Homelessness – a Perfect Storm

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This is a summary of a revealing article written by Joe Speye which you can view if you click here.

He makes some ‘revelations’ about: Homelessness, Social Housing, ‘No-fault’ Evictions by PRS, N.H.F & Shelter and their ‘No DSS campaign’

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HMRC sees Buy-to-Let Landlords as source of future funds

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Landlords’ Tax:

There has been a substantial number of buy-to-let landlords admitting
that they have paid no tax on their rental income – they have failed to declare
to HMRC on an annual tax return that they are receiving income from rents.

Through various campaigns and tax amnesties HMRC has
discovered a veritable “gold-mine� of potential tax revenue undeclared by
buy-to-let landlords. The revenue claw-back has risen by 145% over two years,
from 6,600 landlords coming clean with £21m in 2017-18 to 16,110 doing the same
with £42m in the last financial year, according figures recently released by
HMRC.

Given the numbers involved, it encourages HMRC in its belief
that there is a larger potential pot of money waiting for their coffers when
they eventually track down more offenders, and when they do, tax penalties can
be as much as twice (200%) of undeclared income.

The “Let Property Campaignâ€� – see below – run by HMRC, is designed
to inform buy-to-let landlords of the consequences of tax evasion. Landlords
who do not voluntarily declare all their rental income could face this very high
penalty of up to 200% of their undeclared revenue.

Mark Giddens, a partner at accountancy firm UHY Hacker
Young, told The Sunday Times:

“HMRC sees the buy-to-Let market as a source of hundreds of
millions of pounds of unpaid tax. The amounts collected just from landlords
coming in from the cold suggests they may not be too far wrong with that
estimate�

The Let Property Campaign gives landlords an opportunity to
bring their tax affairs up to date. If they are an individual landlord letting
out residential property in the UK or abroad, they will get the best possible
terms to pay the tax they owe, if they participate.

If a landlord owes tax on letting income they can tell HM
Revenue and Customs (HMRC) about undeclared income by making a voluntary
disclosure. By informing HMRC they wish to cooperate, they will be given three
months (90 days) to calculate, declare and pay what they owe.

Unlike previous HMRC campaigns and amnesties, there is no
disclosure ‘window’ requiring landlords to disclose what you owe by a specific
date.

The present campaign will be ongoing for some time, but landlords
intending to come forward who delay, risk the higher penalties if they are
subject to an enquiry and they have not already notified an intention to
disclose.

Whether the errors were due to misunderstanding the rules,
or deliberately avoiding paying the right amount, HMRC says it is better to
come forward and admit any inaccuracies rather than wait until HMRC uncovers
those errors.

The Let Property Campaign offers the best possible terms
available to get tax affairs in order says HMRC. However, when a landlord makes
a disclosure, what is due will depend on why they failed to disclose: if information
was deliberately kept from HMRC there will be a higher penalty than if a
mistake has been made.

For those who have completed self-assessment tax returns but have simply made a mistake there’s a statutory time limited on HMRC going back for a maximum of 6 years – no matter how many years an individual is behind with tax affairs.

However, if an individual did not come forward and HMRC finds out later it will be much harder to convince them that it was simply a mistake and the law allows HMRC to go back up to 20 years in serious cases, resulting in HMRC carrying out a criminal investigation.

Let Property Campaign: your guide to making a disclosure

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – HMRC sees Buy-to-Let Landlords as source of future funds | LandlordZONE.

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Starting a legal challenge to Leeds Selective Licensing?

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I am a Leeds landlord. The council has decided to implement this in 2 areas. We made a detailed argument trashing their points, but they have lied their way past this and used the executive meeting to pass it even though they were thrashed in one of the 2 areas in the consultation.

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Think twice or benefits tenants will be the biggest casualties

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The government should “think twice� before changing the rules on eviction in the private rented sector, amid signs that the most vulnerable tenants on state benefits are likely to be the biggest casualties of the controversial new initiative, the National Landlords Association says today.

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Improving fraud detection is vital for the future of the PRS

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On Monday 8 July, Paul Shamplina and his team at Landlord Action will once again appear on Channel 5’s ‘Nightmare Tenants Slum Landlords’, this time highlighting the need for better fraud detection when it comes to referencing. Paul Shamplina says letting agents and referencing companies who invest in technology with the means to validate tenants’ financial means and payment histories will stand to benefit in the future

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Virtual & Augmented Reality Inventory Reporting

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Danny Zane,
chair of the AIIC (Association for Independent Inventory Clerks) predicts that
AR (Augmented Reality) technology will revolutionise the inventory process in
the near future. Augmented
reality (AR) adds
digital elements to a live view often by using the camera on a smartphone. AR
differs from VR (Virtual
Reality) which offers a complete immersion experience that
shuts out the physical world, by allowing you to walk through a real space with
added digital elements, such as labelling or text description. Zane believes AR
could add a new dimension to inventory reporting within VR, allowing reports to
go beyond the 2D/3D picture and offer tenants and landlords the opportunity to
walk around their properties in VR whilst damage and a schedule of conditions
is pointed out in real time and space.

