Rental property predictions 2022

[MrXxxx]

On 30/12/2021 at 18:31, Joncrete Cungle said:

The rate Serco  we the tax payer are paying for HMO is so generous a couple of landlords I have spoken to reckon they can buy a property, convert it and the rate Serco the government pay them will pay off the mortgage in 7 years.

FTFY :-(

[spygirl]

On 01/01/2022 at 15:34, sarahbell said:

I want my son to be able to afford to buy a house at some point. 

HMO and more immigrants mean he won't be able to.

And the tax required to keep those immigrants in HMOd, delivering pizzas cash in hand.

[Joncrete Cungle]

45 minutes ago, spygirl said:

And the tax required to keep those immigrants in HMOd, delivering pizzas cash in hand.

Once they get their decision to stay (can take a decade or more) then they get housing bennie and go to the top of the list competing against the natives for social housing. Then their place in the HMO is taken by the latest dinghy arrival.

[UmBongo]

On 29/12/2021 at 05:40, Sugarlips said:

What has thrown me though is the crazy number of regular family homes that can only be let as student digs. I appreciate the BTL scourge is everywhere but I’m struggling to find anything but student houses atm.

I know there has been a huge amount of dedicated student accom built around the local uni and college, I presumed more than enough to accommodate the demand but this suggests otherwise, except they are all listed as available not leased.

This annoys me. In the area where I live hundreds (thousand plus?) of ex council houses in proximity to the University of East Anglia in Norwich have been turned into student houses. This one is now hoping to seek tenants for next academic year:

House share 1 bedroom - £450 pcm

The £450 a month a student tenant for a room in this shared house is perhaps a bit more than the going monthly rent of a whole council house close by. Maybe £800-1000 a month as a private rented house to a family.

A lot of purpose built student blocks have been built in the area too so I'm at a bit of a loss to explain the supply and demand between the two types of accommodation.

[UmBongo]

As per my last post, here is one of the culprits snapping up these ex-council houses in proximity to the UEA and turning them into student digs:

Flipping ex council houses into 'luxury' student digs

 

[Democorruptcy]

On 30/12/2021 at 16:58, Don Coglione said:

£650pcm? Did you live in a shed?!

I'm renting and pay less than £700 pcm for a fully furnished 2 bed, acres to walk around, sea views inc council tax, leccy, oil, water, TV licence, freesat, fibre. Owner's got fed up of too many holiday let changovers every week.

[Wight Flight]

I have mentioned before that there is usually a requirement for your income to be 3x rent. I think this is partly to comply with rent insurance rules. For a £1k per month house you needed to earn £36k

Today I noticed that one of our agents has dropped the requirement to 2.5x rent. So now, with your £36k salary you can hand over £1,200 per month to your landlord.

Guess they just couldn't find enough well paid tenants to milk under the old criteria.

Rents up 20%. Trebles all round.

[Frank Hovis]

52 minutes ago, Wight Flight said:

I have mentioned before that there is usually a requirement for your income to be 3x rent. I think this is partly to comply with rent insurance rules. For a £1k per month house you needed to earn £36k

Today I noticed that one of our agents has dropped the requirement to 2.5x rent. So now, with your £36k salary you can hand over £1,200 per month to your landlord.

Guess they just couldn't find enough well paid tenants to milk under the old criteria.

Rents up 20%. Trebles all round.

 

That's interesting; down here again the 3x rule would be silly because they would have so few qualifying at current rental levels.

[Wight Flight]

8 minutes ago, Frank Hovis said:

 

That's interesting; down here again the 3x rule would be silly because they would have so few qualifying at current rental levels.

Again it sets a floor. LHA rate for a 3 bed is £8,700 per annum, so if you are working you need to earn £26,100 to be able to outbid a benefit bunny.

Which doesn't sound a lot, but it equates to 57 hours per week for a minimum wage worker.

Work doesn't pay.

[Frank Hovis]

12 minutes ago, Wight Flight said:

Again it sets a floor. LHA rate for a 3 bed is £8,700 per annum, so if you are working you need to earn £26,100 to be able to outbid a benefit bunny.

Which doesn't sound a lot, but it equates to 57 hours per week for a minimum wage worker.

Work doesn't pay.

 

That's shocking given how many jobs down here are minimum wage.

Why, as you say, would you want to do one when you could be on benefits?

[Wight Flight]

4 minutes ago, Frank Hovis said:

 

That's shocking given how many jobs down here are minimum wage.

Why, as you say, would you want to do one when you could be on benefits?

It's even worse if you look forwards.

Because of the leverage, if LHA increases by 10%, the worker needs to increase their income by 30% to compete.

[Frank Hovis]

2 minutes ago, Wight Flight said:

It's even worse if you look forwards.

Because of the leverage, if LHA increases by 10%, the worker needs to increase their income by 30% to compete.

 

Cornwall's and, by the sound of it, the IoWs housing isn't meeting the basic requirement of providing accommodation for working people where they need to live and at levels that they can afford.

Front of house staff are going to be in very short supply in coastal towns this summer.

[sarahbell]

https://propertyindustryeye.com/agents-told-to-brace-themselves-for-major-legislative-changes/

: “From April 2025 we see the next phase of changes to the Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) with a minimum rating of EPC C for all new tenancies. It is expected that the new standard will apply to all tenancies from 2028. Between now and 2030 we will also start to see the impact of the Levelling Up legislation being introduced in England. And then of course we have RoPA.”

[macca]

On 02/01/2022 at 21:46, Joncrete Cungle said:

Once they get their decision to stay (can take a decade or more) then they get housing bennie and go to the top of the list competing against the natives for social housing. Then their place in the HMO is taken by the latest dinghy arrival.

