Is it unusual to check how the water runs and how many power outlets are in a potential rental? Like I got told by a potential landlord that I was weirding him out and to leave, I mean there was several problems with the viewing like the original tenants were still there and it was a mess so I
couldn't really do anything. My mentality is to have a pretty thorough inspection of the place cause I could be living there a long time and I want to be comfortable and not have problems.
No. My sister did exactly not that, and the property it turns out didn't have running water. At all. Oh it had faucets. The water just didn't run.
Always check such things imo. Any land lord who gets offended by you wanting to be doubly sure everything is as advertised is probably a land lord you don't want to rent from anyway.
If your landlord is getting weird about you doing checks (which is common sense) it probably means they are hiding some long running problems.
Some people have very low standards and landlords love those people because they will never complain or call on them to fix gak. I've rented some absolute hovels in my student days...
Nothing wrong with checking that sort of thing. The landlord's attitude is a pretty big red flag to me though. You're going to have to live in this place and pay a lot of money in the process so it's only reasonable to want to check out everything to do with the place. If a landlord doesn't like you being so thorough there may well be an ulterior motive on their part.
Things like water pressure and electrical outlets can be a problem in older buildings, especially if the owner hasn't upgraded the infrastructure in a long time. With the amount of electrical equipment most people use now the old double socket for your TV is less and less suitable.
I agree with the others, checking the basic services and utilities is perfectly normal and should honestly be part of what they show you upon arrival and certainly something you need to make sure of.
It's not just counting plug sockets and checking the running water, its checking if the hot and cold both work; its checking if there's a meter system; its seeing if the plugs even work. Checking the toilet is a very good thing, not just if its nice to look at but if it flushes and refills; showers to see if they run and check the grouting, ovens, fridges/freezers. If they provide facilities its good to check them.
Any landlord who doesn't like that is sending up big red warning flags. At best they might be new to it and thus not quite confident with someone moving around "their property" etc... They might be ok, but could also be a nightmare because its their first time and they aren't really prepared for what having a lodger entails.
At worst they know something is wrong in the property and don't want you to spot it before paying. It might be nothing to do with the water nor electrics it could be something else entirely, but if you're paying attention to the small details then you're more likely to spot it so they try and hurry you along or make you sound odd to try and stop you poking around.
A note on water, sometimes properties that haven't been lived in for a long while might run coloured water where the water has basically sat in the tank/system/pipes for a long while. So if you get coloured water run the tap for a bit and see if it clears. It's something a letting agent or experienced landlord should know about (and typically aim to run the water the day before etc... to avoid it).
(after all they're no doubt going to want you to sign something saying it's in perfect condition so they can charge you for messing stuff up when you leave, so if it's pre-broken you need to know even if you are ok with renting a place with faults)
and if the landlord doesn't want you to run a mile there is almost certainly something wrong with the place (or just the landlord)
Landlords are parasites extracting useful money from the economy from peoples hard work for doing feck all.
Give them no quarter, expect none. If a landlord dislikes you checking stuff like that it probably means they want a pushover tennant they can push around and ignore their obligations.
It's nice when they get the red flags out right away, up front.
Yes, you should be checking the water pressure, that the toilet flushes, that the outlets work, and a great many other things already mentioned in this thread. There are a few reasons a landlord might not want you doing those things and none of those reasons are in your best interest.
Indeed. But defo get copies of what was taken at the time. It's far too easy for them to 'confuse' those pics, with ones showing no damage from a past tenant.
I've known people to take photos of the property when they've moved in, all time stamped on the photo (or in the photo properties, but on the photo is normally trusted a bit more so "because you can't change it so easily". Then they take the files and have a legal firm hold them - recording the date etc...
This way they've got two layers of proof of the date when the photos were taken.
While I agree 100% that 'landlords' are moochers, the situation isn't so bad in Canada as it is in the U.K..
Specifically in Ontario, where I now live, tenants have very, very strong protections from predators and I'm advised the situation is much the same from Newfoundland to B.C..
The rental scene in the U.K. is, by comparison, a shark-tank.
In my experience, landlords in Scotland and England have been hit and miss but orders of magnitude better than those in the US and Israel, the only other places I have any experience. Mostly I think that's been down to what people will accept as the baseline for 'habitable' more than anything else, though.
I've never encountered a landlord who was uncomfortable with me checking things out, though. That's gotta be an auto-pass for any would-be tenant, surely?
how are landlords moochers? someone has to own the property.
Tenants can be just as bad. I've had chinese contractors renting my property who had people sleeping on mattresses on the floor in the living room, leaving the kitchen in a tip, stains everywhere, leaving the door wide open during the day.
Not to mention law (in the UK at least) is massively biased towards tenants.
New laws have come in that forbid the upfront charging of more than 5 weeks rent, meaning that tenants can potentially leave without paying the last months rent, and increasing the amount I have to pay to letting agents to cover increased fees.
even donkey-cave tenants who stop paying rent... I know people who have had to foot mortgages and bills for months because someone refuses to leave their property. Now I'd tend to take more direct action but then as I said, the law heavily favours tenants in pretty much all cases.
Regarding the OP, it does seem a little odd. I use a letting agency so I never have any direct contact with tenants, but if i did I'd certainly be trying to show off the house in the best light.
Better the resident or the state. Private landlords are both preventing poor people getting on the housing market and exploiting that predicament for continued financial gain. Every single one is mooching.
One of the big issues is that in the UK a lot of the issues regarding housing and tenants falls under civil law rather than criminal. So whilst there are laws in place for both sides, crafty people (on either side) can cause a nightmare because it all has to go through slow civil court systems and even then it can be hard to get judgements enforced; and because its civil its not really something the police will deal with.
There's loads of stories about scummy and bad landlords just as there are for tenants. I'd even argue it can be worse for landlords in so much as tenants can wind up living in their properties without permission and without paying rents for a long time before they can be evicted which can all come with crippling costs as well - not to mention that you're unlikely to see any money from the tenant.
It works exactly the same way in Ontario - and all of Canada. Until recently (in Ontario) we had the Landlord and Tenant Board; now it all falls under the Social Justice Tribunal of Ontario umbrella. It isn't hard to get judgments enforced, either here or there, though judgments are often slow in forthcoming, you're right.
You could easily solve that problem by throwing money at the court/tribunal system, but ironically people who like to complain about the courts often also don't like to pay taxes for things like courts.
There is no basis to assert that laws in the U.K. favour tenants and plenty to assert that in fact, the system is heavily weighted in favour of parasitic 'landlords', regardless of outlier horror stories trotted out as if they're the norm in a transparent attempt to garner sympathy.
Can't Pay, Won't Pay isn't a documentary, no matter what Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells desperately wants you to believe.
Better the resident or the state. Private landlords are both preventing poor people getting on the housing market and exploiting that predicament for continued financial gain. Every single one is mooching.
The state?! Oh dear.. So its better for those totally competent, fiscally responsible, not at all corrupt Westminster dwellers to call the shots in property management than the common man? I respectfully disagree. The last thing we need is the government taking more of our money. I actually make very little profit from my property. I pay most of it back in income tax. I pay for all repairs. And I take all the risk on the actual market value of the property. This is of course offset by the fact that I will in all likelihood have a nice asset at the end of it. But getting rid of private landlordship won't get more people owning properties.. It will mean more people in council houses, draining capital rather than creating it.
Better the resident or the state. Private landlords are both preventing poor people getting on the housing market and exploiting that predicament for continued financial gain. Every single one is mooching.
The state?! Oh dear.. So its better for those totally competent, fiscally responsible, not at all corrupt Westminster dwellers to call the shots in property management than the common man? I respectfully disagree. The last thing we need is the government taking more of our money. I actually make very little profit from my property. I pay most of it back in income tax. I pay for all repairs. And I take all the risk on the actual market value of the property. This is of course offset by the fact that I will in all likelihood have a nice asset at the end of it. But getting rid of private landlordship won't get more people owning properties.. It will mean more people in council houses, draining capital rather than creating it.
This is a far, far better thing, for literally everyone involved except private landlords, than renting at market rates. However, we're getting to politics.
Well I wouldn't worry as you'll probably get your wish in our misguided rush to take everything from the layman and give it to the gevernment. People should be celebrating the ability for totally average Joe's like me to get into private ventures, not be hankering to take it away under some weird impression that I get it all handed to me on a plate.
Plenty of people are happy to rent, and I'm sure they'd rather rent from people like me, (I've never increased rent charges in my entire spell of ownership, despite having every right to according to the market value) than the state, who will rape them for every penny they can.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Well I wouldn't worry as you'll probably get your wish in our misguided rush to take everything from the layman and give it to the gevernment. People should be celebrating the ability for totally average Joe's like me to get into private ventures, not be hankering to take it away under some weird impression that I get it all handed to me on a plate.
For what it's worth, we're very lucky and own two homes. We could happily buy multiple properties by mortgaging the ones we have, rent them, and earn more than we do currently. Significantly more. It has absolutely nothing to do with my resenting how easy it is for some people. It's entirely about wanting other people to have secure homes, too.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Plenty of people are happy to rent, and I'm sure they'd rather rent from people like me, (I've never increased rent charges in my entire spell of ownership, despite having every right to according to the market value) than the state, who will rape them for every penny they can.
I'm not sure why you think they state will abuse its tenants. Have you ever had a council house? They don't come at astronomical rents in my experience. They're pennies compared to private rents in every town I'm aware of.
Better the resident or the state. Private landlords are both preventing poor people getting on the housing market and exploiting that predicament for continued financial gain. Every single one is mooching.
Yeah, no.
Yes, some landlords are total scumbags. But many more are perfectly decent people who do care about their tenants.
Landlords who rent out to permanent tenants are actually far better for the economy than a landlord who is turning all of their properties into AirBnBs. At least the property is housing for residents which isn't going to inflate the price of housing.
And the tenants are gaining benefits out of the arrangement too. Tenants don't have to bear responsibility for long term maintenance, if the plumbing conks out the landlord has to foot the bill and get it fixed in a timely manner. They didn't have to cough up a large downpayment like the landlord did when they bought the property, nor do they have the long term obligations that come with owning that property. This is of course a thing that can give landlords nightmares too. Tenants can absolutely trash a property and often get away with it. Most tenants of course are decent people, but the chance of getting a bad seed is always a danger.
Landlords are also always going to have to charge their tenants a higher rate than what the mortgage payment is, otherwise they aren't making money. IE: month to month, renting is more expensive than a mortgage all else being equal. So if a renter is able to save up enough for a downpayment, they will eventually be able to buy their own place. Assuming they aren't in subsidized housing and/or have the discipline to actually save up.
Basically, tenants pay more monthly for the convenience of not having to deal with the periodical expenses and hassle of property ownership. Its a fair trade off assuming nobody is a scumbag, and most people aren't.
Landlords who rent out to permanent tenants are actually far better for the economy than a landlord who is turning all of their properties into AirBnBs.
