220,000 homes set to leave the PRS this year

Govt now fining us £7000 each tenant for every RRA act letter we cannot prove we’ve gave to the tenant-In ten years time. We get fined £7000 for an admin error for a letter the tenant can get off the internet just like we have to. This time Govt gone too far. We Housing Providers. Many of us don’t want the houses & only keeping for the tenant. And you want to fine us £7000 for an error where no one has got hurt?
I tell me Landlord mates in the gym, they can’t believe it. I say It’s really easy, go on Google put £7000 fine Landlord in. They come back next day & say Wow cannot believe it, I would never have never known, that’s it, I’m selling.
I bike Sundays with 10-15 lads. Some have houses, I tell them, they flabbergasted, they had no idea.
I’ve got several expensive (for Nottingham) nice bungalows nice areas I was maybe never gonna’ sell. I’m even selling them now if/when the tenant should ever leave. Govt gone too far now. Renters group love it, but someone please tell em, they’ve now voted for something that’s made their houses more expensive & cut supply. My tenants understand fully what the Govt & Councils are doing to them, they’ve known for years I wish to sell but they now can’t get anywhere any more. All started since George Osborne Sec 24 2015, then Selective Licensing 2018, then UC, the list goes on.
£7000 for a paperwork error each tenant & even if you have gave em the sheets, if you lose your proof, you’ve had it. I can stab someone & get less. Parking ticket £60. No car insurance £200. Letter that tenants not bothered about £7000?

You do really have to wonder what government policy in this area is all about. The Renters Rights Act does have a bit of nutty stuff in it…stopping you from taking more than the asking rent….stopping you taking rent up front (which penalises some pensioners), limiting rent increases. All of which has the effect of increasing rents because you have to increase rents in advance, well ahead of the changes just in case you can’t do it later. And if you look carefully at the proposals to stop you renting out property at below Band C these aren’t coherent either.

But the biggest problem is the tax system, not the Renters Rights Act. If you are running a small residential property portfolio outside a limited company the tax system punishes you for doing it and it also penalises you for raising finance to make energy efficiency improvements. All at a time when the government says they are going to build 1.5 million new homes but we can also see that they might as well be promising to give pigs not just the ability but the right to fly. Empty promises and lies.

Investing in residential property is an investment in something socially useful, especially if it reduces dependence on non-renewable energy. But the tax system penalises it. I just read an article about someone who has invested in a SIPP:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/pensions/private-pensions/how-built-18m-pension-from-100k/?msockid=0b8a4155c7db6ba1058955b1c6196a07

In this article, the SIPP investor who built up the SIPP says that he invested in British American Tobacco. And here’s the thing…you can invest in tobacco, guns (defence stocks are doing well), petrochemicals (including fossil fuel companies drilling in Norway’s jurisdiction), addictive pharmaceuticals, addictive video games, unethical social media companies. All sorts of investments that are not necessarily for the public good. And yet, if you invest in putting a roof over somebody’s head the tax system punishes you, and it also penalises you for raising extra capital for energy efficiency improvements if you aren’t part of the limited company club. And you can’t easily join the small limited company club if you are part of the majority; small portfolio landlords can’t claim roll-over relief and roll their properties over into shares in limited companies. Only the bigger people can do that. HMRC even punishes you via the capital gains tax system and the inheritance tax system. If you built a business, built a home, secured a pension…the government punishes you, not the big people.

But there is so much more a competent party could do. It could increase capital allowances making the installation of photovoltaics worth it. It could enable you to offset your finance costs against the rent for an energy efficient property just by changing one box on the property pages of your personal tax return. It could allow you to invest in energy efficient residential property via your SIPP. Yet you are not allowed to do any of these things and there is no party out there proposing that you should be able to.

You have to wonder why this is and where you would turn for a choice at the next election. Historically, ‘green’ parties used to campaign for things that the ordinary person in the street could do to play a part in making the world a better place. Now the UK Green party is just another radical left wing pressure group, attacking you even more than the government does.

So as we eye-up the next election, where are the genuinely competent politicians? Which political party understands that in order to make the world a better place ordinary people, including ‘ordinary’ (i.e. small) landlords need to be empowered to do it, not just attacked and scapegoated.