Join me, Mark Alexander, on the expert panel at the National pin Meeting on Wednesday 7th December

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I’m delighted to announce that I’ve been invited by Simon Zutshi to take part in the expert panel at their National pin Meeting on Wednesday 7th December!

During the meeting, we will have a presentation from Mike Bristow

The post Join me, Mark Alexander, on the expert panel at the National pin Meeting on Wednesday 7th December appeared first on Property118.

View Full Article: Join me, Mark Alexander, on the expert panel at the National pin Meeting on Wednesday 7th December

EPC policy…the road to tenant hell?

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The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Like being obliged to have an EPC to rent a property.

So, I’m a landlord and a homeowner. I have in the distant past been a tenant. When I buy a home

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View Full Article: EPC policy…the road to tenant hell?

Council faces half-billion pound debt after disastrous investments

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Investigations have thrown new light on a series of solar energy investments which failed to switch the lights on for Thurrock Council.

Conservative led Thurrock Council has saddled itself with an almost £500 million debt when it tried to bridge a funding gap by taking on risky investments with council taxpayers’ money.

This Council is one of the most indebted of all English local authorities after borrowing around £1.5bn, that amounts to 10 times its annual spending budget.

A regular income

Thurrock Council’s investments were meant to make a regular income for the authority to help pay for vital services, but it has recently been reported that many of the investments they made have gone sour.

The latest central Government figures for the first quarter of this financial year show Thurrock had £941m outstanding in short term loans from other councils. This is nearly three times as high as the next indebted council which is Lancashire with £332m of loans outstanding.

The council will now borrow £836m in weekly instalments from the Public Works Loan Board (PWLB) up until 16 March, 2023, of which £678.5m will be repaid to other local authorities.

Other councils currently under central Government intervention are Slough Borough Council and Liverpool City Council, which appear in the top ten in terms of inter authority short term lending, owing £318m and £229m respectively.

An acute crisis

The almost unbelievable scale of the financial crisis affecting Thurrock Council has been revealed though an investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism into its series of failed investments. These left a huge hole in its finances to the tune of almost £500m, it’s the biggest debt ever reported by a UK local authority.

The authority in Thurrock now owes around £324m to 27 different authorities, including £60m to Derbyshire CC and its pension fund, and £20m to Cornwall Council, plus there are another 21 local government bodies that had previously lent money to Thurrock in 2020, now no longer involved.

It took three years of investigation by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ) to uncover the full magnitude of Thurrock’s financial crisis, including hundreds of millions lent to solar energy companies run by businessman Liam Kavanagh, 53 solar farms in all.

According to the BIJ, Thurrock council invested £655m in Mr Kavanagh’s companies, with an expected loss of £188m in some or all of the companies. Another £94m is tied up in a company called the Just Loans Group and is expected to represent another £65m loss on its investment when the company went bust in June, meanwhile millions more have been put at risk and lost in a series of other deals that have since turned sour.

Thurrock not the only one

In common with other councils, Thurrock got itself involved in commercial deals, many in commercial property, in attempts to offset short term income gaps during the years of austerity cuts. This was facilitated in large part by the availability of cheap borrowing through the Treasury.

The alternative income streams provided by investing council reserves and borrowings work well for a time until commercial businesses started to struggle, commercial property rents disappeared as tenants left, turning assets into liabilities, and now interest rates are on the rise as well.

They had been warned

Councils were being warned over a period of years by property professionals about the risks involved in taking on commercial investments that they were not equipped to deal with, but it seems the prospect of steady income streams to fill funding gaps using low interest borrowing was too tempting.

Major concerns by central Government over Thurrock’s exposure to risky commercial investments led to a team of commissioners being sent in to investigate its finances. Their report showed that the council’s finances were in a significantly worse state than originally thought.

Thurrock has sent an appeal to the central Government for an emergency bailout and is putting through a drastic programme of cuts to local services and making staff redundancies. This will also involve selling off council owned buildings and land plus other assets at its disposal as it tries to stay solvent. Local council taxpayers are also likely to see stiff increases.

Rob Whiteman, the chief executive of the public sector accountants body has said:

“What we are seeing in Thurrock is shocking and unprecedented. I have not seen anything like this in my 30-year career in local government,”

The government reports said of the financial situation the council finds itself in:

“This is a grave position and at this point the council cannot find a way to finance their expenditure in-year and is unlikely to achieve a balanced budget for 2023-24 without external support.”

