to think all buy to let people are just in it to get someone else to work to pay off their mortgage?

[madhurjazz]

I wish people would say it as it is. Buy to let in my mind is just about getting someone else that can't afford a deposit / without a stable job to do all the hard work to pay off the mortgage of someone else. It does feel like a massive step backwards in equality.

Very few actually want to rent, the vast majority are stuck doing so as speculation keeps pushing ownership out of reach.

I see your point, OP. Hate the rent prices charges these days, too: if you rent a place alone and actually have a job (you don't claim benefits), that's a huge chunk out of your salary which makes it even harder to save to buy a place.

Really hate that in my area (south west Surrey), so many landlords buy up properties to rent to students for extortionate rates (meaning less properties available and the ones that are left are crazy expensive), then developers keep acquiring land to build silly expensive apartments, rather than modest, sensibly priced family homes. Sucks!

NRTFT - too long!

But YABU, some of us are accidental landlords. I bought my house in the worst month ever, when I was single. 7 years later, with a DH and baby on the way our 1-bed was too small. However selling would put me in negative equity, so we went on to rent while saving for another house, and I rented the house out (but making no profit my tenants have just covered the mortgage).

What would you have people like me do? Lose money on something I've paid into for so many years, all to feel righteous and guilt-free? The 'buy to letters are immoral' stance really fucks me off especially when tenants trash your house and cause hundreds of pounds worth of damage and then piss off without paying months worth of rent

So would you prefer that my portfolio was not available? I do agree that proper longer term rents at more reasonable prices with security would be better (and if that's happens I'll sell up) but in the meantime what would you prefer?

What do you mean "your portfolio" is not available?

HMRC has a new big brother plan they are consulting on at the moment where all the self employed including allthose Uber drivers and Handy self employed cleaners and the like the Deliveroo people too would have to have a new software package they pay for, record all their earnings and not just send to HMRC once a year as now but at least 4 times a year. If you want to fight big brother state now is your chance - respond to the HMRC consultation on digital tax.

This makes my blood run cold.

Hmrc have a new system coming out to crack down on tax evasion and fraud. But how is that relivant to this? Unless btl people are computing fraud?

Your quote sounds like a loaded one full of bias, where is it from?

This very thread.

Like a lot of people - I didn't want the hassle of being a property owner the moment I moved out of home.

So I chose to rent because I wanted the flexibility of being able to move around with work.

Had one or two dodgy landlords and some lovely ones.

Did I resent them? Nope - they provided suitable housing a a reasonable cost. They also came and mended things when necessary - saving me the expense and faff of getting a new boiler for example.

Are you suggesting that government own all non owner occupied properties OP? They couldn't afford to buy the properties off of people.

This is nonsense.

But how is that relivant to this? Unless btl people are computing fraud?

They may not be committing fraud but to assume it won't affect everybody who needs to self assess is niave.

I don't commit fraud but if the proposals are passed I will be giving up the 'self employed' element of my income as it will become too time intensive and beurocratic- I won't actually have the time to do the work as I'll be too busy inputting receipts and meeting HMRC deadlines.

Real time PAYE uses a similar system - it often used to take me a day a month to process the pay of one staff member - it is clunky, unreliable and poorly designed. There's no reason to think self assessment will be any better.
Yes, there are software packages you can buy to make the process more automated - but that's an additional expense on an already stretched income.

Accidental landlord here twice. I have to pay tax on my 'investment'. I charge under the going rate for my place because I want it looked after. I currently rent elsewhere until I can afford to buy on again somewhere more appropriate for myself and the kids. That will be a long way off though. I'm hoping I can do it because I would like that to be my pension.

Namebake, re the point about government owning non owner occupied properties and how they'd afford to buy them, don't forget the concept of compulsory purchase and the issue of who decides the valuation

I imagine some of the far left might see merit in that route ...

NN, I am lobbying against the HMRC digital tax proposals which will be a nightmare for small businesses and involve a lot of cost and time. I think they are going to exclude landlords who earn under £10k or something like that. They will not be excluding my business. There is a consultation on whether they will let hundreds of thousands of self employed people continue to keep records in excel (and many don't even use excel by the way). There will be exclusions for the large numbers of areas without good internet access but I won't quite come into that as can now go beyond dial up here.

I am lobbying against the HMRC digital tax proposals which will be a nightmare for small businesses and involve a lot of cost and time.

To say nothing of how fucking deeply uninspiring this might be for someone who wants to, say, take a crack at window cleaning.

Would love to have a BTL investment... However I never sit around feeling jealous of those who have achieved this. Rather, I admire them.

What is RTB??

Yes to building more homes.

What can be done to make houses more affordable? I hope DH & I are able to help with a small deposit for our DC but then they're on their own really. Not everyone has this privilege.

