Pay Less Property Tax presentation by Mark Smith (Barrister-At-Law) – Titans event 14th October

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Hon. Legal Counsel, Mark Smith, Head of Chambers at Cotswold Barristers will be presenting, ‘Are you paying too much tax on your property rental business? Business structures for Landlords’ at the next TITANS meeting (re-branded J6 event) run from the Crowne Plaza in Gerrards cross on Thursday the 14th of October.

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WARNING: Plans to nationalise Berlin rental market to have ‘global effect’

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Berliners have voted to forcibly buy housing owned by large property companies in the German capital in a bid to combat rising rents. 

While delegates at the Labour conference have been debating rent controls in Brighton, Berlin tried and failed to establish a rent cap in January 2020 – but this step is an even more dramatic approach.

If approved, Berliners’ vote to take public ownership of private property could have ‘worldwide ramifications’ and set a precedent for similar initiatives worldwide.

The non-binding referendum, which got 56% support, would mean the local government would buy 11% of the city’s properties to make housing more affordable by transferring about 226,000 apartments into public hands.

The proposal applies to property companies that have more than 3,000 rental units, however Deutsche Wohnen, which owns more than 100,000 units in the city, says it doesn’t expect the transfer will happen, and that such a move would be ‘unconstitutional’.

Tied up

The firm says: “Funds and resources would be tied up for decades in compensation payments and thus be lost to the construction of urgently needed housing and further investments in the infrastructure of the growing city.”

More than 84% of the population of Berlin are tenants and are paid an average salary lower than other major cities, yet rental prices have increased markedly in recent years.

The neighbourhood of Mitte is the second most unaffordable neighbourhood in Germany, according to estate agent Homeday.de, where someone earning the average salary would need to spend 61% of their net income on rent.

It says a rental burden of more than 40% of the household income is defined as financial overload, meaning that the average earner is priced out of 17 out of 19 Berlin neighbourhoods. 

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – WARNING: Plans to nationalise Berlin rental market to have ‘global effect’ | LandlordZONE.

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Lobby group: ‘Tenants should be paid £1,700 to move out when served no-fault notice’

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Tenants should be able to challenge Section 21 notices and get compensation if they’re forced to move home for reasons outside their control, says Generation Rent.

The campaign group is calling for measures to challenge ‘mandatory’ evictions when a landlord wants to sell and to help tenants fund the £1,709 that it costs an average household to move home.

Generation Rent says Section 21 is used by landlords when selling up, who can also abuse it to re-let at a higher rent, or to avoid making repairs.

40,000 households

Its research shows that more than 40,000 households in England have been threatened with homelessness by landlords using no-fault eviction grounds in the two years since the government promised to abolish them.

Between April 2019 and March 2021, councils dealt with 557,030 cases of homelessness, of which 91,710 were private tenants facing eviction. Of these, 44,040 households were facing eviction due to their landlord selling up, re-letting or evicting following a complaint by the tenant – representing 0.9% of England’s 4.7m private renter households.

The Prime Minister’s local borough of Hillingdon has the second worst rate in the country, with 29 in every 1,000 private renter households having faced homelessness after complaining about disrepair, or after their landlord decided to sell or re-let their home.

Alicia Kennedy, director of Generation Rent (pictured), says: “Being forced to move for reasons outside your control creates unimaginable stress, uproots you from your community and disrupts children’s education. Right now, landlords need no reason to inflict this on their tenants.

“The government has rightly committed to the abolition of Section 21 evictions, but this is too late for the thousands of renters who have faced homelessness while the reforms have been delayed.”

Read more about Section 21 eviction notices.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Lobby group: ‘Tenants should be paid £1,700 to move out when served no-fault notice’ | LandlordZONE.

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Boris U-TURN – New Planning Reforms ditched!

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New planning reforms set in motion by Robert Jenrick, Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings are to be scrapped.

Boris Johnson draws property industry’s ire over watered-down planning reforms. Plans aimed to curb councils’ power to oppose developments and speed up delivery of new homes in England scrapped.

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BTL product choice is still increasing

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There are now more Buy-to-let (BTL) products available today than on offer in March 2020, before the impact of the pandemic was felt across the sector, according to the latest data from Moneyfacts.co.uk.

– September started with 2,968 products on offer in the BTL sector

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Labour conference: big on landlord bashing, thin on new ideas for rental sector

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Shadow housing minister Lucy Powell (pictured) set out Labour’s stall at its conference in Brighton yesterday, presenting it as the ‘party of home owners and tenants’ but proffering few ideas for the private rented sector (PRS).

Much of the speech was spent attacking the Conservative’s track record within the PRS, its house-building efforts, withdrawn Green Homes Grant scheme and the ongoing fire safety and leasehold scandals.

This included fierce criticism of fast-rising house prices and the dwindling number of affordable homes available to first time buyers, the reduction council houses but also the expansion of what she called an ‘insecure’ rental sector.

“I see no contradiction in us also promoting home-ownership – not for more landlords or second homes, but for ordinary working people – nurses, electricians, delivery drivers and care workers – currently priced out,” she said.