Conservative leader, Mark Coxshall has issued a statement saying that services will continue to operate as normal for now and staff would continue to be paid, but he warned that there would be “extremely difficult decisions to come”.

View Full Article: Council faces half-billion pound debt after disastrous investments

EXCLUSIVE: New renting laws in Wales are a ‘disaster’ for landlords

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From today, landlords in Wales will see the biggest change to housing legislation in decades coming into force with the rules affecting both landlords and tenants.

But the new laws have been slammed as a ‘disaster’ for landlords by Janet Finch-Saunders

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View Full Article: EXCLUSIVE: New renting laws in Wales are a ‘disaster’ for landlords

BREAKING: House prices fell in October, latest Nationwide HPI reveals

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Annual UK house price growth slowed to 4.4% in November, down from 7.2% in October as the fallout from the mini-Budget continued to impact the market.

Prices fell 1.4% month-on-month – the biggest drop since June 2020 – making the average home worth £263,788, according to Nationwide’s November house price index, which reports that while financial market conditions have stabilised, interest rates for new mortgages remain high.

Those buyers returning to the market are negotiating hard while others have put their plans on ice, hoping for a combination of falling prices and lower fixed mortgage rates in the New Year.

Most advisors agree that predicted property price falls of 30% are overstated and believe that following a dip, prices will adjust over the next year or so. Some report that many landlords are holding back for a possible price crash so they can swoop in and buy property at a bargain.

Savvy

Imogen Sporle, head of term finance at Finanze, says: “In the past six months or so, savvy landlords have been releasing maximum equity from their portfolios when rates were low and fixed their mortgages in for five years. They now have a cash surplus to snap up properties when the expected crash occurs.”

In Scotland, landlords are selling up portfolios, often at a significantly reduced rate, according to Marie Johnstone, MD at Wilson Property Group.

“The cap on rental income has driven further uncertainty into an unstable marketplace,” she says. “We could see an avalanche of flats coming onto the market in the New Year once the short-term lets have cashed in on the Christmas trade.”

DeLorean

Mike Staton, director of Staton Mortgages, strikes a more jovial note. “If you are a landlord, I would consider asking Santa for a DeLorean for Christmas and fast forward to 2024. These days, you’ve got as much chance of getting a DeLorean than you have of getting a new buy-to-let mortgage at a decent rate,” he jokes.

View Full Article: BREAKING: House prices fell in October, latest Nationwide HPI reveals

Landlords – Attack back?

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Hello, I know this will go nowhere. We cannot strike. We cannot ask for more pay. How about – and I’ll keep it short.

Every article on the web (excluding offensive material) gets a tag from all landlords.

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View Full Article: Landlords – Attack back?

Shelter claims a million private renters face eviction this winter, reports ITV

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Just over half a million people are “at risk of being of being kicked out of their home this winter”, Shelter’s Chief Executive Polly Neate told ITV last night.

This figure has been achieved by rolling the number of tenants in the PRS threatened with, or served, eviction notices over the past month (502,000) with the 482,000 who are currently behind with their rent.

Describing the eviction process – whether via a Section 8 or Section 21 notice – as a ‘petrifying and painful process’ for tenants who fall behind in their rent, ITV’s Dan Hewitt (main picutre) interviewed several tenants facing eviction who were in difficult financial circumstances.

ITV News, which ran versions of Hewitt’s bulletin at both teatime and 10pm last night, pinned the looming rise in evictions on the Government’s ongoing decision to freeze Local Housing Allowance (LHA) for the UK’s 1.2 million private renters in receipt of Housing Benefit or Universal Credit.

This represents approximately one in four PRS renters.

As many readers will know, this means that during a period that has seen rising fuel and food costs, tenants within the LHA system receive payments towards their rent that are often significantly less than the rent they pay.

Polly Neate (pictured) added: “Almost a million private renters are at risk of being of being kicked out of their home this winter, and more will follow.

“Every day our emergency helpline advisers are taking gut-wrenching calls – from the mum who’s skipping meals to pay the rent to the family terrified they will be spending Christmas in a grotty homeless hostel.

“The government’s refusal to unfreeze housing benefit, when private rents are rising at record rates, means the rental crisis is fast becoming a homelessness emergency.”

