Summer Budget 2015 – Landlords Reactions

Reply to the comment left by "Stewart Jackson" at "24/07/2015 - 12:34":

"I just wish commentators would stop calling offsetting our costs a “Tax Break”. It’s just offsetting the cost of doing business against the income"

Spot on.

I have sent the letter on page 111: http://www.property118.com/budget-2015-landlords-reactions/76164/comment-page-111/#comments to my mortgage broker. and asked him to send it to his clients, and to any other brokers he knows to pass on to their clients.

I changed the covering email on page 111 by replacing "This measure will drive landlords to sell up, which will reduce the number of properties available to rent" which was aimed at letting agents to "This measure will deter landlords from borrowing to buy more properties."

The broking community should be another good conduit to get the message spread to landlords.

Also now sent a letter to the Bank of England...

I finally sent the letter to my MP, who also happens to play a role at the Treasury, tonight. I have chosen not to post a copy of it here to be read and then manipulated by the primary school bullies on the hpc forum, who STILL seem to be copying almost every post here into various threads on their own popular forum.

I say bullies, but really they’re not. They are actually more like the insecure dim witted kids that hid behind the school bullies, trying to act all hard’n’clever’n’stuff, thinking that will make them popular. In fact thinking about it - they would make perfect tabloid journalists, who also hide behind their keyboards!

Sorry all, I know I should just ignore all their puerile and often deeply offensive male chauvinistic banter.

Reply to the comment left by "Mark Shine" at "24/07/2015 - 20:57":

Hi Mark.
I have been blissfully unaware of this HPC thing. Just looked at the site because a few people had mentioned it and it looked a bit boring. They want to get a life if they have to keep checking on what we're saying. They must find us very interesting. But the feeling isn't mutual. I won't be looking at it again.
I have come across this phenomenon before though on a site discussing Spanish house prices - some people wanted to make sure they got the best possible bargain when the house prices had completely bottomed out. They were frantic about it; a very nervous, risk-averse type - they'd wet themselves if they found out after buying that they'd spent a penny more than necessary. So, of course, they probably never bought anything in the end.
Some of them are quite jealous, too, of course and bitter and vengeful. Personally I don't give a bee baa boo if someone has got more money than me - but for some this is disastrous. And if you think about it, these are the supporters of the kind of anti-landlord campaigns run by Shelter and so of course they're over the moon at this Budget proposal, which has pandered to their psychological problems and feelings of failure, perhaps (can't generalise too much, as all kinds of psychoses and sociopathies could be at play here). Obviously, they haven't thought about all the people, maybe some of them included, whose rents will go up and who may find themselves homeless when the landlords go bust. Yeah. Really clever.
Ah. I noticed one thing. They do think they are really clever. I saw some comments suggesting they think they are the intelligentsia and we are some kind of dullards. I'd be happy to compare certificates with them!
I didn't see the sexist stuff, luckily.

Reply to the comment left by "Ros ." at "24/07/2015 - 22:24":

You obviously didn't see what they were saying about my wife on their thread entitled "Dedicated Landlord Property Portal" then.
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Reply to the comment left by "Ros ." at "24/07/2015 - 22:24":

Glad you missed their sexist threads or sexist comments on many threads there Ros.

You've become something of a celeb on some of their threads, although they obviously don't read your posts too closely as they seem to think or assume you're male. My guess is their contributors are 100% male.

I need to force myself to stop looking at their comments. Some of their contributors clearly are intelligent, some of them are actually rather witty, yet many of them are just deeply twisted. But you're right - let's not speak of them again. They are doing Mark A a big help by inadvertently directing people here, but no need to return the favour.

Just a quick thought, first of all I firmly believe that we are a business and I don’t want to back track on this concept, but if the government insist that we are not a business and that all property letting is investment then this train of thought should be used by the Cotswold Barrister to help fight the West Bromwich Building Society case re the interest rate scam of the Base rate tracker mortgages.
If renting property is most definitely a personal investment then we are most definitely consumers when purchasing our financial products and as such the unfair contract regulations should apply in the High court case that is coming up. If I remember correctly they stated that any landlord with more than 4 properties was treated as a commercial investor and as such the unfair contract regulations would not apply.
It’s just a thought, and I certainly don’t think we should have to be playing angles like this in that grossly unfair legal court ruling. Just making a statement!

Hello. New member here. Great to see action being taken. I'm staggered by the lack of response on other sites. Having spoken with agents I know locally, I appear to be the first / only one to have mentioned the problem to them suggesting investors simply are not alert to the implications.

I'm in a similar position to Mark Shine. Income from letting only iro 180K - gross let portfolio about £4.5 million. Annual taxable profit has been steadily in the £40K area. I still need to properly analyse my numbers but my effective rate of tax is heading for high 50s under the new rules. A 0.5% rise will take me into the 60-65% area. A 1.5% rise interest rate will take me in to the 80-85% region.

I used to develop within a limited company - mostly conversions of knackered houses into flats. After 10 years I decided to develop one site to hold for myself as a "pension", which I have fully managed myself since 2008. It was a calculated decision to put my money into property, managed by myself, rather than a pension managed by someone else.

Interestingly, my main competitor for purchasing sites locally over the years has been a large privately owned company. Times rich list. Hundreds of properties. I know, respect and am on good terms with the owner. They have always had the advantage of size from being an early entrant into the market - which is fair enough. Now the government seems set on crucifying small businesses like mine whilst handing even more competitive advantage to the much larger incorporated property holders. From where I am standing it looks obscene!

The spreadsheets showing how the changes will affect landlords are extremely useful. I think they would be strongly complimented by illustrations showing how incorporated landlords with identical portfolios would be affected. Or, for different sized portfolios, even illustrating how differently the effective tax rate will be affected in both cases. Calculating this is way beyond me, but I think it is important to firmly illustrate the disparity between how the different groups are being treated.

I am not against reigning in the future Buy to Let market. However, this feels more like punishment of a random sample of those who participated in the years when it was actively encouraged. Unfortunately, the recent hysterical vilification of landlords (and I don't deny that there are those who deserve it) means that getting anyone to listen is all the more difficult as they have a carte blanche to dismiss you.

Anyway. Glad to have stumbled across this site. My MP is the Shadow Business Secretary. I'm not sure whether that is a good or bad thing. We'll see.

Reply to the comment left by "Dr Monty Drawbridge " at "25/07/2015 - 11:20":

Welcome on board Doc, I look forward to reading more comments from you 😀
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