New policy?

The only hints of new policy from Powell came half way through her speech, during which she said a Labour government would link housing costs to wages and “tackle the thorny issues of quality, affordability and security in private rentals”.

But Powell made it abundantly clear Labour was no friend of landlords, portraying the Conservatives as treating “housing as a commodity: to be traded, profited from, part of an investment portfolio, a pension pot, not as the bedrock of stable lives and life chances”.

Powell revealed few initiatives during her speech, save for a plan to launch a ‘great housing challenge’ to learn from Labour councils, mayors and the Welsh government in order to “develop a housing plan together”.

She also took a shot at the new housing secretary, saying: “I hear we have Michael Gove coming to the rescue! Do me a favour. Ask the teachers! Less a knight in shining armour, a wrecking ball more like!”.

Read her speech in full.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Labour conference: big on landlord bashing, thin on new ideas for rental sector | LandlordZONE.

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Kent landlord is banned for life from contacting local council

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Controversial landlord Fergus Wilson has been banned for life from contacting his local council directly after losing a High Court battle.

Multi-millionaire Wilson has been slapped with an injunction after the court heard he had sent hundreds of letters and emails and made needless phone calls and formal complaints against officers, councillors and legal representatives.

He sent one letter to council leader Gerry Clarkson’s home address, encouraging him to ‘do all the young people in Ashford a service and commit suicide’. 

In another, Wilson referred to a female member of staff as an ‘objectionable fat lady’ and ‘Michelin lady’ when calling for her to be fired. 

In his judgment, Daryl Allen QC said: “The defendant’s conduct repeatedly went far beyond merely irritating and annoying, it was deliberately offensive. It included numerous unfounded allegations of professional misconduct and criminal conduct.”

Interim junction

It supports the previous interim injunction which Ashford Council was awarded in July 2020 and means the landlord will now only be able to contact it through a named legal advisor. A council spokesman says: “The judgement has vindicated the council’s decision to take the unusual step of resorting to litigation in order to protect its staff and councillors.”

Wilson admits that he called a staff member ‘Michelin Lady’, after receiving a letter which he took gross offence to, when Ashford Council failed to respond to his Freedom of Information request. He then decided to stop letting properties in Ashford when the council issued harassment proceedings.

He tells LandlordZONE: “All properties were either sold or spoken for before the outcome of the council’s application was known. I am sorry for all the tenants who had been with us for many years. They are totally innocent victims.”

Wilson recently offered to sell some of the remaining 150 houses from his 970-strong portfolio to the Home Office or Kent County Council to help address the issue of homeless asylum seekers, as he plans to retire and leave himself just 10 houses.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Kent landlord is banned for life from contacting local council | LandlordZONE.

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Labour the party of home ownership?

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Before the Labour Party conference, Lucy Powell, Shadow housing secretary said: “Labour is the party of homeownership, the Tories are the party of speculators and developers. They treat housing as a commodity, not the bedrock of stable lives and life chances.”

Labour has announced plans to:

Give councils powers to force landowners to sell vacant sites to build new housing at lower prices than the compulsory purchase system currently allows.

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Say goodbye to gas, electrical and EPC paperwork, new platform promises landlords

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An online platform has officially launched that helps landlords eliminate one of their most tiresome admin headaches – getting EPC, electrical and gas safety certificates completed on time.

Called Symple, it enables landlords so register their rental property and then flag up when each of the three mandatory certificates were last completed and the platform does the rest each time they become due.

Founder Simon Dresdner says his service guarantees that the work will be completed and that each certificate will be sent to the landlord in time and, if not, the certificate is provided for free.

Best described as a cross between birthday card website Moonpig and a property maintenance platform like Fixflo, Dresdner says rather than landlords having to do the chasing his team ensure the work is taken up by its army of 700 local service providers, who are then chased if they fall behind schedule.

“Some 80% of jobs don’t require chasing, but we ensure that the 20% that do aren’t allowed to lag behind – for example if an electrician picks up one of our EICR electrical inspection jobs and has hasn’t booked an appointment to visit the property within 24 hours, we chase them,” he says.

“We are also unique because our service covers all three types of certificate and also all of the UK.

“Most importantly, we’ve focused on taking the faff out of landlord lives when it comes to electrical and gas safety inspections and EPC compliance.”

Symple has been under development for several years and soft-launched a few months ago with around 200 landlords already using its service.

Dresdner says the service will eventually offer non-mandatory services such as boiler repairs and maintenance and electrical PAT testing. Symple charges £50 for gas and EPC certificates and £125 for an EICR certificate.

Read more about the mandatory certificates needed for a rental property.

©1999 – Present | Parkmatic Publications Ltd. All rights reserved | LandlordZONE® – Say goodbye to gas, electrical and EPC paperwork, new platform promises landlords | LandlordZONE.

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Local council is offering to lease my flats?

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Hi everyone, My local council is offering to lease my flats on an interim lease agreement, whereby they would use the properties as temporary accommodation for households owed a duty under S188 or S193 of the Homelessness Reduction Act.

Can I ask if anyone has done this with their properties and let them out on this basis?

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