Proposal to make BTL a time limited offer – Feedback request

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Once more I am after landlords’ views – this time about a proposal put forward by the Centre for Policy Studies. In a nutshell it is this:

‘What we propose, therefore, is that the Government should make every buy-to-let landlord in the country a time-limited offer.

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38 Degrees have a petition to pause UC rollout

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I would like to share the 38 Degrees petition to pause the rollout of Universal Credit: click here

“To Esther McVey:

Universal Credit is a scheme that replaces lots of different benefits. But it’s been riddled with problems since it was first trialed.

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I have stopped letting properties – Fergus Wilson

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Like all employers in the South East I was heavily dependent on an East European workforce. On 1st October, 2018 at 7.30am a Hungarian workman did not turn up for work. He telephoned to say he was on the ferry heading for Calais as he had been offered a job the previous night in Germany.

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Landlord in Burnley fined £56,000

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Selective Licensing:

A Burnley landlord has been fined £56,000 for breaking Burnley Council’s selective licensing scheme rules.

Landlord David Paul Vallender failed to apply for licenses for four properties he owned and rented out in Athol Street North, Bruce Street, Ada Street and Dickson Street, all of Burnley, under the council’s selective licensing scheme.

The council brought a successful prosecution against Vallender using legislation introduced by the government to help tackle “rogue� landlord property owners.

Burnley magistrates imposed fines on Vallender of £12,500 for each property. In addition to the fines he was ordered to pay a further £5,000 as a victim surcharge and £1,100 in court costs.

Vallender who did not attend the court hearing was found guilty in his absence.

The fines imposed and victim surcharge will go to central government, whereas the costs will go to the council to help cover the cost of bringing the prosecution.

The court was told that Vallender had asked for exemption forms for three of the properties in August 2016, but had failed to progress this any further despite several requests by the council up until December 2017. He had then promised to send the forms in by February 2018, but they were never received by the council.

Vallender, the court was told, had tried to avoid the selective licensing requirement by creating 21-year leases for his tenants. However, the ruse was not accepted by the court.

Councillor John Harbour, the executive member for housing and leisure, had said:

“The council is always willing to work with private landlords and support them in providing good quality and well managed homes for residents.

“In this case the landlord was given every opportunity to work with us but failed to provide the information we needed, despite repeated requests and meetings with officers.

“This was one of the biggest fines ever handed out by the courts in this country for failing to properly licence properties. It shows the importance of landlords and managing agents working with us to improve the management of privately rented houses in our borough.�

Under the Housing Act 2004 councils are given powers to introduce selective licensing schemes to deal with particular problems in specified problem locales in their boroughs.

These schemes are meant to be highly targeted measures to tackle the most severe housing problems arising from poor management of rental properties.

Burnley council is currently consulting the public and landlords in the area about proposals to renew its existing selective licensing schemes. These are currently effective in the Trinity, Gannow and Queensgate/Duke Bar areas, and it is looking to introduce a new scheme in Daneshouse with Stoneyholme.

Selective licensing in the private rented sector: a guide for local authorities – here

[Image shows Burnley Canal]

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Shelter’s Head of Research misled public on TV

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Last Thursday Hilary Burkitt, the Head of Research at Shelter, spoke about the PRS on the BBC’s Politics Live programme, about 22 minutes from the start. click here

She said “people don’t have the stability at the moment

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Waltham Forest Council uncover Rent to Rent Scammer

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A property managing agent who used ‘ghost tenants’ as a front so that she could cram 16 people into one over-crowded house has been hit with a £26,000 fine.

The council property licensing team received an application to register the property on Eastfield Road

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Surprise! new tenant

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Hello All, Last week, I carried out a general check up/inspection/’how’s it going?’ visit at the same time as a periodic electrical inspection. This was arranged with the tenant by text/phone.

It was surreal. I have never been in this position before.

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James Brokenshire announces consultation to cap unfair leaseholds

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The Government’s proposal is for the vast majority of new houses to be freehold with ground rents for new leases capped at £10.

Housing Minister, James Brokenshire, said: “Unfair ground rents can turn a homeowner’s dream into a nightmare by hitting them in the back pocket

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Will proptech save the property business?

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New Technology:

Both letting agents and estate agents are very concerned about the disruptive effects of new technology, “proptech� as it’s been dumbed, for property, as opposed to “fintech� for the financial services world.

The disruptive effects of online delivery of both property sales and lettings, with the likes of PurpleBricks, and in lettings, Upad, are making quite rapid inroads into traditional ways of doing business.

One only needs to look into the travails of the likes of Countrywide and Foxtons, whose share prices have tanked since Christmas, to know that proptech is one of the factors behind the drop.

But Sheila Manchester, introducing a leading authority on proptech, Prof. Andrew Baum, who is to speak at the next Negotiator journal’s conference on 30^th November asks: “Will proptech save the property business?�

Co-author of books with sales of over 60,000, and a report: “Proptech 3.0: The Future of Real Estateâ€� produced by the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School in 2017, Baum is being named one of the three of the world’s foremost and influential people in proptech.

So will proptech save the massive global real estate market, or will it damage it beyond repair by removing the personal contact that most clients value today? Could it totally devalue what professional well trained agents strive for today, by entering into a cut-price race to the bottom?

Are traditional “people-centric” agents today “tech savvyâ€� enough to adapt to the challenges of tomorrow before it’s too late? Will they succeed by harnessing the technology to their own advantage, using the best of both worlds – new technology to enhance their offering, a creative an efficient hybrid model, and their own personal touch, rather than let new proptech businesses take over completely?

A recent RICS survey shows how far behind many in the industry still are: only around one-third of a batch of 200 surveyors questioned had heard of proptech, let alone understood what proptech means, and 66 per cent were still collecting their data with pen and paper.

But change is on its way and as Andrew Gove onetime CEO of Intel famously said: “Only the Paranoid Survive.�

We could be on the cusp of yet another tech revolution almost as big as the Internet itself, as Blockchain enters the fray; a revolutionary new technology spun out of Crypto currency, Blockchain lends itself so readily to money transactions and contracts – as a dependable open access ledger. Thousands of tech people are working on systems backed by billions of pounds in investment, working to change the way property is traded and managed.

To simplify somewhat: a blockchain is a continuously growing and immutable list of records (blocks), which are linked (chained in sequence) and secured using cryptography. Each block typically contains a cryptographic hash of the previous block, a timestamp and full transaction information. Together, these blocks form an online openly distributed, unchangeable, peer-to-peer (decentralised) ‘ledger’ of records between different parties.

The Oxford research initiative is bringing together academics and property industry experts from across the globe to research and understand the technology and innovation drivers of change for real estate. An updated report will make the research findings available to everyone, but in the meantime you should read the one published in 2017 – see link below.

Andrew Vaughan, Chief Executive Officer at Redevco, a company involved in the research, has said:

“We recognise the enormous structural changes taking place in our sector. We believe these will be both positive as well as disruptive, will come at an astonishing speed and will significantly impact our business.

“We are delighted to join the Future of Real Estate initiative working with like-minded partners to learn about and anticipate the impact of such technologies and innovations at an early stage.�

Proptech 3.0: The Future of Real Estate – here

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CGT when you own both freehold and leasehold?

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My wife and I jointly own the freehold of a building and I own the four individual leasehold flats contained in this building (as, I hope I am right in saying you are not allowed to own both the freehold and the leasehold of the same building)

If we want to sell one of the leasehold flats can we use both of our CGT allowances against the capital gain?

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