With the
global AR market forecast to reach a value of $70.01
billion by 2023. Investment in AR has steadily increased in the past few
years, and more recently, the technology has generated renewed interest from
big brands such as Facebook and Apple. Augmented reality allows brands to offer
immersive and digital experiences, and to engage consumers in a unique
way. 

Zane,
who runs My Property Inventories is convinced this is an obvious next step for
the inventory industry: “Right now we rely on labelled photos for accurate,
impartial documentation of a properties conditions. Imagine if you could
experience walking around a room, zooming in on damage and compare it to the
condition before a tenancy began. Augmented reality is the obvious next step
forward for independent, impartial inventory reports, those working in the
industry would be wise to jump on the bandwagon�, comments Zane who is planning
to role out a VR trial as a first step with his own company in the coming weeks:
“I am hoping that by investing in the technology to start compiling VR and then
AR inventory reports we will stay afoot of the expectations of consumers and
keep impartial inventories relevant and important and most important of all, even
more usable.�

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Virtual & Augmented Reality Inventory Reporting | LandlordZONE.

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UC trial for thousands to join “managed migration� starts in Harrogate

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Harrogate is the first area in Britain to trial a major new phase of Universal Credit. Up to 3,000 existing benefit claimants in the Yorkshire spa town are being moved to the six-in-one system starting this month, in the first test of “managed migration�.

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How safe is your housing investment?

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House Prices:

With the S&P 500 up 16.2% and the FTSE 100 up 10.2 in
the last 6 months, the focus for investors has recently be back on the stock
markets, but can it last?

Houses are one asset class that’s bigger than stocks and
bonds combined. The world’s homes are worth over $200trn (£159trn) in total,
and they are a very important element in the worlds economy.

The Woodford Equity Income Fund suspension fiasco is perhaps
a sobering reminder that the stock market is no easy option, even for the
experts, so property provides a continuing safe haven for most of us. However,
there’s always the threat of a downturn in property prices.

The last time house prices had a big fall, around the rich
world, it triggered the deepest downturn since the 1929 Great Depression, in
what has since become known as the Great Recession. But according to The Economist, prices are likely to keep
on rising, at least in the short run.

It’s over ten years since the Great Recession, and home
values on average are back above water – they’ve recouped all of their losses
and then some in most countries in the west, and in some cases they are well
above – Canada and New Zealand are now 40% above their pre­-crisis peaks.

But is another economic crash due soon? Not according to The Economist,

The Economist has developed an economic model to
predict “changes in real home values at the national level,� arguing that “an
inexact forecast provides more in­sight than no forecast at all.�

The model takes into account such measures as GDP growth and interest rates, home prices to rents and incomes ratios and his­torical prices, all to take into account momen­tum and mean reversion. Using a machine-learning algorithm they call a “random forest”, the model creates a “forest” of “decision trees”, measuring each of the variables.

Back-testing has shown the model to have an acceptable
accuracy of 3 percentage points over an 18 month forecast period, with greater
errors during booms and busts, but still of some utility.

Ireland, Spain, Germany and the US are expected to be the
fastest growing markets to Q2, 2020 (all above 3% growth) with France, the UK,
and Australia showing marginal growth, and Italy declining.

According The Economist’s model, conditions to­day are dissimilar to those of 2006. Across the ten countries monitored, the “average of its median es­timates for the year to June 2020 is an ap­preciation of 2.3%.�

Although a downturn is not completely ruled out – there is a one-in-seven chance that Italian prices will fall by at least 5% – the most likely scenario, it says, is that the house price rally has further to run.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – How safe is your housing investment? | LandlordZONE.

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The Dirty Dozen

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The Alliance promised to publish a list of rogue/non-compliant local authorities who have introduced selective licensing schemes. Our list is not exhaustive. We have spent a lot of time studying these schemes and we will in due course update and add to this list.

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Q&A: Rapid eviction of tenants

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The Government says that the bulk of homelessness is due to Section 21. Is this true?

Homelessness is not down to a single factor; there are several factors to consider including the reduction in social housing and the increasing pressure on existing housing stock.

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