I agree but 'better than terrible' isn't synonymous with 'good'.
At least the property is housing for residents which isn't going to inflate the price of housing.
Yes it does.
And the tenants are gaining benefits out of the arrangement too. Tenants don't have to bear responsibility for long term maintenance, if the plumbing conks out the landlord has to foot the bill and get it fixed in a timely manner. They didn't have to cough up a large downpayment like the landlord did when they bought the property, nor do they have the long term obligations that come with owning that property.
And many (nowadays, in some territories, most) will never manage to save one, precisely because they're giving a landlord so much.
Landlords are also always going to have to charge their tenants a higher rate than what the mortgage payment is, otherwise they aren't making money. IE: month to month, renting is more expensive than a mortgage all else being equal
And? My argument is that there should simply be no private landlords. I'm not quibbling about the rates. Obviously businesses need to make money - housing should not be a business. It is an essential commodity.
You'd really be running into some serious ethical problems if you made a law saying that each individual person can only own 1 residence. Not to mention the economic disaster such a law would create.
Obviously businesses need to make money - housing should not be a business. It is an essential commodity.
Why not?
Food is an essential commodity, so is clothing. You have to pay for the water and electricity that gets serviced to your home, and those are also essential commodities. And they're all businesses. Growing food, building and maintaining houses, making clothes, its not free.
The only way to not have this be the case would be if you simply killed off most people and we all went back to living in caves scrabbling for berries and fighting off wolves. And that would definitely not be a good thing for humanity.
I would not go so far as to say no landlords, sometimes people end up with an extra property for various reasons, maybe even two. If they rent those out to people in temporary situations, that is fine. I would not really consider such a person a landlord.
People (and corps) who are professional landlords, as in, all they do is own property and drain money out of actually productive people for their own profit, they are the problem.
Grey Templar: We subsidise food pretty heavily, you know, to keep it cheap. If you want to subsidise housing to the same extent that would be pretty cool. But the way it works now, most of that subsidy goes into the pockets of lazy landlords who don't do anything for their money.
Most individual landlords were born rich, inherited their money. I've met plenty of those kind of people in my life, and they are useless and lazy, the real parasites on society. Wouldn't know a day of hard work if it hit them in the face.
Grey Templar wrote: You'd really be running into some serious ethical problems if you made a law saying that each individual person can only own 1 residence. Not to mention the economic disaster such a law would create.
I own two. I don't want to stop people owning more than one residence. I just don't think they should be letting them at profit. I'd simply outlaw that, charge high council tax for unoccupied properties, and allow councils to spend more on property for social housing again.
Obviously businesses need to make money - housing should not be a business. It is an essential commodity.
Why not?
Food is an essential commodity, so is clothing. You have to pay for the water and electricity that gets serviced to your home, and those are also essential commodities. And they're all businesses. Growing food, building and maintaining houses, making clothes, its not free.
For what it's worth we don't pay directly for water, only via council tax, we subsidise food production and we exempt much of it and some clothing from taxes. I want more of the same support for housing. Social housing already exists, just in horrifically low numbers. That aside, there is a distinction in that access to housing is in most cases a prerequisite to acquire any other essential commodity. Try getting a job or signing up for benefits without a permanent address.
Grey Templar wrote: You'd really be running into some serious ethical problems if you made a law saying that each individual person can only own 1 residence. Not to mention the economic disaster such a law would create.
I own two. I don't want to stop people owning more than one residence. I just don't think they should be letting them at profit. I'd simply outlaw that, charge high council tax for unoccupied properties, and allow councils to spend more on property for social housing again.
If you banned leasing for profit, literally nobody would ever be a landlord. So yes, you would effectively be banning being a landlord as it would have the same effect. Who would voluntarily go through the hassle of upkeeping multiple homes and managing them if they could only charge cost? Nobody, unless you were some masochist who for some reason enjoyed that stuff far more than could be considered sane.
My parents have 2 rentals and thats almost a full time job in and of itself. If my parents couldn't make any profit out of it I guarantee they'd never do it.
Fining people for unoccupied residences is another sticky situation too. What if there is simply nobody who wants to rent the place? You'd be penalizing a landlord who is already probably having financial strain because they can't find any tenants.
The only places that should be fined and penalized IMO is things like AirBnBs. Those things are cancer for rent prices.
Grey Templar: We subsidise food pretty heavily, you know, to keep it cheap. If you want to subsidise housing to the same extent that would be pretty cool. But the way it works now, most of that subsidy goes into the pockets of lazy landlords who don't do anything for their money.
Food subsidies are a little different in the US. It gets subsidized, but for the opposite reason. The US has so much food production capability, that we actually pay farmers to leave their fields empty because if they all grew food it would flood the global market, causing prices to collapse and farmers to go out of business because their crops would be worthless.
Basically, the US subsidizes food to keep the prices above a certain level. Not to keep food cheap for the consumer, but so that we don't lose all of our farms. And food is still very cheap here anyway, so there really isn't a concern with that.
Fining for unoccupied places is supposed to incentivise people to sell up and drive the property prices down so people can afford to own their own homes rather than donating a big chunk of their income to parasites every month.
Ideally you want to encourage lots of landlords who are renting for profit that they should sell their properties and get more people into housing while also building more houses for poor people.
Da Boss wrote: Fining for unoccupied places is supposed to incentivise people to sell up and drive the property prices down so people can afford to own their own homes rather than donating a big chunk of their income to parasites every month.
Ideally you want to encourage lots of landlords who are renting for profit that they should sell their properties and get more people into housing while also building more houses for poor people.
Anything else is economically inefficient.
Which is fine, till you add real world situations. Like say, an economically depressed area that has lost a lot of jobs. meaning people have moved elsewhere and the landlords are sitting around with properties that they can't rent out and nobody wants to buy. Hence the value of their property falls like a stone and, if they're like most landlords who just own maybe 1-2 properties, they probably also lose their home as well because they default on the mortgages of all their properties.
Fining people for having empty spaces is misguided and doesn't solve anything. It just trades one problem for another.
Grey Templar wrote: You'd really be running into some serious ethical problems if you made a law saying that each individual person can only own 1 residence. Not to mention the economic disaster such a law would create.
I own two. I don't want to stop people owning more than one residence. I just don't think they should be letting them at profit. I'd simply outlaw that, charge high council tax for unoccupied properties, and allow councils to spend more on property for social housing again.
If you banned leasing for profit, literally nobody would ever be a landlord. So yes, you would effectively be banning being a landlord as it would have the same effect. Who would voluntarily go through the hassle of upkeeping multiple homes and managing them if they could only charge cost? Nobody, unless you were some masochist who for some reason enjoyed that stuff far more than could be considered sane.
Almost no one other than the state being a landlord is the whole point, so that's not a negative. The point of not specifically prohibiting people renting a property is that you don't outlaw people who own a second home that a family member or friend lives in for only the cost of bills though, which is what I'd want to protect (and what can be quite common in certain occupations).
Fining people for unoccupied residences is another sticky situation too. What if there is simply nobody who wants to rent the place? You'd be penalizing a landlord who is already probably having financial strain because they can't find any tenants.
Not a fine, just differential council tax. That's already a thing. If it's too much they can sell it. Which is, again, the point.
Worth it in my view to get rid of the scourge of buy to let landlordism. Some people would suffer but they made their choice to make an investment decision profiting off of other people in this way, so I have limited sympathy.
Da Boss wrote: Fining for unoccupied places is supposed to incentivise people to sell up and drive the property prices down so people can afford to own their own homes rather than donating a big chunk of their income to parasites every month.
Ideally you want to encourage lots of landlords who are renting for profit that they should sell their properties and get more people into housing while also building more houses for poor people.
Anything else is economically inefficient.
Which is fine, till you add real world situations. Like say, an economically depressed area that has lost a lot of jobs. meaning people have moved elsewhere and the landlords are sitting around with properties that they can't rent out and nobody wants to buy. Hence the value of their property falls like a stone and, if they're like most landlords who just own maybe 1-2 properties, they probably also lose their home as well because they default on the mortgages of all their properties.
And then the state can buy them all on the cheap and the landlords can get themselves productive jobs. Success all round!
Well, since you guys all seem hellbent on state ownership of everything, you should probably all move to Venezuela. You can find your communist utopia there waiting for you.
Da Boss wrote: Fining for unoccupied places is supposed to incentivise people to sell up and drive the property prices down so people can afford to own their own homes rather than donating a big chunk of their income to parasites every month.
Ideally you want to encourage lots of landlords who are renting for profit that they should sell their properties and get more people into housing while also building more houses for poor people.
Anything else is economically inefficient.
Which is fine, till you add real world situations. Like say, an economically depressed area that has lost a lot of jobs. meaning people have moved elsewhere and the landlords are sitting around with properties that they can't rent out and nobody wants to buy. Hence the value of their property falls like a stone and, if they're like most landlords who just own maybe 1-2 properties, they probably also lose their home as well because they default on the mortgages of all their properties.
And then the state can buy them all on the cheap and the landlords can get themselves productive jobs. Success all round!
You do realize that most landlords do have other jobs too. Being a landlord is a sidegig. Most landlords own 1, maybe 2, additional rentals that make them a small amount of money after the mortage and bills are taken care of. If they're lucky, maybe its enough to cover the mortgage on their own home, and maybe justify the extra hours that they put into it. They do not in any way deserve the vitriol that you are flinging their direction. And heck, anybody who makes being a landlord a full time job is going to be working their butt off. Its not a lazy mans job.
Its only a tiny minority of landlords who are fat cats sitting in a mansion somewhere with buckets of cash they make from 'abusing their poor tenants'. We're not living in a Charles Dicken's novel.
Da Boss wrote: Fining for unoccupied places is supposed to incentivise people to sell up and drive the property prices down so people can afford to own their own homes rather than donating a big chunk of their income to parasites every month.
Ideally you want to encourage lots of landlords who are renting for profit that they should sell their properties and get more people into housing while also building more houses for poor people.
Anything else is economically inefficient.
Which is fine, till you add real world situations. Like say, an economically depressed area that has lost a lot of jobs. meaning people have moved elsewhere and the landlords are sitting around with properties that they can't rent out and nobody wants to buy. Hence the value of their property falls like a stone and, if they're like most landlords who just own maybe 1-2 properties, they probably also lose their home as well because they default on the mortgages of all their properties.
And then the state can buy them all on the cheap and the landlords can get themselves productive jobs. Success all round!
You do realize that most landlords do have other jobs too. Being a landlord is a sidegig. Most landlords own 1, maybe 2, additional rentals that make them a small amount of money after the mortage and bills are taken care of. If they're lucky, maybe its enough to cover the mortgage on their own home. They do not in any way deserve the vitriol that you are flinging their direction.
Its only a tiny minority of landlords who are fat cats sitting in a mansion somewhere with buckets of cash they make from 'abusing their poor tenants'. We're not living in a Charles Dicken's novel.
