The Latest Campaign Poster from Shelter

Reply to the comment left by "Flat Detective" at "30/03/2014 - 02:03":

I can feel your pain,Joe ,I couldn't have put it better myself.With 4 eviction over the last 18 months,damage and a 40k bill to foot between solicitors,unpaid rent,repairs,marketing etc,I am not surprised that landlords are beginning to become more vocal.Shelter is a left-wing political platform,that is what a lot of these "charidees" are about,not to mention the wages paid to chief executives and the whole apparatus,it stinks.

Read my original post. You will see indeed that I support what Joe has said. He has used capital letters not to indicate a "level of anger" but to answer your comments and differentiate between his and yours.
And the Sean Lock video is "despicable" in its portrayal of landlords, paid for by donations and other financial support via the taxpayer. I would love to be in a position that my properties are "snapped up" within days. But the level of competition is such that unless they are priced right and maintained well they do not let. Shelter knows exactly what it is doing in its political stance to discredit landlords to force legislative control over them as has happened in Scotland and soon to happen in Wales. And if we get a Labour government run by Red Ed he will cosy up to his Trotskyist mates at Shelter and do the same. The result will be less good landlords who will get out of the game and be replaced by more bad ones who will not give a toss about licensing or Shelter. So carry on with the tirade Shelter. But be careful what you wish for.

Reply to the comment left by "Flat Detective" at "29/03/2014 - 21:05":

London can be a wonderful City, it is one of many of Europe's fine capitals that I can get to in a couple of hours.

The reason I choose not to live there is that I can enjoy a far better lifestyle living elsewhere. London is too expensive for me to justify living there.

I understand that some people have no choice other than to stay but a LOT of people do have the ability to move on and find better lives in other parts of the Country, the BBC have proven that. If Londoners were to do the same then London would be far less crowded and the issues you speak of would reduce significantly to similar levels as experienced in the rest of the UK.

I would also point out that Shelter propaganda isn't just aimed at London, it has far reaching tentacles and landlords on the extremities continue to get stung.

Supply and demand is far better balanced outside London and in some areas tenant demand exceeds the supply of available property. This creates choice, hence far less people have to put up with inferior living conditions.

Landlords do not control demand, with or without landlords the number of properties wouldn't increase. In fact, without landlords there would probably have been less properties built since 1996 and the introduction of BTL mortgages.

Landlords cannot control supply or demand and they have little control over where people choose to live.

Now lets turn to charitable status.

When I wanted to raise money to create the Deed of Assurance I struggled. Very few people wanted to support "The GOOD Landlords Campaign". By your own admission, the Deed of Assurance is good. The reason you hadn't heard of it is lack of funds to promote it as a solution for GOOD Landlords to offer and for good tenants to request.

On the other hand, Shelter raise millions on the back of being a housing charity. However, they don't provide housing. They are totally focussed on highlighting problems are will not listen to or promote practical solutions. They pay no tax and the people and organisations supporting them get tax relief on their donations. How can this be right?

CONCLUSION

I agree with what other landlords have said. This behaviour is despicable. Shelter are political lobbyist at their core and should not be allowed to masquerade as a housing charity.

PS - I will not be able to respond for the rest of the day as I will be driving from my home in Norfolk to pick my Mum up from Heathrow airport and then bring her home for a bit of pampering as it's Mothers Day today so we will have to pick up on this discussion again tomorrow.
.

Reply to the comment left by "Flat Detective" at "30/03/2014 - 02:03":

i think you have youre answer.
gary is correct and i thought it was obvious the reason for the caps was to differentiate my text from yours so as to make reading easier. you seem to be misconstruing a fair bit and i wonder whether this is because you are influenced by preconceptions about landlords. i was not at all 'angry' when i wrote any of the posts whether here or on FB. furthermore, my tenants are treated very fairly as evidenced by how long many stay. i have even agreed to rent reductions when long term tenants fell on hard times. several of my properties are under rented to good long term tenants. in fact i have never had to evict a tenant or had rent arrears (although there has been a few close shaves). i do know from the experience of others how fraught this would be. i think you need to read these blogs with more of an open mind. you seem to be deploying similar blinkered tactics to shelter.

I'm still interested to get a bit more detail (see questions in my previous post) on how Flat Detective could have so many landlords, and so many allegedly bad ones.

There are quite a few cowboy HMO landlords in London but I would say that many of the tenants are also cowboy tenants in that the arrangements they often get into are so obviously so dodgy that they cannot be expected to end well. Sure this is partly due to the scarcity of accommodation, but still...

Very interesting views about Shelter, to be fair to them and they are often on the other side of Landlord Action cases, I invited them to my office a month ago and they came down and I showed them my operations and to look at the landlords perspective on things when there is a bad tenants.

I also let them hear some advice line calls from distressed landlords, so Shelter are engaging.

Have a look below at my blog on Retaliation Eviction on Section 21, my thoughts about the governments ideas on it.

http://www.landlordaction.co.uk/site.php/blog/retaliation_eviction_under_section_21_28_3

Reply to the comment left by "Paul Shamplina" at "02/04/2014 - 10:57":

It is Brilliant to see Shelter working with you Paul 🙂

A very positive step IMO.

Reply to the comment left by "Neil Patterson" at "02/04/2014 - 11:08":

One small step for Shelter, one giant leap forward for the PRS.

Great news Paul, perhaps you can encourage Shelter to read this thread?
.