Yes to regulating & registration of landlords. Will the Tories do this though? I doubt it.

Compulsory purchasing of non owner occupied homes - communist fantasy I hope and nothing more!

Oh RTB means Right to Buy I guess?

If they earn under £10k at window cleaning I don't think they will (at least for now when it comes in a few years' time) have to do it. Many of us have been keeping perfect accounts for decades in a way that suits us. For some people it may even be paper and pen and it works very well for them and they once a year they tell HMRC all the details on their tax return. The likely requirement to have to buy a complicated software product to upload expenses and income every day is only to suit the Government. It is not going to make anything easier for most people and in particular I hate the way they are saying loads of tax payers have told them they adore the proposal as it will anable them to log on and see what they have earned. It is just untrue. Most self employed people already know that informatino from their own books and records and do not need time consuming log ons and pass words being imposed on them (unless I suppose tax rates were cut in half)

Anyway now is the time for everyone to lobby their MP and respond to the HMRC consultation. Sorry this is a bit off topic. www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/545715/Making_Tax_Digital-Bringing_business_tax_into_the_digital_age-consultation.pdf

Would love to have a BTL investment... However I never sit around feeling jealous of those who have achieved this. Rather, I admire them.

Its hardly an achievement, wahay someone managed to take on huge debt (often by remortgaging) to speculate on housing and feed the pyramid scheme.

If it all fails, as it should do but we haven't had a free market for a long time, these btl suckers will soon see they are just the marks for the banks to make more money.

I think the new software is aimed at those not properly accounting for their earnings or being always late submitting or having gaps for whatever reason. I CHOOSE to pay a monthly fee for software to run our business and make sure VAT returns, Tax, salaries and such are paid on time to the right people for the right amount. I think it can only benefit SE folk to have a rigorous system that does all this for them - think of the hours they currently spend with shoe boxes of receipts and so on at the end of the financial year (or usually 9mths after that the night before its due in) panicking about their returns. All of this would not be there. We have been exempted from the 1/4ly returns at the moment

We had to let our flat as we moved to a different area of the country and the bottom just dropped out of the market the week after we put it up for sale. We then had to rent ourselves whilst we waited for the market to recover as all of our money was tied up in the original flat. And we made a £20k loss in the end. So we're not all in it for the money.

madhur not everyone remortgaged their home or takes on huge debt to do BTL.

Some of us buy in cash.

Just because you made a loss doesn't mean you weren't in it for money! I've sold some shares at a loss, that's life investments can go up and down.

Some may of bought in cash. But that is probably a tiny amount. The vast minority are using borrowed and remortgaged money, a ponzi scheme.

Dont rent privately If you don't want to pay landlords

Borrowing 75% or more like 60% since the rule changes to buy a property to let out is not a Ponzi scheme. Ponzi schemes usually mean people end up with no money. That has not been the result for landlords. Interest rates have certainly been kept very low by the Bnak of England and landlords know rule changes like those this year may well affect house prices upwards or downwards.

May, the PM, seems to have made it clear this week she is moving from Cameron's plan to build more houses for people to buy to helping ensure there are more properties for people to rent. I am not sure most people in the UK would prefer this option however. We tend to prefer to buy where we can in the UK.

Last two years I had zero profit on my flat rental because the roof needed repairing at a hearty cost of nearly 9k. My tenants lived blissfully unaware of the cost, yet benefitted from a beautiful shiny new roof. Had they owned the flat they'd have been in dire straits financially. Not many people can easily afford a roof costing night-on ten thousand pounds, just like that. Then when the boiler died at Christmas I was the one paying for expensive emergency call-out charges to immediately repair it. They were not troubled financially by it at all.

I read an article about renting where they said in many ways it's preferable to rent, to spare yourselves the financial burden of repairs such as theses, assuming you have a good landlord of course.

I was another trapped by negative equity, and didn't have enough money to pay for the cost of moving in with my boyfriend and paying for the negative equity on my existing flat. So if selling isn't an option then renting it has to be.

There are two sides to a coin as well. As a landlord I've been quite dismayed by how many seemingly nice and normal people will deliberately damage property that does not belong to them. I've paid literally thousands on repairing damage when tenants leave, and truly value a good tenant who will look after things properly.

So yeah, you may not like having to rent, but not every tenant is a good tenant and can cause a huge headache. Funny how it's the "I hate landlords" posts you see on MN and not "I hate tenants". It strikes me that landlords accept the fact that there are people out there who can't be arsed, and try to find a way through despite it.

I'm an accidental land lord, I hate it, the tenant hates it, they have the deposit and earnings to buy but his business went bankrupt so they are waiting out the 6 years.

It is a dreadful situation, I could buy a shoe box to live in for cash but every time I go to view, I'm out bid buy a buy to let land lord, even if it's only £500 if you don't have it you don't have it.