I really couldn't care less. All renting at profit is harmful. If it's your main job, tough. If it's a side-gig for holiday money, tough.
Da Boss wrote: I would likely exempt people with 1 or 2 extra homes. I think that is fair enough.
So when arguing with me you can not use that example.
Well, if we're going to move the goalpost to that, that still doesn't solve the problem you allege is happening(mass ownership of rentals = bad) since it exempts most of the so called offenders.
Da Boss wrote: Fining for unoccupied places is supposed to incentivise people to sell up and drive the property prices down so people can afford to own their own homes rather than donating a big chunk of their income to parasites every month.
Ideally you want to encourage lots of landlords who are renting for profit that they should sell their properties and get more people into housing while also building more houses for poor people.
Anything else is economically inefficient.
Which is fine, till you add real world situations. Like say, an economically depressed area that has lost a lot of jobs. meaning people have moved elsewhere and the landlords are sitting around with properties that they can't rent out and nobody wants to buy. Hence the value of their property falls like a stone and, if they're like most landlords who just own maybe 1-2 properties, they probably also lose their home as well because they default on the mortgages of all their properties.
And then the state can buy them all on the cheap and the landlords can get themselves productive jobs. Success all round!
You do realize that most landlords do have other jobs too. Being a landlord is a sidegig. Most landlords own 1, maybe 2, additional rentals that make them a small amount of money after the mortage and bills are taken care of. If they're lucky, maybe its enough to cover the mortgage on their own home. They do not in any way deserve the vitriol that you are flinging their direction.
Its only a tiny minority of landlords who are fat cats sitting in a mansion somewhere with buckets of cash they make from 'abusing their poor tenants'. We're not living in a Charles Dicken's novel.
I really couldn't care less. All renting at profit is harmful. If it's your main job, tough. If it's a side-gig for holiday money, tough.
Too bad the world doesn't, and will never, work like that. Tough to be you I guess.
Again, I suggest moving to Venezuela. It sounds right up your alley.
No, I haven't. Again, however: it increases the cost of housing and simultaneously makes it significantly more difficult to save in order to get on the ladder yourself. It serves to keep poorer people out of the housing market twice over.
Da Boss wrote: Fining for unoccupied places is supposed to incentivise people to sell up and drive the property prices down so people can afford to own their own homes rather than donating a big chunk of their income to parasites every month.
Ideally you want to encourage lots of landlords who are renting for profit that they should sell their properties and get more people into housing while also building more houses for poor people.
Anything else is economically inefficient.
Which is fine, till you add real world situations. Like say, an economically depressed area that has lost a lot of jobs. meaning people have moved elsewhere and the landlords are sitting around with properties that they can't rent out and nobody wants to buy. Hence the value of their property falls like a stone and, if they're like most landlords who just own maybe 1-2 properties, they probably also lose their home as well because they default on the mortgages of all their properties.
And then the state can buy them all on the cheap and the landlords can get themselves productive jobs. Success all round!
You do realize that most landlords do have other jobs too. Being a landlord is a sidegig. Most landlords own 1, maybe 2, additional rentals that make them a small amount of money after the mortage and bills are taken care of. If they're lucky, maybe its enough to cover the mortgage on their own home. They do not in any way deserve the vitriol that you are flinging their direction.
Its only a tiny minority of landlords who are fat cats sitting in a mansion somewhere with buckets of cash they make from 'abusing their poor tenants'. We're not living in a Charles Dicken's novel.
I really couldn't care less. All renting at profit is harmful. If it's your main job, tough. If it's a side-gig for holiday money, tough.
Too bad the world doesn't, and will never, work like that. Tough to be you I guess.
Again, I suggest moving to Venezuela. It sounds right up your alley.
You'll remember I said I own two houses, right? Not really flag-waving communist stuff. Bash on with the ad hominem misfires, though.
I bear absolutely no burden. Your claim, your burden. I have refuted it on exactly the same ground it was advanced; naked assertion.
Nobody thinks you got your rental property handed to you. We think you got it by exploiting the labour of others.
I literally posted an example of how it favours tenants in the post before. Eg, I can't charge them 2 months rent up front, meaning if they are so inclined they can just up and leave at the end of their final month sans payment, and I can do nothing about it.
Fair enough, you're entitled to your misguided opinion. I'll just sit here with my property, ready to sell when I need to buy my own house, so who's the fool?
Grey Templar: I started with my goalposts there, thank you. It tackles the large corporations and buy to let landlords while still leaving a rental market for people in temporary situations.
I think it is a good solution. I am not actually out to get "the majority" of people, just to solve the problem of excessively high house prices and people being stuck in the trap of renting.
I am not a communist, just a social democrat who thinks important stuff should be well regulated for the public good.
But since your solution only deals with a small minority of landlords, it won't have the effect on housing prices you seem to think it will.
I think you're also a little blinded by thinking that renting should only ever be temporary, that is a big assumption that I think you should reexamine. People have lived their entire lives renting the place they live, its been done for thousands of years. Its not perfect, but it is a workable system.
You'll remember I said I own two houses, right? Not really flag-waving communist stuff. Bash on with the ad hominem misfires, though.
Yeah. So if you view landlording as some heinous evil that is not only morally reprehensible but should also be banned, why are you contributing to the problem by being an evil landlord yourself?
You'll remember I said I own two houses, right? Not really flag-waving communist stuff. Bash on with the ad hominem misfires, though.
Yeah. So if you view landlording as some heinous evil that is not only morally reprehensible but should also be banned, why are you contributing to the problem by being an evil landlord yourself?
I'm not convinced you're really reading me. I object to renting at profit and to people having unoccupied housing. I do not object to people owning multiple occupied properties. We have multiple occupied properties.
Grey Templar wrote: People have lived their entire lives renting the place they live, its been done for thousands of years.
Wait what? I realise my I'm a pedantic archaeologist bell is going off here, but exactly how are you defining 'rent' here?
The Irish Potato famine was really a combination of factors, of which landlording was only a small portion. Boiling it down to "landlords are evil" is disingenuous and ignorant of what was a complex chain of events.
You'll remember I said I own two houses, right? Not really flag-waving communist stuff. Bash on with the ad hominem misfires, though.
Yeah. So if you view landlording as some heinous evil that is not only morally reprehensible but should also be banned, why are you contributing to the problem by being an evil landlord yourself?
I'm not convinced you're really reading me. I object to renting at profit and to people having unoccupied housing. I do not object to people owning multiple occupied properties. We have multiple occupied properties.
No, I'm reading you. You're just not making sense.
I'm assuming you're not managing your rentals as a charity. That you're charging a rent which turns you a profit. But according to everything else you're saying renting to people for profit is evil. So why are you doing something you consider evil? Maybe I'm wrong and you are renting at cost and doing all the extra work that comes from being a landlord for free, but that is quite a fanciful assertion that I and most people would have a hard time believing if you say its true.
All landlords who have any sort of brain will object to having an unoccupied unit, weather they own 1 unit or 500 units. That's a unit that isn't making them any money. Its not like a landlord whose primary business is making money off of rental income wants an unoccupied space. Landlords don't want to have to evict tenants. They want tenants who pay the rent and don't damage the property. The best scenario for a landlord is to have a long term tenant who never causes any problems and gives no reason for eviction.
The only thing that really causes issues with this scenario is when doing something other than renting to long term tenants is more profitable. Like having an AirBnB that you can charge $300 a day for to tourists instead of $1500 a month to a long term renter.
Thats the sort of thing that should be clamped down on. Thats what really will drive up housing prices(both to own and rent). I don't blame the landlords for doing that though. But it is something that should be looked at for restrictions. I might look at saying an individual could only have some arbitrary number of AirBnB units at a time rather than limiting the number of rentals they can have overall.
Excommunicatus wrote: While I agree 100% that 'landlords' are moochers, the situation isn't so bad in Canada as it is in the U.K..
Specifically in Ontario, where I now live, tenants have very, very strong protections from predators and I'm advised the situation is much the same from Newfoundland to B.C..
The rental scene in the U.K. is, by comparison, a shark-tank.
Now that sentiment is just not okay as a generalization.
And generally depends more on the socio economic structure of the region you are trying to rent.
Grey Templar wrote: The Irish Potato famine was really a combination of factors, of which landlording was only a small portion. Boiling it down to "landlords are evil" is disingenuous and ignorant of what was a complex chain of events.
You'll remember I said I own two houses, right? Not really flag-waving communist stuff. Bash on with the ad hominem misfires, though.
Yeah. So if you view landlording as some heinous evil that is not only morally reprehensible but should also be banned, why are you contributing to the problem by being an evil landlord yourself?
I'm not convinced you're really reading me. I object to renting at profit and to people having unoccupied housing. I do not object to people owning multiple occupied properties. We have multiple occupied properties.
No, I'm reading you. You're just not making sense.
I'm assuming you're not managing your rentals as a charity. That you're charging a rent which turns you a profit.
And you are wrong. My explicitly saying earlier that I wouldn't want to prevent people having homes their family or friends stay in should have been your clue.
My girlfriend's family live in one. They pay bills. We're actually about to buy another, which we will live in (moving back and forth between where we live now and there every two-three months for work reasons). If, at a later date, we end up just living in one of them, then, depending on which one we're not living in, we will sell the other or keep it and rent it for the cost of council tax and bills to a PhD student or visiting academic in my old university, as a colleague of mine does already.
All landlords who have any sort of brain will object to having an unoccupied unit, weather they own 1 unit or 500 units. That's a unit that isn't making them any money. Its not like a landlord whose primary business is making money off of rental income wants an unoccupied space. Landlords don't want to have to evict tenants. They want tenants who pay the rent and don't damage the property. The best scenario for a landlord is to have a long term tenant who never causes any problems and gives no reason for eviction.
Sorry but you are wildly incorrect. Many landlords with significant numbers of properties purposefully keep many empty to drive up prices. This is an severe problem in the UK, especially London, for example.
My girlfriend's family live in one. They pay bills. We're actually about to buy another, which we will live in (moving back and forth between where we live now and there every two-three months for work reasons). If, at a later date, we end up just living in one of them, then, depending on which one we're not living in, we will sell the other or keep it and rent it for the cost of council tax and bills to a PhD student or visiting academic in my old university, as a colleague of mine does already.
" but i do it for a better cause "
"my second domicile in walis is perfectly fine and does not disturb the village life by beeing empty all the time"
Is literally hilarious contrasted with your own standards.
Altough empty unit tactics are of course a issue, people with double living units then required are equally as bad, especially if they do not even fill the unit propperly.
My girlfriend's family live in one. They pay bills. We're actually about to buy another, which we will live in (moving back and forth between where we live now and there every two-three months for work reasons). If, at a later date, we end up just living in one of them, then, depending on which one we're not living in, we will sell the other or keep it and rent it for the cost of council tax and bills to a PhD student or visiting academic in my old university, as a colleague of mine does already.