You know its the rich stealing all the money right? Not the poor, every penny you give to a poor person goes straight back to the rich.. They don't stash it in ofshore bank accounts, it goes to landlords, shops, gas, electric and water. Bills.. something like $50 trillion sits un taxed in ofshore accounts.

The billionaire owned media's job is to make us hate the people at the bottom of the ladder, so we don't notice those at the top stealing all the money.

Look at how easy it is for them to fuck peoples brains and make them hate. You upset them, like Corbyn did when he said he would tax them.. they will propaganda the shit out of you. 

 

[macca]

On 08/02/2022 at 13:44, Frank Hovis said:

 

Cornwall's and, by the sound of it, the IoWs housing isn't meeting the basic requirement of providing accommodation for working people where they need to live and at levels that they can afford.

Front of house staff are going to be in very short supply in coastal towns this summer.

Land tax.. but a corrupt government are never going to tax themselves..  you would need a socialist government to provide affordable housing, but that ships sailed with the Blairites back In charge of Labour you have 2 parties virtually the same.. like America.. Both owned by big businesses and in it for personal gain. 

And before you tell me they would bankrupt us, remember Boris bankrupted London as mayor and Tories have spent about 1.7 trillion.. 4x more than Blair (who I hate) with a banking Crisis.

Paying private landlords is 5x more expensive than the council owning it's own stock, when generation rent retire we get to pay the landlords £1500 a month from our taxes.. yay! instead of £350 to the council.

[Noallegiance]

Anecdotal:

Woman I know bought a flat a few decades ago. Moved out of it once married and family coming. I know not the financial details regarding mortgage. Presuming changed to a BTL.

Anyhoo, she's struggling getting rid of the current tenant. Lease is down so much that she needs to pay £tens-of-thousands to beef it back up for a sale. Repairs needed inside the flat due to neglect. Repairs needed to communal areas outside the flat plus a new fire escape.

In summary, a few decades of 'I'm a landlord and looking forward to capital gains' seems to have turned into 'I wish I'd never been a landlord and I'm coming out potentially in the red'.

In my head I'm thinking "Diddums. Tough shit. Zero sympathy."

 

And, to be frank, a little bit of "I hope this is playing out across the land to enough parasites in order to make a difference".

 

Turns out I'm a bit cold with all this property shit now.

Oh well.

[spygirl]

Oh dear.

What could go wrong with slumlords chopping up houses into HMOs?

 

 

Council tax on my buy-to-let has quadrupled to £7,000’

Landlords face soaring bills as their properties are suddenly reclassified for council tax purposes

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/buy-to-let/council-tax-buy-to-let-has-quadrupled-7000/

Hundreds of thousands of landlords could see their council tax bills quadruple in a stealth tax raid which has seen rental properties be reclassified to generate more tax.

Many large rental homes, which are let room by room to tenants, are being revalued so they are now considered as multiple smaller dwellings for council tax purposes, rather than one home with several tenants. In a five-bedroom property this means five sets of council tax will be due.

Revaluations have centred on areas with the highest number of rental homes and experts said this suggested councils were seeking to reclassify properties to increase their income.

Penny Mourdaunt, minister of trade and Portsmouth North MP, criticised the wave of revaluations and called on the Government to intervene to prevent housing supply being harmed.

"This is a growing problem and it is arbitrary. It is stopping homes being built because developers' business models become unviable,” she said.

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Government figures show there are 500,000 of these so-called "houses in multiple occupation" in England that could be affected.  Campaigners said they were inundated with calls from worried landlords.

Ian Fletcher, of the British Property Federation, an industry body said: "Local authority budgets have been squeezed for more than a decade, so they need ways of getting more money. There is only one way this will go and that is up."

With these tenancies, landlords typically pay bills and council tax on behalf of tenants and then pass on a single monthly charge to renters. If council tax rises, landlords must absorb the cost or pass it on to tenants in the form of higher rents.

Daryn Brewer, 43, is a landlord and developer in Portsmouth. The city is in the top 20 local authorities in the country for large rental properties.

He rents a six-bedroom property to tenants but the Valuation Office Agency told him it had been classified as six separate dwellings. This meant the total council tax bill for the property quadrupled from £1,821 to £7,287. 

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“This looks like the poll tax. It’s an absolute mess,” Mr Brewer said.

Councils do not classify properties for tax purposes themselves. But Chris Daniel, a housing consultant, warned that cash-strapped councils were able to refer HMOs to the Valuation Office to be reclassified as multiple properties.

Calli Robertson, 47, is a landlord with 15 properties in Peterborough. The council tax bill on one of her five-bedroom homes quadrupled from £1,300 per year to £4,890. It was reclassified as five one-bed homes, even though three of the bedrooms did not have en-suite bathrooms and none had kitchen facilities, she said. 

The council tax jump meant that Mrs Robertson needed to raise the rent on the cheapest room by 23pc.

Alan Murdie, of Council Tax Legal Services, a specialist consultancy, said: “Cases are shooting up.”

Mr Murdie said there had been particular spikes in east and west London, Coventry and Birmingham. These areas all have high proportions of rental homes let out room by room. 

Wendy Whitaker-Large, a landlord and campaigner, said: “A year and a half ago, I was getting calls about this every few months. Now it's two or three times a week. It’s about to blow up.”

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In some cases similar properties on the same street had been classified differently for council tax purposes.

Ms Whitaker-Large said: “It completely destroys the market and puts landlords at a massive disadvantage. Some landlords think they must foot the bill or the tenants will leave.” 

She said one landlord in Hertfordshire declared bankruptcy after his two 12-bedroom properties were reclassified.

A spokesman for the Valuation Office, which is part of HM Revenue & Customs, said that its approach to large rental homes had not changed. “The amount of tax any assessment will yield is not a consideration,” he said.