Biggest losers

Paul Shamplina (pictured, left) of Landlord Action, who featured in both ITV News bulletins, says: “As I said on camera to Dan, the biggest losers from all this are tenants many of whom are now finding that huge competition – sometimes up to 40 applicants – for a reduced number of rented properties means higher rents.

“And it’s not going to get better – next year I predict that evictions next year will eclipse those during 2019 before Covid struck – so possibly more than 120,000, although this will include more mortgage evictions as the recession bites as well as landlords exiting the market.”

Landlords response

Chris Norris, Policy Director for the National Residential Landlords Association, says: “The vast majority of landlords want to help tenants stay in their homes wherever possible. However, the Government needs to do more to support those most in need of help. This should include unfreezing housing benefit rates. 

“It is simply absurd that support for housing costs is being linked to rents as they were three years ago, not as they are today.

“Ministers need also to address the supply crisis in the rental market. Recent tax hikes have served only to cut the number of homes available to rent, whilst demand continues to remain strong. All this is doing is driving rents up and making homes harder to access.

“We are working with the Government to ensure the system that replaces Section 21 repossessions is fair and workable for responsible landlords as well as tenants.

“This needs to include ensuring landlords can effectively tackle the problem of anti-social tenants and those building substantial rent arrears.”

Watch the ITV News item in full here

View Full Article: Shelter claims a million private renters face eviction this winter, reports ITV

BLOG: What are the pros and cons of investing in property via a Limited Company?

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A recent survey from Paragon Bank suggested that the number of landlords planning to set up a Limited Company to purchase a buy-to-let property reached 62% in the second quarter of 2022, up from 50% in the first quarter of the year.

According to the research, this is the highest proportion of landlords in the last three years that have indicated they are moving to a Limited Company.

Although some landlords have been investing in buy-to-let via a company for many years, the trend has increased rapidly since April 2017, when the government decided to phase in changes to the rules on how mortgage interest was taxed.

By April 2021, none of the interest paid on buy-to-let mortgages could be deducted from rental income; instead, investors filing Self Assessment tax returns would apply a relief of 20% to the cost of mortgage interest and other finance costs. This typically penalised higher-rate tax payers who could, in the past, have claimed 40% or more tax relief.

Attractive option?

Meanwhile, those that invest through a Limited Company are still allowed to deduct finance costs from their rental profits so, on the surface, that may seem a more attractive option for landlords.

However, it’s important to be aware that this is not straightforward and there are a number of factors that can affect whether such a move would be beneficial overall to you. So, if you’re considering making new investments via a Limited Company and/or transferring the ownership of existing buy-to-lets, you will need expert advice.

For any professional to be able to advise you, it’s important that they understand both your own personal financial situation and also your long-term property investment objectives.

For instance, are you looking to invest for pension income? Do you plan to pass on your portfolio to your children? Only then can all the pros and cons be properly taken into consideration, to help assess whether investing via a Limited Company is the right thing for you.

The pros

• You can deduct all your finance costs from the rental income.
• Typically, you pay a lower tax via the company, versus rates of personal income tax.
• Transferring ownership of a property or portfolio can be easily done via reallocation of shares, rather than changing the actual ownership of the property.
• Any profit you make can be kept in the company until you need it, rather than having to be declared in the year that you personally earn the income from buy to let. If you’re looking for income when you retire, drawing down dividends as and when you need may be a better option for you.  
• You may be able to save money when selling a property via a Limited Company rather than as an individual.  
• It can improve your profit and loss balance, as Limited Companies have to carefully account for every expense, which you may not be doing if you investing as an individual.
• If you wish to pass on your portfolio to your children, making them shareholders or a Company Director can be much more cost-effective than them inheriting property.

The cons

• You can’t simply transfer a property from your own ownership to a company without incurring costs such as Stamp Duty charges (Land Transaction Tax in Wales; Land and Buildings Transaction Tax in Scotland).       
• Financing via a commercial mortgage may cost more than financing a buy-to-let as an individual and you may have to pay higher fees as well. On top of this, you’re likely to have to pay for your Limited Company bank account, which currently may be free of charge.
• You need to calculate whether the overall amount of tax you pay via a company will be less, or at least no more, than the amount you pay investing in your own name. For instance, with a Limited Company, you will pay Corporation Tax, tax on dividends and will lose your personal allowances and exemptions. 
• You will need expert advice to understand the most tax-efficient way for you to set up a Limited Company, how to manage your funds via a company, your ongoing accounting and filling in tax returns differently. So you may incur higher ongoing costs if you need to employ an accountant to make sure you produce accounts according to government rules and regulations.