" but i do it for a better cause "
"my second domicile in walis is perfectly fine and does not disturb the village life by beeing empty all the time"
Is literally hilarious contrasted with your own standards.
Altough empty unit tactics are of course a issue, people with double living units then required are equally as bad, especially if they do not even fill the unit propperly.
Our jobs are 400 miles apart and we will have an infant by that point. We'll be continually moving back and forth between Glasgow and London and whilst we're lucky to have the capital to purchase, we'd burn it if we had to rent or continually stay in hotels in London to cover when we need to be there. We'd far rather live in the same place and remove the issue but we're in the same field and it has very few jobs in the UK.
We'll pay full council tax in both all the time rather than seeking exemptions that legally we are entitled to, and, as I said earlier, I think our council tax when each isn't occupied should be much higher than it is. I'd happily pay it. We should have to.
My girlfriend's family live in one. They pay bills. We're actually about to buy another, which we will live in (moving back and forth between where we live now and there every two-three months for work reasons). If, at a later date, we end up just living in one of them, then, depending on which one we're not living in, we will sell the other or keep it and rent it for the cost of council tax and bills to a PhD student or visiting academic in my old university, as a colleague of mine does already.
" but i do it for a better cause "
"my second domicile in walis is perfectly fine and does not disturb the village life by beeing empty all the time"
Is literally hilarious contrasted with your own standards.
Altough empty unit tactics are of course a issue, people with double living units then required are equally as bad, especially if they do not even fill the unit propperly.
Our jobs are 400 miles apart and we will have an infant by that point. We'll be continually moving back and forth and whilst we're lucky to have the capital to purchase, we'd burn it if we had to rent in London to cover when we need yo be there. We'd far rather live in the same place and remove the issue but we're in the same field and it has very few jobs in the UK.
We'll pay full council tax in both all the time rather than seeking exemptions that legally we are entitled to, and, as I said earlier, I think our council tax when each isn't occupied should be much higher than it is. I'd happily pay it. We should have to.
Not the point.
The point is you occupy and not fill propperly, removing supply from the market.
What does empty unit tactics do? Removing supply from the market.
What does that lead to?
Also paying tax is not fething solving the issue since the government generally does not solve the issue.
In fact as an exemple even Zürich with a oh so left leaning policy of building more cheap space to rent to keep prices low has actually not solved anything and rather produced clientel for it's Party. Having solved no issue.
Other exemple Zug, right leaning this time, the only positive thing to say is that they didn't waste tax money for clientelism.
All landlords who have any sort of brain will object to having an unoccupied unit, weather they own 1 unit or 500 units. That's a unit that isn't making them any money. Its not like a landlord whose primary business is making money off of rental income wants an unoccupied space. Landlords don't want to have to evict tenants. They want tenants who pay the rent and don't damage the property. The best scenario for a landlord is to have a long term tenant who never causes any problems and gives no reason for eviction.
Sorry but you are wildly incorrect. Many landlords with significant numbers of properties purposefully keep many empty to drive up prices. This is an severe problem in the UK, especially London, for example.
I dunno how it is in all of the US, but "corporate" apartment complexes are a major, major problem where I live. My area and especially my zip code are "hot" for new construction of housing. This is great and all, however the problem is, each new housing development is putting larger houses closer together on smaller lots for more money than I paid for mine. Apartments are just as bad, if not worse. . . There was a new complex put in relatively close to my house, and a friend asked me to check into it (nasty personal situation, they couldn't be "caught" with things such as housing listings on their web browsers, and yes, legal proceedings were underway) . . . This brand new apartment complex *started* at a roughly 850 sq. ft. studio unit listed for $1400/month. A 1 bedroom unit that was only slightly larger was closer to $1600/month.
Now, a brand shiny new apartment complex, sure, that will draw a higher price than the "old run down" one down the road, but the problem is, that old busted place, they are RAISING their rents right along with the brand new place. And the thing is, most of those places you really are NOT paying for anything as advertised. . . Rarely are there any "amenities" worth writing home about. Your commute still sucks. The "minutes away" shopping is more like an hour away because of all the traffic.
Back when I did own 2 properties and rented one out, I took the route that, I suspect many of us in the military take: have a property management company list it under these instructions: "I want rent set to make my mortgage and your cut" . . . As a result (they used a computer algorithm based on a number of factors in the area to determine rental rate) I made a "profit" of 200 bucks a month.
Da Boss wrote: Ha! thanks for explaining my own history to me.
I am willing to bet I know a lot more about the Irish Potato Famine and the underlying economic system that allowed it to happen than you do.
That's ad hominem and appeal to authority.. Either come up with a counter point or back down.
Automatically Appended Next Post: The only property owners keeping properties empty like you say are russian oligarchs and the like, and grouping regular landlords in with those people is just absurd.
My girlfriend's family live in one. They pay bills. We're actually about to buy another, which we will live in (moving back and forth between where we live now and there every two-three months for work reasons). If, at a later date, we end up just living in one of them, then, depending on which one we're not living in, we will sell the other or keep it and rent it for the cost of council tax and bills to a PhD student or visiting academic in my old university, as a colleague of mine does already.
" but i do it for a better cause "
"my second domicile in walis is perfectly fine and does not disturb the village life by beeing empty all the time"
Is literally hilarious contrasted with your own standards.
Altough empty unit tactics are of course a issue, people with double living units then required are equally as bad, especially if they do not even fill the unit propperly.
Our jobs are 400 miles apart and we will have an infant by that point. We'll be continually moving back and forth and whilst we're lucky to have the capital to purchase, we'd burn it if we had to rent in London to cover when we need yo be there. We'd far rather live in the same place and remove the issue but we're in the same field and it has very few jobs in the UK.
We'll pay full council tax in both all the time rather than seeking exemptions that legally we are entitled to, and, as I said earlier, I think our council tax when each isn't occupied should be much higher than it is. I'd happily pay it. We should have to.
Not the point.
The point is you occupy and not fill propperly, removing supply from the market.
Unfortunately we will. It shames us, but my position is not that no one should be able to own a temporarily unoccupied property, nor even a permanently unoccupied one, only that they should be forced to pay for the privilege, and I would happily pay for it whilst we seek work within commuting distance of the same place. The minute it's possible to be in one place, we will be and no profit shall be made from the other.
Da Boss wrote: Ha! thanks for explaining my own history to me.
I am willing to bet I know a lot more about the Irish Potato Famine and the underlying economic system that allowed it to happen than you do.
If you truly did know all about it, then you'd know that the biggest factor was the Corn Laws combined with the dangers of monoculture farming. The problem with then further excarberated by the economic situation at the time encouraging land owners to use their land for more profitable cash crops(like beef). Add in that England botched the famine relief efforts though a combination of bad information and a wee bit of racism and you get a problem that was far greater than the sum of its parts.
I'm far from an expert. Clearly, you aren't one either though. the Potato famine is a warning against the dangers of monoculture farming, isolationist policies, the need for resilient domestic food production, and against general political ineptitude. Drawing the conclusion that the tenant-landlord relationship is inherently evil is selective memory.
My girlfriend's family live in one. They pay bills. We're actually about to buy another, which we will live in (moving back and forth between where we live now and there every two-three months for work reasons). If, at a later date, we end up just living in one of them, then, depending on which one we're not living in, we will sell the other or keep it and rent it for the cost of council tax and bills to a PhD student or visiting academic in my old university, as a colleague of mine does already.
" but i do it for a better cause "
"my second domicile in walis is perfectly fine and does not disturb the village life by beeing empty all the time"
Is literally hilarious contrasted with your own standards.
Altough empty unit tactics are of course a issue, people with double living units then required are equally as bad, especially if they do not even fill the unit propperly.
Our jobs are 400 miles apart and we will have an infant by that point. We'll be continually moving back and forth and whilst we're lucky to have the capital to purchase, we'd burn it if we had to rent in London to cover when we need yo be there. We'd far rather live in the same place and remove the issue but we're in the same field and it has very few jobs in the UK.
We'll pay full council tax in both all the time rather than seeking exemptions that legally we are entitled to, and, as I said earlier, I think our council tax when each isn't occupied should be much higher than it is. I'd happily pay it. We should have to.
Not the point.
The point is you occupy and not fill propperly, removing supply from the market.
Unfortunately we will. It shames us, but my position is not that no one should be able to own a temporarily unoccupied property, nor even a permanently unoccupied one, only that they should be forced to pay for the privilege, and I would happily pay for it whilst we seek work within commuting distance of the same place. The minute it's possible to be in one place, we will be and no profit shall be made from the other.
I don't care.
Your situation is created out of your own volition.
By your own problem identification you Fall under the same category as the problem generated by companies with significant market power.
That is my issue with your argument.
And to the last part:
There is no "Ablasshandel " for sins, and yes i am catholic thank you. You are just as guilty by your own percived problem as these multibillion companies using market position of oligopols to their own advantage.
There's a saying, rocks and Glass Houses, something.
All landlords who have any sort of brain will object to having an unoccupied unit, weather they own 1 unit or 500 units. That's a unit that isn't making them any money. Its not like a landlord whose primary business is making money off of rental income wants an unoccupied space. Landlords don't want to have to evict tenants. They want tenants who pay the rent and don't damage the property. The best scenario for a landlord is to have a long term tenant who never causes any problems and gives no reason for eviction.
Sorry but you are wildly incorrect. Many landlords with significant numbers of properties purposefully keep many empty to drive up prices. This is an severe problem in the UK, especially London, for example.
I dunno how it is in all of the US, but "corporate" apartment complexes are a major, major problem where I live. My area and especially my zip code are "hot" for new construction of housing. This is great and all, however the problem is, each new housing development is putting larger houses closer together on smaller lots for more money than I paid for mine. Apartments are just as bad, if not worse. . . There was a new complex put in relatively close to my house, and a friend asked me to check into it (nasty personal situation, they couldn't be "caught" with things such as housing listings on their web browsers, and yes, legal proceedings were underway) . . . This brand new apartment complex *started* at a roughly 850 sq. ft. studio unit listed for $1400/month. A 1 bedroom unit that was only slightly larger was closer to $1600/month.
Now, a brand shiny new apartment complex, sure, that will draw a higher price than the "old run down" one down the road, but the problem is, that old busted place, they are RAISING their rents right along with the brand new place. And the thing is, most of those places you really are NOT paying for anything as advertised. . . Rarely are there any "amenities" worth writing home about. Your commute still sucks. The "minutes away" shopping is more like an hour away because of all the traffic.
Back when I did own 2 properties and rented one out, I took the route that, I suspect many of us in the military take: have a property management company list it under these instructions: "I want rent set to make my mortgage and your cut" . . . As a result (they used a computer algorithm based on a number of factors in the area to determine rental rate) I made a "profit" of 200 bucks a month.
Yeah, those are a problem. But its not really a problem caused by the rental corporations themselves. They're just symptoms.
