UK population and provides this small minority with a generous pension relative to the private sector. In contrast there are 27.5 million people in the UK working in private business. These people don't get generous, gilt-edged public sector pensions. They are instead reliant upon employment and their pensionable assets (including BTL) to secure their future.

They also rely upon their homes to 'safeguard' their future...just as Angela Rayner did when she bought her council house and possibly rented it to her brother before she became an MP. Even public sector workers rely on BTL investments and their homes to provide a 'pensions safeguard' if they consider their generous public sector pensions aren't enough for the future they aspire to.

If the left-wing members of the labour party really want to redistribute assets they should start with Keir Starmer's non-taxable pension, the pensions and grace-and-favour homes of trade union leaders and the pensions of the chief executives and other senior executives of local councils. If they attack private businesses, people's own homes, or their pensions (including the BTL investments of small-portfolio landlords) then they are attacking the majority to benefit the privileged few.

In the meantime it has been reported that in anticipation of a labour government increasing numbers of millionaires are departing the UK.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/06/18/business/uk-millionaires-loss-record/index.html#:~:text=As%20many%20as%209%2C500%20people,by%20migration%20advisers%20Henley%20%26%20Partners.

If these reports are correct and the left wing members of the UK political set (e.g. the SNP) continue to attack the PRS it is hard to see how they can afford to build their 1.5 million new homes.

The simplest 'big idea' they could come up with would be to allow us to invest in BTL via a SIPP wrapper, even if that was only for energy-efficient property. The structures to enable this are already there for commercial property and the only missing bit of the jigsaw is an EPC system that is actually meaningful.

What politicians and the media do not seem to grasp or want to acknowledge is that rents are set by the BTL mortgage that they usually have behind them. Not many of us 'evil' landlords own our rentals outright. As mortgages rise, rents have to rise accordingly. Most Buy To Let lenders insist that the rent is at least 1.25 times (or more) the outstanding mortgage. They will not provide the BTL mortgage unless the rent reflects this. But this is never mentioned when this subject comes up.

Reply to the comment left by Lorne Mason at 01/07/2024 - 14:29
That's right...but it's not the only risk-factor affected by inflation. The Bank of England summarises the figures as follows:

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/quarterly-bulletin/2023/2023/the-buy-to-let-sector-and-financial-stability

As of December 2023 according to the BOE BTL debt is about 300 billion of outstanding debt, 18% of the total mortgage market.

But it's not just BOE policy that affects risk. If you can't deduct your mortgage costs because of tax policy then you have to push rents up higher as rents climb. If you run a higher risk of your tenant not being able to pay you, or of you not being able to get your property back for a year because of problems in the court system, then you have to push the rent up higher to mitigate the risk....governments like the SNP government in Scotland increase your risk as a landlord.

And in a high-risk environment what you can also do to decrease the risk is advertise the property at a guide price and find a way to select the best tenants out of the 20-30 that apply for the property. E.g. by prioritising those with better references, a better credit-rating, those who are prepared to pay higher than the advertised rent or pay rent upfront.

That's a sensible response to a more risky environment created by government and the Bank of England. It's not a question of 'bidding wars' created by landlords...it's a question of a rational and objective response to a more risky environment created by government and the Bank of England.

Reply to the comment left by Paul Essex at 01/07/2024 - 12:35
All labour MPS aren't communist...the SNP in Scotland appears to be full of more radical left-wingers than the labour party in Scotland.

In April the Times reported that HMRC research had found that millionaires were leaving Scotland:

https://www.thetimes.com/uk/scotland/article/higher-earners-leaving-scotland-to-reduce-tax-burden-research-finds-kl56bnv7g

The Independent has just reported that a group called People Before Profit in Northern Ireland has proposed a 45% tax on business profits over £125K:

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/tax-on-millionaires-proposed-as-people-before-profit-calls-for-radical-change/ar-BB1pd9dr?ocid=msedgntp&pc=HCTS&cvid=7c3aa100ea9a403aa9abac4deeac227b&ei=38

In fact, although the Republic of Ireland has a higher headline rate of Corporation Tax than the UK, big companies like Amazon and Facebook don't actually pay that rate of tax (with the cooperation of the Irish government). So having a high rate of tax in NI would just result in companies relocating from e.g. Belfast to Dublin. In the end these kind of radical left-wing policies result in a lower tax-take as both individuals and companies vote with their feet in order to stop themselves being penalised.

Because of the Barnett Formula, in the UK we pay out more tax-payers' money per citizen in Northern Ireland and Scotland than we do in England (although our poorest communities are actually in England and often seem to be attracted by the likes of UKIP and Reform):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnett_formula#:~:text=The%20Barnett%20formula%20is%20a%20mechanism%20used%20by,services%20in%20England%2C%20Scotland%20and%20Wales%2C%20as%20appropriate.

The SNP always blames Westminster for the failure of its policies. But in the end, the more radical and extreme-left-wing regions like Scotland and NI become, the more England picks up the tab and the more they drive other parts of the UK to other extremes.

In the end because millionaires also flee England it's middle-income earners in England that end up being punished for left-wing extremism in Scotland and NI. Even the left-wing press knows that:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/21/britain-millionaires-leave-tax-havens-uk#:~:text=Henley%20%26%20Partners%2C%20which%20makes%20a,millionaires%20migrated%20from%20the%20UK.

Politics is about who controls the middle ground, not the lunatic fringes. The problem with the labour party is that we don't always know which ones are the communists... 🙂

There are several comments here about landlords with fully owned properties being in a good place.

One of mine now works out at 2.2% roi after tax and expenses, definitely not fat cat territory yet it is around market rent. So in the south east we are generally stuffed mortgage or not!

Reply to the comment left by david porter at 01/07/2024 - 11:15
Anyone with a brain and that is objective knows that he is merely saying these things to hoover up votes from our young people; knowing too well that he CAN'T and WON'T deliver on these promises to them. He WON'T deliver diddly squat as him and his team are incapable of doing so. And there is no financial headroom in the treasury to do so. Were his party to win (God FORBID), they WILL ruin lives as they have been doing in ALL councils controlled by their Marxist party and especially in Wales. They are a clueless bunch who are saying and will continue to say anything and everything just to get elected. Anyone with aspiration or love for our country that vote for these lot need their heads examining. They WILL RUIN your finances and our country and make the Gordon Brown era mistakes child play. Vote for them at your economic peril.

Reply to the comment left by Lorne Mason at 01/07/2024 - 14:29
But these are clueless people who don't understand the true dynamics of anything. They are Marxists who thinks that they can legislate and control everything, when in reality they CAN'T. It is both embarrassing and laughable that we are even talking about these sorts of people as being potentially in charge of our country - the former mighty Great Britain!!!!! It's sad.

Not all landlords are evil - but just incase we will treat you all as though you are!!

Reply to the comment left by Rob Crawford at 01/07/2024 - 17:41That's right. You can invest your pension in arms to be sent to Israel or the Yemen. You can invest your pension in tobacco companies targeting the third world, or getting teenagers addicted to vapes. Not only can you do it, you are encouraged to do it via the tax breaks.

But you can't invest your pension in a buy-to-let putting a roof over somebody's head in the UK whether it's energy-efficient and reducing the UK's CO2 emissions or not: And if you invest outside of a pension and you are a small-portfolio landlord (the majority, i.e. the small people) you will suffer a punitive tax regime....particularly in Scotland, the region in the UK with the most left-wing government.

I don't think it's really evil in intent...just incompetent.