EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

yeah i think i agree with most of that tbf.

i'm not suggesting all trump voters are fash, but all fash are trump voters and the ones that aren't - well it doesn't seem to bother them all that much, which is equally worrying.

Residential property shouldn't be an 'investment' at all.
Ramp up to 90% tax on rental income, receipts ringfenced for local authorities to purchase/build new housing stock. Local authorities to charge based on servicing house build/purchase cost over average working life (so probably something like 40 years) ie. longer than usual mortgage terms.
Make private landlording un-profitable and uncompetitive and it will go away.

How about addressing taxation on inherited property hidden in trusts or by other means + offshore ownership? (Of course this lot wouldn’t go for that) Possibly less likely to hit the little (littler) guys?

That's already starting to an extent, I know a number of people who have been put off renting out their properties due to the new tax rules coming in. It isn't that profitable if the crazy equity gains aren't there.

The issues are whether the lack of flexibility will hit people. Will these local authority lets cover 3/6 month lets? Will they be in places people want to live? What about places out of London where the demand for rented property is lower?

On the flip side, what if you own a property but want to move to work somewhere else or move in with a partner? With a 90% tax on rental income it would be pretty much impossible to relocate temporarily.

#armchairpolicymakers

My end goal would be private ownership and public rental - I don't see what value a private landlord adds. The need to cover (relatively) short term finance costs, pay tax and (in theory) extract profit just increases the difference between the base cost of housing and what the renters pay.
If you give councils (or a national housing service, for example) a new stream of funding and a long timescale to cover setup costs, renters could be paying a lot less to live in the same place.
Genuine question - why should rents rise with inflation when costs are fixed?

All this is a problem that was solved in the 19th C with housing associations.

Everyone marvels at the fairness and quality of housing in Sweden (granted, there are now shortages because of recent governments sitting on their laurels) and yet when you go to Gothenburg you see that most of their social welfare system, hospitals, unis, schools, and housing associations were first imported by merchants from Scotland who saw the opportunity to start businesses in Sweden and industrialise the country. Ensuring that there were social systems in place was just seen as a natural and virtuous thing to do with your wealth, and because these systems worked they propagated around the country.

It's pretty saddening to see people talking about this 'Swedish miracle' and wonder at how different things could be in Scotland and the UK if all these safety nets hadn't been chipped away over generations or suffocated at birth.

Now even housing associations aren't allowed to do what they were intended to do-providing cheap, near to cost accommodation-because it would interfere with the wider market trends if they did. Hence you get bollocks 'mid-market' 'affordable' housing which is basically market rate minus a tenner, maybe with an option to buy 20% etc, and means tested only in the sense that you can't earn more than £35k, in which case you'd be far better getting your own mortgage anyway.

Cunts.

On the flip side, what if you own a property but want to move to work somewhere else or move in with a partner? With a 90% tax on rental income it would be pretty much impossible to relocate temporarily.

People would just do it under the table. Or you adjust the rules on absentee landlords, or whatever it's called by HMRC.

This is the boat we are in. Currently making a small loss if we weren't returning, next year it would be a slightly larger loss due to the tax changes.

Granted our original mortgage was never intended to be for a BTL investment, so it's not the best benchmark but I'm not sure sure how many people could go out today and make a decent return on BTL.

EDIT : obvs not doing anything under the table, as it isn't worth it.

Netherlands has a shortage due to lack of keeping up but that is also a problem for the social housing co-ops (which got hurt a lot by the global stock market crash due to the property crash as they had also invested in stocks...)

Granted I haven’t lived there for over 20 years but this doesn’t sound true from my personal experiences whenever I’ve visited. It’s not the upkeep that’s lacking as much as the shortage of new builds. It’s still a far better situation than most countries in the EU.

You certainly can’t begrudge people for playing the game (especially when encouraged by successive governments) but yeah the rules should change. Investing is good but there are other, economically and socially productive ways to use spare money aside from property speculation. Crowd-sourced business loans seem like a great way to have some direct impact there.

Regarding rent rises, that has a certain amount of logic to it but probably only possible due to limited supply. It all seems a bit ‘oh everyone else is so I should too’. If you want market returns, put your money in the market.

.

end rent seeking, get rid of private landlords etc

Why stop with the housing sector? When I bought my skinny soy-decaf dry-latte this morning, most of what I paid actually went towards rental of the coffee machine. I'm outraged at this social injustice! We should ban private coffee shops immediately except for state owned coffee distribution!

Because different things with a small crossover are still different things

I suppose that is a reasonable argument if you’re enough of a bellend to equate necessary shelter with an unnecessary hot drink.

Why don't we start monetising water and oxygen supply too? Lots of money to be made there. If people don't want to pay they just need to stop breathing.

People ignore the fact that Marx, prior to becoming an economist/philosopher, was a journalist and more interested in Greek classics than social revolution. He was radicalised when the Prussian government changed the law to criminalise the poor collecting dead firewood from the land (which they needed to survive) at the behest of landowners who had inherited or stolen the land in the first place, and he became witness to the fact that four fifths of the cases heard in court became concerned with fining or jailing them into servitude because of this.

This is a model of capitalism; take something essential to life and leverage every penny you can out of it to generate income for the minority that control the resources. Hardly equivalent to a lease contract for a coffee maker that comes with a service plan and creates extraneous goods at 1000% markup.

If you can't see the inherent evil in a system that demands people pay two thirds of their salary every month just to keep shelter over their heads (and lets not get into the quality of what they can expect for their money or the security they will enjoy there) then you need to have a fucking word with yourself.

Bad English on my part I meant keeping up with demand. You are right, not enough houses being built atm and they are working on making it easier.

Many graduates still live at home as the rent is too high, but they earn too much for social housing.

What do you think of the big housing corporations/landlords?

I suspect they push out the "little" ones as well. Could be wrong.

@JWestland not sure to ask here or the news thread, but if Paisley Jr is recalled and there's a bi-election would the constituency just come out and vote DUP again anyway?

Unfortunately most likely yes as there are still many people that vote purely on Orange vs Green. The old joke that you can put a flag on a goat and people vote for it still holds. He will lose some votes I guess, but I'd be surprised if he gets kicked out.

A satire site put it nicely: https://theulsterfry.com/politics/top-dup-politician-set-to-admit-murder-as-scandals-escalate/

🏴SEIZE THE BEANS oF PRODUCTION 🏴

If you can't see the inherent evil ... then you need to have a fucking word with yourself.

Have you considered meditation?

Amaeze

lol

@bothwell There's a tshirt in this somewhere...

#someonestartalist

Coffee beans throw off the pods of repression!