The real cause is an unsustainable economic bubble. Usually caused by a particular industry that is drawing in highly paid workers who begin competing with each other for housing. That is what drives up the housing prices past what the 'normal' people in the area can afford.
For an example. The tech companies that have been booming in the San Francisco Bay area. Google and Youtube mainly. Because they have created a concentration of a highly(overpaid) workforce, it drives the price of housing up for everybody else. And so you get houses on skid row being sold for six figures.
If booming industries didn't clump together, the effect they had on the local housing markets would be spread out more and wouldn't put excessive pressure on the rest of the population.
So what happens when my tenants move out, and I have a period of months where its unnocupied, who owns it? Because if you're suggesting the government picks up the tab of the mortgage, council tax, bills and maintenance then I'm right with you.. That would be awesome.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So what happens when my tenants move out, and I have a period of months where its unnocupied, who owns it? Because if you're suggesting the government picks up the tab of the mortgage, council tax, bills and maintenance then I'm right with you.. That would be awesome.
No. They're suggesting that the government fine you outrageous sums for the crime of having your tenants leave and being unable to find someone to fill the vacancy. On top of you having to pay all the other taxes and bills you'd still have.
I don't care.
Your situation is created out of your own volition.
By your own problem identification you Fall under the same category as the problem generated by companies with significant market power.
That is my issue with your argument.
And to the last part:
There is no "Ablasshandel " for sins, and yes i am catholic thank you. You are just as guilty by your own percived problem as these multibillion companies using market position of oligopols to their own advantage.
There's a saying, rocks and Glass Houses, something.
You're not following. I'm not saying that when we own two properties that are not always occupied that we will not be contributing to a problem. I'm saying that people, including me, should be forced to help contribute to solutions to that problem.
My position is renting at profit is seriously damaging, and people with unoccupied properties should pay substantial council tax, and that by preventing the first, and enforcing the second, you significantly reduce both rent and house prices, alleviating the strain on poorer people.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So what happens when my tenants move out, and I have a period of months where its unnocupied, who owns it? Because if you're suggesting the government picks up the tab of the mortgage, council tax, bills and maintenance then I'm right with you.. That would be awesome.
No. They're suggesting that the government fine you outrageous sums for the crime of having your tenants leave and being unable to find someone to fill the vacancy. On top of you having to pay all the other taxes and bills you'd still have.
Not outrageous (by my definition), and not a fine, but I'd set unoccupied council tax at maybe three times occupied council tax. Enough that it's a significant driver to find occupants and reduce rents if need be, but not instantly crippling.
I don't care.
Your situation is created out of your own volition.
By your own problem identification you Fall under the same category as the problem generated by companies with significant market power.
That is my issue with your argument.
And to the last part:
There is no "Ablasshandel " for sins, and yes i am catholic thank you. You are just as guilty by your own percived problem as these multibillion companies using market position of oligopols to their own advantage.
There's a saying, rocks and Glass Houses, something.
You're not following. I'm not saying that when we own two properties that are not always occupied that we will not be contributing to a problem. I'm saying that people, including me, should be forced to help contribute to solutions to that problem.
My position is charging at rent is wrong, and people with unoccupied properties should pay substantial council tax, and that by preventing the first, and enforcing the second, you significantly reduce both rent and house prices, alleviating the strain on poorer people.
Absolutely nothing I've said is inconsistent.
1) Why is charging a profit for housing morally wrong? You've yet to explain this. All other basic necessities get charged for, and at profit. Thats the only way that those necessities can continue to be provided. The farmer and grocer who provide you with access to food also need to make a living. A landlord is no different.
2) How long would you give a landlord time to find a new tenant before you charged them these 'substantial fines' for having a vacant property? Its not like you can find tenants overnight. And sometimes in certain areas the tenants just don't exist. There are whole neighborhoods in Chicago where there is literally nobody living there. The people who own the properties can't do anything with them. Nobody will rent from them, the value of the properties is far less than what they paid for them, they're quite literally screwed. At least the tenants could leave to greener pastures. I would say its morally wrong to punish someone because they can't do the impossible task you've demanded of them.
I don't care.
Your situation is created out of your own volition.
By your own problem identification you Fall under the same category as the problem generated by companies with significant market power.
That is my issue with your argument.
And to the last part:
There is no "Ablasshandel " for sins, and yes i am catholic thank you. You are just as guilty by your own percived problem as these multibillion companies using market position of oligopols to their own advantage.
There's a saying, rocks and Glass Houses, something.
You're not following. I'm not saying that when we own two properties that are not always occupied that we will not be contributing to a problem. I'm saying that people, including me, should be forced to help contribute to solutions to that problem.
My position is charging at rent is wrong, and people with unoccupied properties should pay substantial council tax, and that by preventing the first, and enforcing the second, you significantly reduce both rent and house prices, alleviating the strain on poorer people.
Absolutely nothing I've said is inconsistent.
No it is, you can't state that it is a problem and expect that someone else, in this case the government, steps in and solves your issue THAT YOU ALSO HELPED CREATE AND MAINTAIN.
You are a self thinking individual which i assume is not under protection.
Act like one and show integrity or leave it BE.
But don't come in and state rent for profit bad, because company bad, because removal of market supply artificially inflates prices.
_________
And now to the economics part of your argument.
What do you think is the main builder and supplier off rent room?
In switzerland it's mandatory pensions.
They have to turn a earning else all older people are fethed.
Guess which rent room they build?
Did you guess it? Luxury ones.
Guess which are over supplied? Luxury ones.
They can't invest into lesser room because the state intervenes in switzerland not unlikely to your suggested system.
The market gets in this Segment chronically under-supplied.
Leading to inflating prices.
Morale of the story, be carefull what you whish for, especially in regards to government intervention.
_______
Later allevating the strain on poorer people.
So enforcing tax on middle class, the one that is the goal of most lower class citizens to achieve and therefore making it impossible to maintain the position solves what issue Excactly?
If anything you would need to finally tax the politicians and 0,5% of top earners propperly.
Guess what, Guernsey, Jersey the Bahamas and Panama have in common.
See the issue? You want these people to intervene which inevitably would work against their own interest.
Da Boss wrote: Ha! thanks for explaining my own history to me.
I am willing to bet I know a lot more about the Irish Potato Famine and the underlying economic system that allowed it to happen than you do.
If you truly did know all about it, then you'd know that the biggest factor was the Corn Laws combined with the dangers of monoculture farming. The problem with then further excarberated by the economic situation at the time encouraging land owners to use their land for more profitable cash crops(like beef). Add in that England botched the famine relief efforts though a combination of bad information and a wee bit of racism and you get a problem that was far greater than the sum of its parts.
I'm far from an expert. Clearly, you aren't one either though. the Potato famine is a warning against the dangers of monoculture farming, isolationist policies, the need for resilient domestic food production, and against general political ineptitude. Drawing the conclusion that the tenant-landlord relationship is inherently evil is selective memory.
Mate, I know a lot more about it than you do. I teach monoculture farming and use the Irish potato famine as my example. Why was there a monoculture? Because of the economic system of tenant farming propagated by the Anglo-Irish Landlord class. The whole thing goes back to Cromwell and the catholic irish being dispossessed of their land and forced to rent from the Protestant landowners he created. The gigantic underclass of tenant farmers were farming potatoes because that was the only way to feed their families on the tiny plots of land allocated to them, and they could not buy any other food because all their money went on rent, trapping them in a cycle of poverty.
Add on to that the fact that lots of landlords saw the Famine as a way to clear out tennants and consolidate their farms, often selectively targeting Irish language speakers in a sort of half hearted ethnic cleansing, buying them passage on over crowded coffin ships to America or Liverpool where hundreds of thousands died in squalor while they repurposed the land into more profitable uses. You are correct about the Corn Laws, but that was more about famine relief than the situation that CAUSED the famine in the first place, which was the economic system of tennant farming taken to an extreme in Ireland because of sectarian hatred that it was not in other countries in Europe.
The famine was complex, but downplaying the role of landlordism in the whole thing is ignorant and wrong. And seriously, the Famine is the defining historical event in Irish history. we study it in school, we have to read books about it, we learn about it from practically every aspect of our culture. I would never dream of lecturing an American on the Civil War or the War of Independence, it is the height of hubris. That you cannot recognise that is a bit worrying tbh.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So what happens when my tenants move out, and I have a period of months where its unnocupied, who owns it? Because if you're suggesting the government picks up the tab of the mortgage, council tax, bills and maintenance then I'm right with you.. That would be awesome.
No. They're suggesting that the government fine you outrageous sums for the crime of having your tenants leave and being unable to find someone to fill the vacancy. On top of you having to pay all the other taxes and bills you'd still have.
Not outrageous (by my definition), and not a fine, but I'd set unoccupied council tax at maybe three times occupied council tax. Enough that it's a significant driver to find occupants and reduce rents if need be, but not instantly crippling.
Just calling something a "tax" doesn't change its punitive nature. If its punitive, its a fine.
What if the landlord really can't afford to reduce the rent? If you own a property to rent it out, the minimum rent you can ask for it is enough to cover the mortgage and any utilities you're including. The landlord then needs to charge a little above that just so he has some profit to make it worthwhile. And forcing him to sell the property off by legislating him out of the landlording business doesn't solve the problem. It just means that someone else will buy the property and have the choice of either living in it(in which case they are absorbing the entire cost) or renting it out as well.
Yes. Huge tenant blocks which are owned by foreign speculators that go unoccupied is a problem. If you want to fix it, go after that problem specifically.
Don't fine people simply for having empty units. Fine people for having absurd numbers/ratios of empty units. Charge high property taxes on foreign owners. Don't punish the small time landlords who are doing the right thing and are actually renting stuff out.
I used to think like that when I was young, dumb blamed others for my problems and was on a very low income.
The main culprit preventing people buying, is low wages, gorwing population. But mainly its estate agent companies charging an absurd amount of money for being the middle man(doing virtualy no work in most cases), charging the tenants AND the landlord. Thus stopping anyone saving for a deposit because when you have to move (unless you are in a stable position and have a long term rental thing going on).
Ive had to move and change a few times (usually a change of ownership from one LTD company to another) and each time all of my saving disappeared as I had to pay new fees, new deposits etc. then go through a legal battle to get my deposit back as they will always try to make deductions for BS - They actually tried to charge me £150 because there was a bit of dust on a tiny part of a skirting board I must have missed when I cleaned...
Anyway the reason it happens is because tenants try to pull a fast one on landlords who then decide to use letting companies as a layer of protection. I know of scumbags that'd move into a place pay the deposit and 1 month rent up front and then do not pay ANYTHING until they are evicted ,which takes a minimum of 6 months in the UK sometimes longer, and more often than not leaving the property in a state which required renovating or renting out to someone with no standards or a bad situation..
Luckily I will be able to buy my own property this year in Hampshire (the most expensive area outside of London). I hope to own many more properties and rent them with my GF if our plan pans out.
