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REI

Activist

Posts:413

22/09/2007 6:09 AM	Alert
Posted By quattro on 09/22/2007 4:37 AM Basically anything that has caused house prices to increase at the rate it has in the recent past should be stopped and this is a small step on the path to that end. You can not be serious. High unemployment, high inflation and high interest rates were the cocktail that last time caused house prices to fall. 1996 was an historic low in terms of affordability. That means it is unlikely to happen again any time soon. Affordability rises and falls and there are many variable. House prices are just part of the mix. The prices are mostly a function of what people can afford to pay monthly. Reduce what people have in their pockets and you will get lower house prices. The problem is FTB will continue to be priced out if they lack the income.

miss_lawyer

First Timer

Posts:1

25/09/2007 2:12 PM	Alert
I buy and Sell houses for a living. I should say a good 70% of all sale and purchases are made up of buy to lets and those building up property portfolios. These people laugh as they reap in the profits, they have been afforded the luxury of being in their late twenties or over and buying when the going was good. I am 23 and stand no chance of buying in the next ten years. Unfortunately I do not have a time machine to whizz me back in time. So something needs to change. I am utterly frustrated. Remove tax breaks, and give the rest of us a chance. If the invention of a time machine is all i have to rely on, then god help us under 25's!

plainservice

Concerned Citizen

Posts:90

26/09/2007 4:53 AM	Alert
I am a concerned Landlord and sympathetic to people who are priced out, but I am disgusted that Pricedout.org.uk campaign is based on spreading deceitful information. There is a propoganda that Landlords get "special" tax breaks. A dishonourable way to conduct a campaign. If the government did change the tax rules. It would mean a lot of landlords selling up or raising rents (probably doubling) to cover the tax. For instance if the rent is £100 and the interest is £80. Currently tax is only paid on the profit of £20. This is a basic business principle FOR ANY BUSINESS - Landlords don't get any special tax treatment. (in fact landlords are worst off....) What pricedout.org.uk are proposing that tax is paid on ALL of the £100. What they are trying to say is that all of the £100 is pure profit, when if fact it is £20. I doubt that such this campaign by pricedout.org.uk is ethical, since half my tenants are on Housing Benefit. If landlords sold up as a result of such tax changes - where would these people end up? Who would house them?. Do people remember the bad old days, where tax payers were forking out a fortune housing people in Bed and Breakfast hotels simply because there were not any council houses? Also, a lack of rental properties would effect jobs. Imagine someone who lives up North, gets a job offer in London. But wants to come to live in London, but finds he can't find any properties to rent. What does he do? Currently 92% of properties are privately owned and 8% are owned by Landlords. If a Landlord owns a rental property, it is there "housing" a person(s) and not there for his own enjoyment. Pricedout.org.uk campaign is not about "creating" new housing. Even if changes there were tax rules changes and it resulted in vast number of properties caming to the market - it would only benefit buyers who are well established with good jobs, credit cards, qualification and prospects. But what about less well off people? Or people that have just left college? What about divorced husbands? Can they afford to buy properties from Day One? Can everyone get a mortgage? What about people who will never qualify for a mortgage - say sub-prime (sorry to use this term), who have menial insecure jobs, don't have credit cards or bank accounts. So you want to take housing away from these people?. So you folks have not said how your campaigning impact these people?. Where are these people supposed to live? How will they get housing if there are no landlords?

Magrathea

Activist

Posts:430

26/09/2007 7:13 AM	Alert
What a lot of waffle, REI There is no need to reduce the amount of money in people's pockets, all you need to to do is use the tax system to significantly reduce or eradicate the returns to certain types of real estate speculation. The market will then stabilise and rationalise so the price of accomodation becomes linked with the real (actual) cost of its provision (like all other goods and services)