If you haven’t already, it’s worth finding out if investing in buy-to-let via a Limited Company could be right for you. We’ve partnered with GetGround, who have helped over 10,000 property investors set up their own Limited Companies and their experts can work with you to discover whether it might be worthwhile for you to make the switch.

If you’re keen to find out more, do contact your local Leaders branch and they will put you in direct touch with the experts at GetGround.

View Full Article: BLOG: What are the pros and cons of investing in property via a Limited Company?

Tenants happy to pay 13% rent premium for green homes, says big landlord

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Renters are willing to pay a 13% premium for a low carbon property, according to new research from Legal & General.

Its survey found that buyers would fork out 10.5% more, with all consumers now rating homes that have energy efficient, sustainable features as more important than the size of the property. There has also been a 34% rise in searches for eco-friendly homes.

Almost two-thirds (62%) see more green investment in housing as an attractive or very attractive option to address the cost-of-living crisis. When asked why they would buy or rent a low-carbon home, 65% of those surveyed chose environmental factors such as reducing their carbon footprint or helping to prevent climate change, while 37% prioritised the cost savings from cheaper energy bills.

Legal & General says the figures indicate that greener residential buildings could generate higher purchase and rental premiums, which would represent a major turning point in the way residential housing is valued in the future.

Material difference

“Climate change and energy efficiency have risen right up the agenda for many people when choosing a home,” says John Alker, head of sustainability.

“With buyers and renters prepared to pay a 10.5% and 13% premium respectively, energy efficiency and sustainability in homes make a material difference to the consumer. This research helps cement the business case for investors and developers to invest in low carbon homes.

“It also shows that clarity is key when it comes to low carbon and energy efficiency. Energy Performance Certificates are not well understood – they need reforming to better reflect real world energy consumption and to help incentivise adoption of low-carbon technology.”

Read more about EPC upgrade costs.

View Full Article: Tenants happy to pay 13% rent premium for green homes, says big landlord

TONIGHT: ITV News to investigate huge problems caused by lack of stock in PRS

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ITV News is to highlight the problems facing the private rented sector tonight, including items during its 6pm and 10pm Evening News bulletins.

Reporter Dan Hewitt (pictured above) is set to lift the lid on the challenges facing landlords and tenants, including how the Government’s Section 24 tax changes and the looming Renters Reform Act measures are reducing the amount of stock and driving up rents.

The bulletins will also include an interview with Landlord Action’s Paul Shamplina in London.

This included visits to two properties where tenants faced eviction in Ilford and Barnet; both being served Section 8 notices.

One had built up rent arrears of £17,000 after it took the landlords months to get their possession order via the courts.

“During the interview I highlighted to Dan that, during my 30 years spent working in the private rented sector, and 22 years running Landlord Action, I’ve never seen such a severe crisis of rental supply in the market,” he says.

“We are seeing an unprecedented number of landlords leaving the sector and serving Section 21 notices to enable them to sell their properties – many small landlords are simply throwing in the towel.”

Shamplina (pictured with Hewitt) says this is due to three drivers; the Section 24 changes to tax relief on mortgage interest, the hike in interest rates brought about by Kwarteng’s mini budget, and the extra regulation expected in the Renters Reform Bill next year.

“As I said on camera to Dan, the biggest losers from all this are tenants many of whom are now finding that huge competition – sometimes up to 40 applicants – for a reduced number of rented properties means higher rents.

“And it’s not going to get better – next year I predict that evictions next year will eclipse those during 2019 before Covid struck – so possibly more than 120,000, although this will include more mortgage evictions as the recession bites as well as landlords exiting the market.”

Watch the ITV news team in action

BTS filming with our @PaulShamplina and @DanielHewittITV Watch the full coverage on tonight’s @itvnews programme 6:30pm, highlighting the current #rentalstock #crisis, #costofliving and #landlords selling up and exiting the sector. https://t.co/nKhxr5J6wg

— Landlord Action (@LandlordAction) November 30, 2022

View Full Article: TONIGHT: ITV News to investigate huge problems caused by lack of stock in PRS