You cannot compare someone who puts in a lot of work and invests their life and savings into properties with some massive asset holding company or some rich oversea oligarch company paying no tax and exploiting some sort of subsidy loophole..(London high-rises owned by Chinese companies as a prime example) There are very gakky people in every aspect of society that ruin it for the rets of us. To suggest that government intervention would not be hijacked by corrupt mofos who will profit is mad. You have to live in absolute dream land to tust the government not be corrupt and not play up to those that supply them with grossly overpaid positions after they leave office or party donations...
In the UK you already pay TAX on buying a 2nd, 3rd etc. properties. Its called stamp duty and it is a LOT of money. And yet I bet you a tiny portion of that money is being funnelled into making affordable housing. Its all a house of cards, its a farce.
I don't care.
Your situation is created out of your own volition.
By your own problem identification you Fall under the same category as the problem generated by companies with significant market power.
That is my issue with your argument.
And to the last part:
There is no "Ablasshandel " for sins, and yes i am catholic thank you. You are just as guilty by your own percived problem as these multibillion companies using market position of oligopols to their own advantage.
There's a saying, rocks and Glass Houses, something.
You're not following. I'm not saying that when we own two properties that are not always occupied that we will not be contributing to a problem. I'm saying that people, including me, should be forced to help contribute to solutions to that problem.
My position is charging at rent is wrong, and people with unoccupied properties should pay substantial council tax, and that by preventing the first, and enforcing the second, you significantly reduce both rent and house prices, alleviating the strain on poorer people.
Absolutely nothing I've said is inconsistent.
1) Why is charging a profit for housing morally wrong? You've yet to explain this. All other basic necessities get charged for, and at profit. Thats the only way that those necessities can continue to be provided. The farmer and grocer who provide you with access to food also need to make a living. A landlord is no different.
I've stated explicitly in reference to this question above. Twice I think. You can disagree with why I think it's wrong, that's fine, but I'm not repeating myself when it's easily sought out in the thread.
2) How long would you give a landlord time to find a new tenant before you charged them these 'substantial fines' for having a vacant property? Its not like you can find tenants overnight. And sometimes in certain areas the tenants just don't exist. There are whole neighborhoods in Chicago where there is literally nobody living there. The people who own the properties can't do anything with them. Nobody will rent from them, the value of the properties is far less than what they paid for them, they're quite literally screwed. At least the tenants could leave to greener pastures. I would say its morally wrong to punish someone because they can't do the impossible task you've demanded of them.
If tenants left prior to the end of their lease of their own accord, maybe you get a month, if it was the end of their tenancy agreement, or the landlord terminated it, then zero. The whole point for me is to move housing stock into state ownership, so none of your issues are a problem.
Da Boss wrote: Ha! thanks for explaining my own history to me.
I am willing to bet I know a lot more about the Irish Potato Famine and the underlying economic system that allowed it to happen than you do.
If you truly did know all about it, then you'd know that the biggest factor was the Corn Laws combined with the dangers of monoculture farming. The problem with then further excarberated by the economic situation at the time encouraging land owners to use their land for more profitable cash crops(like beef). Add in that England botched the famine relief efforts though a combination of bad information and a wee bit of racism and you get a problem that was far greater than the sum of its parts.
I'm far from an expert. Clearly, you aren't one either though. the Potato famine is a warning against the dangers of monoculture farming, isolationist policies, the need for resilient domestic food production, and against general political ineptitude. Drawing the conclusion that the tenant-landlord relationship is inherently evil is selective memory.
Mate, I know a lot more about it than you do. I teach monoculture farming and use the Irish potato famine as my example. Why was there a monoculture? Because of the economic system of tenant farming propagated by the Anglo-Irish Landlord class. The whole thing goes back to Cromwell and the catholic irish being dispossessed of their land and forced to rent from the Protestant landowners he created. The gigantic underclass of tenant farmers were farming potatoes because that was the only way to feed their families on the tiny plots of land allocated to them, and they could not buy any other food because all their money went on rent, trapping them in a cycle of poverty.
Add on to that the fact that lots of landlords saw the Famine as a way to clear out tennants and consolidate their farms, often selectively targeting Irish language speakers in a sort of half hearted ethnic cleansing, buying them passage on over crowded coffin ships to America or Liverpool where hundreds of thousands died in squalor while they repurposed the land into more profitable uses. You are correct about the Corn Laws, but that was more about famine relief than the situation that CAUSED the famine in the first place, which was the economic system of tennant farming taken to an extreme in Ireland because of sectarian hatred that it was not in other countries in Europe.
The famine was complex, but downplaying the role of landlordism in the whole thing is ignorant and wrong. And seriously, the Famine is the defining historical event in Irish history. we study it in school, we have to read books about it, we learn about it from practically every aspect of our culture. I would never dream of lecturing an American on the Civil War or the War of Independence, it is the height of hubris. That you cannot recognise that is a bit worrying tbh.
But again, none of those problems show that being a landlord is inherently evil. They really just show people being evil and abusing their power. You're confusing the method in which a problem was manifested for the actual problem. The problem wasn't that landlords and tenants existed, it was that certain landlords used their position to abuse their tenants because of religious and racial bigotry. On top of economic and agricultural problems.
If a guy uses a baseball bat to beat up someone because he doesn't like the color of their skin, their religion, or just because he looked at him funny, its not the baseball bat who is the blame and the proper response isn't to ban people from having baseball bats.
I don't care.
Your situation is created out of your own volition.
By your own problem identification you Fall under the same category as the problem generated by companies with significant market power.
That is my issue with your argument.
And to the last part:
There is no "Ablasshandel " for sins, and yes i am catholic thank you. You are just as guilty by your own percived problem as these multibillion companies using market position of oligopols to their own advantage.
There's a saying, rocks and Glass Houses, something.
You're not following. I'm not saying that when we own two properties that are not always occupied that we will not be contributing to a problem. I'm saying that people, including me, should be forced to help contribute to solutions to that problem.
My position is charging at rent is wrong, and people with unoccupied properties should pay substantial council tax, and that by preventing the first, and enforcing the second, you significantly reduce both rent and house prices, alleviating the strain on poorer people.
Absolutely nothing I've said is inconsistent.
No it is, you can't state that it is a problem and expect that someone else, in this case the government, steps in and solves your issue THAT YOU ALSO HELPED CREATE AND MAINTAIN.
You are a self thinking individual which i assume is not under protection.
Act like one and show integrity or leave it BE.
But don't come in and state rent for profit bad, because company bad, because removal of market supply artificially inflates prices.
_________
And now to the economics part of your argument.
What do you think is the main builder and supplier off rent room?
In switzerland it's mandatory pensions.
They have to turn a earning else all older people are fethed.
Guess which rent room they build?
Did you guess it? Luxury ones.
Guess which are over supplied? Luxury ones.
They can't invest into lesser room because the state intervenes in switzerland not unlikely to your suggested system.
The market gets in this Segment chronically under-supplied.
Leading to inflating prices.
Morale of the story, be carefull what you whish for, especially in regards to government intervention.
_______
Later allevating the strain on poorer people.
So enforcing tax on middle class, the one that is the goal of most lower class citizens to achieve and therefore making it impossible to maintain the position solves what issue Excactly?
If anything you would need to finally tax the politicians and 0,5% of top earners propperly.
Guess what, Guernsey, Jersey the Bahamas and Panama have in common.
See the issue? You want these people to intervene which inevitably would work against their own interest.
I'm sorry I genuinely don't want to be rude but a lot of this is difficult to read and I'm really not positive what you're trying to get across through most of it.
You don't think it's acceptable to want the state to create ways of contributing for members of society whose circumstances put them in positions where they have to do something they'd rather not or where they feel they're taking more than their share. Fair enough. I disagree.
If you actually had bothered to read what i wrote earlier regarding Zürich one of the most expensive cities on this Ball of misery then you would understand my issue with having state owned market controll.
But alas, you'd rather seem to stand on an ideological soapbox then propperly argue so I for one consider this done.
In fact as an exemple even Zürich with a oh so left leaning policy of building more cheap space to rent to keep prices low has actually not solved anything and rather produced clientel for it's Party. Having solved no issue.
Other exemple Zug, right leaning this time, the only positive thing to say is that they didn't waste tax money for clientelism
I don't care.
Your situation is created out of your own volition.
By your own problem identification you Fall under the same category as the problem generated by companies with significant market power.
That is my issue with your argument.
And to the last part:
There is no "Ablasshandel " for sins, and yes i am catholic thank you. You are just as guilty by your own percived problem as these multibillion companies using market position of oligopols to their own advantage.
There's a saying, rocks and Glass Houses, something.
You're not following. I'm not saying that when we own two properties that are not always occupied that we will not be contributing to a problem. I'm saying that people, including me, should be forced to help contribute to solutions to that problem.
My position is charging at rent is wrong, and people with unoccupied properties should pay substantial council tax, and that by preventing the first, and enforcing the second, you significantly reduce both rent and house prices, alleviating the strain on poorer people.
Absolutely nothing I've said is inconsistent.
1) Why is charging a profit for housing morally wrong? You've yet to explain this. All other basic necessities get charged for, and at profit. Thats the only way that those necessities can continue to be provided. The farmer and grocer who provide you with access to food also need to make a living. A landlord is no different.
I've stated explicitly in reference to this question above. Twice I think. You can disagree with why I think it's wrong, that's fine, but I'm not repeating myself when it's easily sought out in the thread.
2) How long would you give a landlord time to find a new tenant before you charged them these 'substantial fines' for having a vacant property? Its not like you can find tenants overnight. And sometimes in certain areas the tenants just don't exist. There are whole neighborhoods in Chicago where there is literally nobody living there. The people who own the properties can't do anything with them. Nobody will rent from them, the value of the properties is far less than what they paid for them, they're quite literally screwed. At least the tenants could leave to greener pastures. I would say its morally wrong to punish someone because they can't do the impossible task you've demanded of them.
If tenants left prior to the end of their lease of their own accord, maybe you get a month, if it was the end of their tenancy agreement, or the landlord terminated it, then zero. The whole point for me is to move housing stock into state ownership, so none of your issues are a problem.
1) No you haven't. You just say its evil because its damaging to the economy, without any actual proof or logical explanation of how it damages the economy.
2) How does having the government own all the housing solve any of the problems that "landlords are evil!". You're really creating a situation where everybody is a tenant of the biggest landlord of all time, and they have no choice in the matter. And if you think getting your landlord to fix the waterpipes is a pain now, having the government do it would take even longer. At least with a private person as a landlord, I could track them down to talk about any problems. With the government, I'd have to fill out masses of paperwork and wade through mountains of red tape for even a minor problem. Worse still, you probably couldn't even do any repairs yourself because your entire house is government property. Sure, you might be able to go fix the pipe yourself, but you'd be legally prevented from doing that because the government would have to do it.
Existing government run housing in all countries are universally considered dumps. Why you would want to force that situation on every single person is beyond me.
