Dear Mr Neidle

As you have refused to speak to me on a recorded Zoom call on two separate occasions I am publishing this open letter in the hope of appealing to your better nature.

Before I emigrated to Malta in 2016 I lived in Norfolk for 30 years, just down the road from where you live now. My family still do.

Like you, I was a workaholic. I couldn’t switch off. It cost me my first marriage, but that’s another story, I am now happily re-married.

Whilst living in Norfolk and working night and day I was a commercial finance broker. I was also one of the founders of the NACFB (National Association of Commercial Finance Brokers). All the work I did for the NACFB was pro-bono.

After many years of hard graft, I could afford the big house and the nice cars. I probably didn’t have as much money as you do but I was very proud to be employing 300 people. In 2008 my company ranked at number 38 in The Sunday Times Profit Track 100. However, as a result of a loss of credibility, not of my making, I had to lay off all 300 staff and put my company into hibernation, a state the company remains in to this day.  You can read about what happened by clicking on the linked snippet from the Mortgage Strategy magazine article at the time, or in the articles linked below.

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Estate Agent Today

I became very depressed following the collapse of The Money Centre and my failed marriage. I missed the daily interaction with people who shared my values and passion for property investment. Close friends and family suggested that I start a blog to “facilitate the sharing of best practice in the UK Private Renting Sector”, so that’s what I did. You’re reading it now and it has become a reasonably successful business in its own right over time.  However, it wasn’t always like that. There have been many times since the collapse of The Money Centre that I have struggled to make ends meet. Thankfully, low interest rates provided cashflow within my property portfolio at a time I needed it most, and I was able to scrape together extra money by taking on short-term consultancy contracts to help solicitors and accountancy firms with their marketing.

A further knock-back occurred three years after starting my blog when the West Bromwich Mortgage Company sent me a letter regarding a lifetime tracker rate mortgage I had taken to purchase one of my Buy-To-Let properties. They had unilaterally decided to increase the margin they were charging over Bank Base Rate by 2%, which I knew they could not do. They also issued a veiled threat to call in mortgages within 30 days, a clause they had embedded deeply within their T&C’s. I was having none of that, so I used my blog to reach hundreds of landlords in a similar position. We first took the case to the Ombudsman, who messed us around before saying we had no case. I then took the case to the High Court who also ruled against us. Finally, after a further two and a half years of yet more pro-bono work the Court of Appeal upheld the case. You can read more about this via the link below.

https://goughsq.co.uk/ca-hands-decision-pag-118-v-west-bromwich/

I would also like to add that we received no support whatsoever from the industry. I was besmirched and laughed at by many in the industry, including the NRLA, for taking on the case. But that all changed after it was won. Property118 had become the landlords champion and I won a Lifetime Achievers Award.

Very shortly after that, George Osborne announced new rules in his Summer 2015 budget making privately owned rental property business owners the only form of UK business that would no longer be able to offset finance costs against their income. It was a travesty, but despite significant campaigning, it was clear the government was not going to back down. This affected me personally and hundreds of thousands of subscribers to my blog. When I realised that campaigning was yielding no results I went back to the Barristers that had taken on and defeated the West Brom. They came up with several solutions, one of which was incorporation, but that only applied to professional landlords with much larger property rental businesses. However, there were solutions for smaller landlords too, for example, amending beneficial ownership between spouses to fully utilise tax allowances and the lower tax bands. The business model is essentially that Property118 takes on the role of fact finding, introducing and liaising with barristers who then engage clients directly to give the advice and deal with implementation.

It went well for a while, but in 2016 our recommended approach to incorporation, without needing to refinance (all in accordance with HMRC manuals I might add), was attacked via The Telegraph Newspaper. Your friends from Blick Rothenberg put the boot in then in much the same way as they are again doing with you now. Their allegations in 2016 are no different to those in your recent articles. How are we still in business then one might well ask. Why haven’t mortgage lenders called in all those supposedly defaulted mortgages? Why haven’t HMRC engaged DOTAS or created a Spotlight? The answer is obvious to most, everything is being done right.

The attacks we endured in 2016 caused massive stress and loss of credibility for our business, but we pulled through. For me, the timing could not have been worse. I had just relocated to Malta, so again I had to take on short-term contract work to put food on the table.

I explained in my last article that your attacks transcend tax policy. They have since become even more personal and increasingly deranged.

My solicitors have informed me that you wrote to them last week suggesting that I might have been a stakeholder in a business that sold timeshare as investments to low-income people. That is simply absurd. Who is feeding you this information and what does it have to do with tax policy? The only possible connection is that I did take a short-term contract with a company in 2016 when I first arrived in Malta that sold memberships in a luxury car club and Sunseeker yachts to discerning high-net-worth individuals. I advertised them on Property118 for a while, but landlords’ didn’t seem at all interested. Most are all generally very well-grounded folk who prefer to forsake luxuries and invest for retirement and to create legacies. I did manage to find the company premises in Donnington Park race circuit for their SuperCar club through an article I wrote on Property118 though, so they did get some value for their money out of me at least. I suspect they wanted to leverage my credibility with landlords in the belief that my audience would be their target market, the top 5% of earners. How wrong they were if that was the case!

FOR THE RECORD: I have never owned a stake in a timeshare business, nor I have I ever sold timeshare or recruited or trained a timeshare sales force, let alone promoted timeshare as investments. Nor have I ever been involved in timeshare financing in any way. I refuse to spend yet more money on solicitors to defend these ludicrous accusations. Go ahead and write whatever you wish, if you must, I have faith that people will soon see it for what it is. When on earth do you think I would have found the time to do any of that anyway?

You have mentioned in all of your articles that we have not answered any of your tax questions. The reasons for this are simple; a) you are not a regulator, b) your approaches have always been extremely antagonistic, c) you expect us to do so for free and d) you seem intent on twisting information to suit your own narrative. At first I thought you were just barking up the wrong tree, but now I am beginning to think there could be something  much more sinister going on.

Maybe I am becoming irrational and barking up the wrong tree now. That can happen when people wind you up enough. Who’s been pulling your strings?

Have you even taken a moment to consider the anxiety your articles have caused to the hundreds of business owners that have incorporated off the back of our recommendations and also the welfare of their families? Some of these might even be feeling suicidal after reading the things you have written. Is your conscience OK with that? What about the 40 people we employ?

I have two questions for you: –

1. What tax qualifications do you have personally? I checked the websites of STEP, CIOT etc. and can’t find any record of you there. I do acknowledge that you have been a solicitor since 2000, I found that on the SRA website when compiling my report of your conduct to the SRA.
2. What is your relationship with Blick Rothenberg accountants?

Will you PLEASE agree to be reasonable and at least have a telephone conversation with me before this all gets completely out of hand?

Perhaps better still, I will be in Norfolk for a fortnight as of this weekend to visit family. Maybe you would prefer to discuss this over a pint? I’m really not the monster you think I am.

Yours sincerely

Mark Alexander

UPDATE

Dan Neidle has since responded to my two questions as follows …

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