Magrathea

Activist

Posts:430

26/09/2007 1:01 PM	Alert
Plainservice wrote: “I am a concerned Landlord and sympathetic to people who are priced out, but I am disgusted that Pricedout.org.uk campaign is based on spreading deceitful information.There is a propoganda that Landlords get "special" tax breaks. A dishonourable way to conduct a campaign.” Rather than trying to prove that the differences are not an unfair advantage, simply supply an objective and moral rationale for them being different at all. Plainservice wrote: “If the government did change the tax rules. It would mean a lot of landlords selling up or raising rents (probably doubling) to cover the tax. “ Well, of course, they would sell up, because they can’t simply ‘raise rents’ at a whim. To explain why this is the case, simply ask yourself, why, if they could raise rents, they don’t do so now? They would sell up en mass and the exchange price of real estate would fall. Incidentally, your fallacious argument regarding the raising of rents is often used to block the proper taxation of real estate by confusing people about the consequences. Plainservice wrote: “For instance if the rent is £100 and the interest is £80. Currently tax is only paid on the profit of £20. This is a basic business principle FOR ANY BUSINESS - Landlords don't get any special tax treatment. (in fact landlords are worst off....)” The problem is this; in the present circumstances, the role of landlord amounts to little more than a government backed attempt to lumber other people with increased costs; it isn’t even a business in the normal moral sense that most people would understand ( the provision of goods or services for a fee) If I were to come up with a new form of ‘business’ that, as it’s principle of profit-making, added no new wealth, but rather simply operated by lumbering innocent and productive bystanders with increasing and unavoidable costs then I would expect any rational government to tax me at nearly 100% and give the money back to my victims. Plainservice wrote: “What pricedout.org.uk are proposing that tax is paid on ALL of the £100. What they are trying to say is that all of the £100 is pure profit, when if fact it is £20.” I think they are trying to tell you to ‘go away’ and do something productive with yourself; ‘collecting houses’ is not productive Plainservice wrote: “I doubt that such this campaign by pricedout.org.uk is ethical, since half my tenants are on Housing Benefit. If landlords sold up as a result of such tax changes - where would these people end up? Who would house them?." Let me see, there are the same number of houses, and the same number of people, and the exchange price of real estate has fallen dramatically- so where oh where are people going to live?..such a mind-bending conundrum (for you) As a simple suggestion, the government itself could buy you out at the new bargain basement prices and charge rents significantly below the market rate so undermining the entire real estate ‘market’ and, at the same time, make revenue money which can be used to reduce taxes on the producers of wealth. Yes the government could make money by doing what you do; nearly nothing; which is the only thing most government can do remotely adequately. This is in no way my preferred solution and I feel it has many, many drawbacks, but it does illustrate nicely what economically useless articles you are, presently. Plainservice wrote: “Do people remember the bad old days, where tax payers were forking out a fortune housing people in Bed and Breakfast hotels simply because there were not any council houses?” Yes, this was the result of stupid policy The UK government decided a very long time ago it was going to tax real estate upon the service actually provided by the landlord rather than the services taken by the landlord from the community. This ongoing policy mistake has been, in some way or other, behind all of our real estate disasters. In that case, the government decided it was going to tax landlords specifically, but rather than move more tax onto the (presently camouflaged) economic advantages the landlord receives from the community, they decided instead to penalise people for providing any service at all; the result was nobody could be bothered providing that service and they instead simply sat on their real estate collecting the relatively untaxed advantages they received simply for doing nothing. The mistake was twofold; NOT taxing the advantages received by the owner from the community sufficiently AND overtaxing the services the landlord actually provides. This sort of thing is not an accident, there is a very powerful lobby making sure that, whatever happens, tax does not fall correctly and rationally on real estate. Since then, the uk government has been ‘wary’ of taxing the owners of real estate at all; hence the poll tax, which was an attempt to get the burden of paying for government services to real estate off the owners of real estate (especially landlords) and put it on tenants. It is interesting to note that the uk government has gone every-which-way but the direction indicated by simple market logic; namely, that the owners of real estate pay the community for the value of services their real estate receives from the community. So, now after releasing real estate from a large portion of taxation we have run away landlordery and house price inflation, in which armies of entirely useless, halfwits roam the country ‘collecting houses’ so they can sell services they aren’t actually providing to the large number of people now unable to buy a house of their own house because the real estate inflation which is at least partly the result of the actions of this army of halfwits. (breath). In the present circumstances we need most of those halfwits to simply stop doing this, so houseprices can fall somewhat before the economy folds under the pressure and makes them fall. So, there is a bit of a concession here, but the rabbit-hole is quite a bit deeper than you are making it out. Plainservice wrote: “If a Landlord owns a rental property, it is there "housing" a person(s) and not there for his own enjoyment.” If you aren’t ‘enjoying’ your property, why did you pay for it? Plainservice wrote: “Pricedout.org.uk campaign is not about "creating" new housing.” Which is fair enough, considering there is no shortage.

simon99

First Timer

Posts:10

05/11/2007 7:18 AM	Alert
You have to laugh at the response to the petition. It goes round in cricles. They think the answer to everything is shared ownership, though we all know if this catches on it will drive prices even higher. It looks like shared ownership is the future, the next generation can look forward to buying half a house for an extortionate amount. Unfortunately BTL investors were given another big incentive with the cutting of CGT recently.

junk

First Timer

Posts:16

11/01/2008 11:46 AM	Alert
plainservice wrote- 'I doubt that such this campaign by pricedout.org.uk is ethical, since half my tenants are on Housing Benefit. If landlords sold up as a result of such tax changes - where would these people end up? Who would house them?.' junk wrote- If i sold up some of my tenants would be sleeping under a bridge in a cardboard box, I've given homless people a break and housed them. this anti property investor movement forgets that landlords do a service which is needed - HOUSING PEOPLE , if the tax system is changed to be less favourable then less established landords would leave and less rental property means higher rents, the law of economics - supply and demand will take effect.

Magrathea

Activist

Posts:430

12/01/2008 9:11 AM	Alert
"this anti property investor movement forgets that landlords do a service which is needed - HOUSING PEOPLE , if the tax system is changed to be less favourable then less established landords would leave and less rental property means higher rents, the law of economics - supply and demand will take effect. " Some landlords forget that in taking a property to offer it for rent they also 'take a property', which, in the present tax system, adds costs to the community. Landlords have been making quite a bit, at the expense of the community, through capital gains (the monopolization of property).

slicedcake

Activist

Posts:272

17/01/2008 1:58 PM	Alert
Posted By simon99 on 05/11/2007 7:18 AM Unfortunately BTL investors were given another big incentive with the cutting of CGT recently. Taper relief changes?

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