Not Online!!! wrote: If you actually had bothered to read what i wrote earlier regarding Zürich one of the most expensive cities on this Ball of misery then you would understand my issue with having state owned market controll.
But alas, you'd rather seem to stand on an ideological soapbox then propperly argue so I for one consider this done.
In fact as an exemple even Zürich with a oh so left leaning policy of building more cheap space to rent to keep prices low has actually not solved anything and rather produced clientel for it's Party. Having solved no issue.
Other exemple Zug, right leaning this time, the only positive thing to say is that they didn't waste tax money for clientelism
You're not giving me much to work with here. Why specifically didn't it work? Is this social housing or houses to buy? What do you mean by 'clientel for its party'?
Council housing here is ok. Only problem is that there's a horrendous lack of it after decades of selling it off and deliberately failing to replace it.
2) How does having the government own all the housing solve any of the problems that "landlords are evil!". You're really creating a situation where everybody is a tenant of the biggest landlord of all time, and they have no choice in the matter. And if you think getting your landlord to fix the waterpipes is a pain now, having the government do it would take even longer. At least with a private person as a landlord, I could track them down to talk about any problems. With the government, I'd have to fill out masses of paperwork and wade through mountains of red tape for even a minor problem. Worse still, you probably couldn't even do any repairs yourself because your entire house is government property. Sure, you might be able to go fix the pipe yourself, but you'd be legally prevented from doing that because the government would have to do it.
Existing government run housing in all countries are universally considered dumps. Why you would want to force that situation on every single person is beyond me.
A) I don't want the state to own all housing (I actually would in an ideal post-capitalist world, but not any time at all soon).
B) See above re: council housing here. My experience of council housing is limited to Fife and Glasgow, but: people generally think it's decent, councils vary but on the whole aren't bad at upkeep, people have individual named case workers that are their point of contact and responsible for their home, you can do much of the upkeep yourself, moreso than with many private landlords, and there are huge and relentless calls to provide more of it.
Not Online!!! wrote: If you actually had bothered to read what i wrote earlier regarding Zürich one of the most expensive cities on this Ball of misery then you would understand my issue with having state owned market controll.
But alas, you'd rather seem to stand on an ideological soapbox then propperly argue so I for one consider this done.
In fact as an exemple even Zürich with a oh so left leaning policy of building more cheap space to rent to keep prices low has actually not solved anything and rather produced clientel for it's Party. Having solved no issue. Other exemple Zug, right leaning this time, the only positive thing to say is that they didn't waste tax money for clientelism
You're not giving me much to work with here. Why specifically didn't it work? Is this social housing or houses to buy? What do you mean by 'clientel for its party'?
Council housing here is ok. Only problem is that there's a horrendous lack of it after decades of selling it off and deliberately failing to replace it.
I don't think there's a lack of it.(this might vary on geography). The problem is that they are all in an absolutely horrendous state because people living in those had zero respect for these properties and no self respect or self agency because reasons...
I know I live in one and we've viewed many. We had to put in a lot of our own money to do it up and make it liaveble and we are not even allowed to buy it... the next people moving in afterwards will likely be some twads and wreck it within a year and make it unliveable again. At which point do you just say no to government assisted housing?
Not Online!!! wrote: If you actually had bothered to read what i wrote earlier regarding Zürich one of the most expensive cities on this Ball of misery then you would understand my issue with having state owned market controll.
But alas, you'd rather seem to stand on an ideological soapbox then propperly argue so I for one consider this done.
In fact as an exemple even Zürich with a oh so left leaning policy of building more cheap space to rent to keep prices low has actually not solved anything and rather produced clientel for it's Party. Having solved no issue.
Other exemple Zug, right leaning this time, the only positive thing to say is that they didn't waste tax money for clientelism
You're not giving me much to work with here. Why specifically didn't it work? Is this social housing or houses to buy? What do you mean by 'clientel for its party'?
Council housing here is ok. Only problem is that there's a horrendous lack of it after decades of selling it off and deliberately failing to replace it.
Social housing is in switzerland generally a demand of Center left parties..
It didn't work because Zürich is left, Zürich regulated the market to death and has a massive Pool of social housing, which is filled to the brim with Party members.
Government holding significant market sway is Automatically tied to the party and integrity of the people in charge at that time.
Are you now seeing the issue?
You complained about companies having enough power to dry out supply and inflate prices due to market power. Good, a proper cartel /monopoly law of propperly enforced would solve the issue just aswell.
What do you think can and will happen if questionable groups get access to a monopoly though?
And belive me, I've seen very questionable behaviour in my Service to the state.
Social housing is in switzerland generally a demand of Center left parties..
It didn't work because Zürich is left, Zürich regulated the market to death and has a massive Pool of social housing, which is filled to the brim with Party members.
Government holding significant market sway is Automatically tied to the party and integrity of the people in charge at that time.
Are you now seeing the issue?
You complained about companies having enough power to dry out supply and inflate prices due to market power. Good, a proper cartel /monopoly law of propperly enforced would solve the issue just aswell.
What do you think can and will happen if questionable groups get access to a monopoly though?
And belive me, I've seen very questionable behaviour in my Service to the state.
There's around 415,000 people in Zurich and about a fifth live in social housing/cooperatives, right? ca.83,000 people. Your saying the overwhelming majority of those (or at least a significant number, even if it's one per household, are affiliated with one party? Wild.
How does the cooperative housing work? That sounds interesting.
In any case, from the few articles I've just whipped up to skim, all stress that the Swiss housing sector is unique in Europe, so I'm not sure how representative it is. I personally have no fears about drastically increasing the stock available to councils in the UK. Our systems for awarding houses are pretty transparent and fairly isolated from parties, if awash with red tape.
Social housing is in switzerland generally a demand of Center left parties..
It didn't work because Zürich is left, Zürich regulated the market to death and has a massive Pool of social housing, which is filled to the brim with Party members.
Government holding significant market sway is Automatically tied to the party and integrity of the people in charge at that time.
Are you now seeing the issue?
You complained about companies having enough power to dry out supply and inflate prices due to market power. Good, a proper cartel /monopoly law of propperly enforced would solve the issue just aswell.
What do you think can and will happen if questionable groups get access to a monopoly though?
And belive me, I've seen very questionable behaviour in my Service to the state.
There's around 415,000 people in Zurich and about a fifth live in social housing/cooperatives, right? ca.83,000 people. Your saying the overwhelming majority of those (or at least a significant number, even if it's one per household, are affiliated with one party? Wild.
How does the cooperative housing work? That sounds interesting.
In any case, from the few articles I've just whipped up to skim, all stress that the Swiss housing sector is unique in Europe, so I'm not sure how representative it is. I personally have no fears about drastically increasing the stock available to councils in the UK. Our systems for awarding houses are pretty transparent and fairly isolated from parties, if awash with red tape.
Swiss housing sector is comparable to London or any large metropolit Region that is booming.
Cooperative housing works like any Cooperative just with housing as focus.
Altough i heard that economical form is a bit of a swiss thing.
Not Online!!! wrote: If you actually had bothered to read what i wrote earlier regarding Zürich one of the most expensive cities on this Ball of misery then you would understand my issue with having state owned market controll.
But alas, you'd rather seem to stand on an ideological soapbox then propperly argue so I for one consider this done.
In fact as an exemple even Zürich with a oh so left leaning policy of building more cheap space to rent to keep prices low has actually not solved anything and rather produced clientel for it's Party. Having solved no issue.
Other exemple Zug, right leaning this time, the only positive thing to say is that they didn't waste tax money for clientelism
You're not giving me much to work with here. Why specifically didn't it work? Is this social housing or houses to buy? What do you mean by 'clientel for its party'?
Council housing here is ok. Only problem is that there's a horrendous lack of it after decades of selling it off and deliberately failing to replace it.
I don't think there's a lack of it.(this might vary on geography).
No doubt it varies by area - but in June last year there were a million families waiting on council houses in England, with two thirds of them having already waited more than a year, and council house overcrowding hit a record high in January.
Not Online!!! wrote: If you actually had bothered to read what i wrote earlier regarding Zürich one of the most expensive cities on this Ball of misery then you would understand my issue with having state owned market controll.
But alas, you'd rather seem to stand on an ideological soapbox then propperly argue so I for one consider this done.
In fact as an exemple even Zürich with a oh so left leaning policy of building more cheap space to rent to keep prices low has actually not solved anything and rather produced clientel for it's Party. Having solved no issue.
Other exemple Zug, right leaning this time, the only positive thing to say is that they didn't waste tax money for clientelism
You're not giving me much to work with here. Why specifically didn't it work? Is this social housing or houses to buy? What do you mean by 'clientel for its party'?
Council housing here is ok. Only problem is that there's a horrendous lack of it after decades of selling it off and deliberately failing to replace it.
I don't think there's a lack of it.(this might vary on geography). The problem is that they are all in an absolutely horrendous state because people living in those had zero respect for these properties and no self respect or self agency because reasons...
I know I live in one and we've viewed many. We had to put in a lot of our own money to do it up and make it liaveble and we are not even allowed to buy it... the next people moving in afterwards will likely be some twads and wreck it within a year and make it unliveable again. At which point do you just say no to government assisted housing?
Well, I think its definitely important to have some government assisted housing. But expanding it into a standard living arrangement for anyone other than the poor is a bad idea. The tenants though should be held to higher standards too.
My ideal solution to housing for those who can't afford their own places would be as follows,
Cities would build government housing units that would be required to be serviced by public transportation(be that buses or trains or whatever), the number of units would be based on some % of the local population. Residents wouldn't pay any rent, however they would be required to maintain basic standards of behavior. IE: No damage could be done to the units. No excessive trash. No illegal activity. Units would be inspected on at least a monthly basis. The units themselves would either be apartment complexes or in denser areas would be larger apartment buildings. To save money and space, the apartments would have shared kitchen spaces. Violations of behavior rules and damaging the units would result in sentences of labor to pay restitution.
This would be paid for by scaling back existing social programs such as rent subsidies and changing unemployment benefits to put people to work on public works projects like repairing roads in exchange for food and some small amount of pay.
Basically, just give people who are destitute a place they can live with a roof over their heads til they can find something better, but they'd have to maintain basic standards of behavior and work on public projects in exchange.
I've never had a pleasant experience with landlords in my life, problem with renting someone elses property is they will...well..literally lord over it.
Not Online!!! wrote: If you actually had bothered to read what i wrote earlier regarding Zürich one of the most expensive cities on this Ball of misery then you would understand my issue with having state owned market controll.
But alas, you'd rather seem to stand on an ideological soapbox then propperly argue so I for one consider this done.
In fact as an exemple even Zürich with a oh so left leaning policy of building more cheap space to rent to keep prices low has actually not solved anything and rather produced clientel for it's Party. Having solved no issue.
Other exemple Zug, right leaning this time, the only positive thing to say is that they didn't waste tax money for clientelism
You're not giving me much to work with here. Why specifically didn't it work? Is this social housing or houses to buy? What do you mean by 'clientel for its party'?
Council housing here is ok. Only problem is that there's a horrendous lack of it after decades of selling it off and deliberately failing to replace it.
I don't think there's a lack of it.(this might vary on geography).
No doubt it varies by area - but in June last year there were a million families waiting on council houses in England, with two thirds of them having already waited more than a year, and council house overcrowding hit a record high in January.
How many of those are people who are already living accommodation(private or corporate landlords) paid for by govt. due to housing benefits and also waiting on housing, and how many are people who can and do afford to pay rent(otherwise they would be homeless?) but want cheaper housing to better their quality of life so they can go on holidays and etc but not do the extra work and effort?? And how many people genuinely need housing??
Ok lets spit ball here, a million households... If we assume there's on average 3 people at each household that indicates a total population of 4.5% of the UK where people are on the waiting lists.
The unemployment rate of 3.8%. So we can assume 3.8 of the 4.5 are already being recipients of housing benefits in private or corporate landlord accommodations right? Broadly speaking. So that leaves say 1% of people who are waiting on social housing.
Not Online!!! wrote: If you actually had bothered to read what i wrote earlier regarding Zürich one of the most expensive cities on this Ball of misery then you would understand my issue with having state owned market controll.
But alas, you'd rather seem to stand on an ideological soapbox then propperly argue so I for one consider this done.
In fact as an exemple even Zürich with a oh so left leaning policy of building more cheap space to rent to keep prices low has actually not solved anything and rather produced clientel for it's Party. Having solved no issue.
Other exemple Zug, right leaning this time, the only positive thing to say is that they didn't waste tax money for clientelism
You're not giving me much to work with here. Why specifically didn't it work? Is this social housing or houses to buy? What do you mean by 'clientel for its party'?
Council housing here is ok. Only problem is that there's a horrendous lack of it after decades of selling it off and deliberately failing to replace it.
I don't think there's a lack of it.(this might vary on geography). The problem is that they are all in an absolutely horrendous state because people living in those had zero respect for these properties and no self respect or self agency because reasons...
I know I live in one and we've viewed many. We had to put in a lot of our own money to do it up and make it liaveble and we are not even allowed to buy it... the next people moving in afterwards will likely be some twads and wreck it within a year and make it unliveable again. At which point do you just say no to government assisted housing?
Well, I think its definitely important to have some government assisted housing. But expanding it into a standard living arrangement for anyone other than the poor is a bad idea. The tenants though should be held to higher standards too.
My ideal solution to housing for those who can't afford their own places would be as follows,
Cities would build government housing units that would be required to be serviced by public transportation(be that buses or trains or whatever), the number of units would be based on some % of the local population. Residents wouldn't pay any rent, however they would be required to maintain basic standards of behavior. IE: No damage could be done to the units. No excessive trash. No illegal activity. Units would be inspected on at least a monthly basis. The units themselves would either be apartment complexes or in denser areas would be larger apartment buildings. To save money and space, the apartments would have shared kitchen spaces. Violations of behavior rules and damaging the units would result in sentences of labor to pay restitution.
This would be paid for by scaling back existing social programs such as rent subsidies and changing unemployment benefits to put people to work on public works projects like repairing roads in exchange for food and some small amount of pay.
Basically, just give people who are destitute a place they can live with a roof over their heads til they can find something better, but they'd have to maintain basic standards of behavior and work on public projects in exchange.
Yeah. I agree there are solutions I would like to see implemented.
Can you imagine the outrage some people would be told they have to work to receive states benfits?? (I'm only speaking for the UK).
This thread will get locked any minute now so sadly we will not be able to discuss these ideas at length.
Bottom line is, if you are on dakka you are already in the 1% (western society) of the world. So why the bichin?
There are ethical ways to conduct yourself as a business, a landlord an employee, a enant etc. and thats all you can do unless you run for parliament/start your own party movement. .
Da Boss wrote: Ha! thanks for explaining my own history to me.
I am willing to bet I know a lot more about the Irish Potato Famine and the underlying economic system that allowed it to happen than you do.
If you truly did know all about it, then you'd know that the biggest factor was the Corn Laws combined with the dangers of monoculture farming. The problem with then further excarberated by the economic situation at the time encouraging land owners to use their land for more profitable cash crops(like beef). Add in that England botched the famine relief efforts though a combination of bad information and a wee bit of racism and you get a problem that was far greater than the sum of its parts.
I'm far from an expert. Clearly, you aren't one either though. the Potato famine is a warning against the dangers of monoculture farming, isolationist policies, the need for resilient domestic food production, and against general political ineptitude. Drawing the conclusion that the tenant-landlord relationship is inherently evil is selective memory.
Mate, I know a lot more about it than you do. I teach monoculture farming and use the Irish potato famine as my example. Why was there a monoculture? Because of the economic system of tenant farming propagated by the Anglo-Irish Landlord class. The whole thing goes back to Cromwell and the catholic irish being dispossessed of their land and forced to rent from the Protestant landowners he created. The gigantic underclass of tenant farmers were farming potatoes because that was the only way to feed their families on the tiny plots of land allocated to them, and they could not buy any other food because all their money went on rent, trapping them in a cycle of poverty.
Add on to that the fact that lots of landlords saw the Famine as a way to clear out tennants and consolidate their farms, often selectively targeting Irish language speakers in a sort of half hearted ethnic cleansing, buying them passage on over crowded coffin ships to America or Liverpool where hundreds of thousands died in squalor while they repurposed the land into more profitable uses. You are correct about the Corn Laws, but that was more about famine relief than the situation that CAUSED the famine in the first place, which was the economic system of tennant farming taken to an extreme in Ireland because of sectarian hatred that it was not in other countries in Europe.
The famine was complex, but downplaying the role of landlordism in the whole thing is ignorant and wrong. And seriously, the Famine is the defining historical event in Irish history. we study it in school, we have to read books about it, we learn about it from practically every aspect of our culture. I would never dream of lecturing an American on the Civil War or the War of Independence, it is the height of hubris. That you cannot recognise that is a bit worrying tbh.
But again, none of those problems show that being a landlord is inherently evil. They really just show people being evil and abusing their power. You're confusing the method in which a problem was manifested for the actual problem. The problem wasn't that landlords and tenants existed, it was that certain landlords used their position to abuse their tenants because of religious and racial bigotry. On top of economic and agricultural problems.
If a guy uses a baseball bat to beat up someone because he doesn't like the color of their skin, their religion, or just because he looked at him funny, its not the baseball bat who is the blame and the proper response isn't to ban people from having baseball bats.
I mean, I can't recall where I said it was evil in this thread. That is a word I reserve for more serious things than this. I consider it somewhat immoral, and would like to see it discouraged as a way to make large amounts of money.
But the problem with the potato famine and with modern landlordism is the power differential. Landlordism provides a way for the rich to exert power over the poor by buying up all the assets and then using them to exploit the poor out of the value of their labour. It entrenches inequality, allowing the already rich to get richer at the expense of those who cannot afford to buy a house. They syphon off the value created by those people doing useful work and amass it, usually using it to buy more properties and increase the number of people they can economically parasitise. But it ultimately comes back to power.
I am in favour of distributing power more evenly around the world. I think that produces better behaviour and prevents abuses as were seen in the Potato Famine (btw, it was not "some landlords", the system was pervasive. Otherwise the famine would not have been so severe.)
Having this power gives landlords the ability to abuse it. Whether all of them do or just some of them is pretty irrelevant, they should not be encouraged to have that power in the first place.
There is a place for temporary rental housing. Some may even prefer to live in such housing long term. But the real reason people tend to live in rental accommodation is because they are trapped, and cannot get out. House prices are way, way higher than they used to be, and that drives up rents. Anything that encourages the sale of houses will help to drop the price and make it affordable for normal people instead of the rich.
Given that all attempts at "redistributing power" around the world end up distributing the power into the hands of tyrants and not into the common people, I wish people would learn from those mistakes and stop trying.
There is always going to be a power differential of some kind. The one we have right now is the most equitable we can hope for and still have a functional modern society. It causes the least harm to the fewest people.
Council housing here is ok. Only problem is that there's a horrendous lack of it after decades of selling it off and deliberately failing to replace it.
I don't think there's a lack of it.(this might vary on geography).
No doubt it varies by area - but in June last year there were a million families waiting on council houses in England, with two thirds of them having already waited more than a year, and council house overcrowding hit a record high in January.
How many of those are people who are already living accommodation(private or corporate landlords) paid for by govt. due to housing benefits and also waiting on housing, and how many are people who can and do afford to pay rent(otherwise they would be homeless?) but want cheaper housing to better their quality of life so they can go on holidays and etc but not do the extra work and effort?? And how many people genuinely need housing??
Ok lets spit ball here, a million households... If we assume there's on average 3 people at each household that indicates a total population of 4.5% of the UK where people are on the waiting lists.
The unemployment rate of 3.8%. So we can assume 3.8 of the 4.5 are already being recipients of housing benefits in private or corporate landlord accommodations right? Broadly speaking. So that leaves say 1% of people who are waiting on social housing.
When you have government that is throwing money at hovels for people to live in are you surprised market prices go up??
Leaving aside the 'most of them are just workshy scumbags that want to smoke fags and get pissed' tone:
Council housing is MUCH cheaper than paying housing benefit to private landlords, so that many of these people are being supported by housing benefit is an argument that we need more council housing, not against.
In most parts of the UK, you can't simply get on the waiting list because you fancy a cheaper home. In addition to being a UK or Irish citizen, councils are free to apply a whole range of criteria. The most common exclusion criteria are income above a given level, savings over a given amount, if you have no demonstrable connection to the local area, if you've ever been in rent arrears, or if you have any history of antisocial behaviour.
Most of the 'hovels' having money thrown at them are private lets that the state has to keep in business with housing benefit precisely because it doesnmt have the housing stock to accommodate people.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So what happens when my tenants move out, and I have a period of months where its unnocupied, who owns it? Because if you're suggesting the government picks up the tab of the mortgage, council tax, bills and maintenance then I'm right with you.. That would be awesome.
No. They're suggesting that the government fine you outrageous sums for the crime of having your tenants leave and being unable to find someone to fill the vacancy. On top of you having to pay all the other taxes and bills you'd still have.
Even more outrageous than the council tax I already pay? wow
I don't care.
Your situation is created out of your own volition.
By your own problem identification you Fall under the same category as the problem generated by companies with significant market power.
That is my issue with your argument.
And to the last part:
There is no "Ablasshandel " for sins, and yes i am catholic thank you. You are just as guilty by your own percived problem as these multibillion companies using market position of oligopols to their own advantage.
There's a saying, rocks and Glass Houses, something.
You're not following. I'm not saying that when we own two properties that are not always occupied that we will not be contributing to a problem. I'm saying that people, including me, should be forced to help contribute to solutions to that problem.
My position is renting at profit is seriously damaging, and people with unoccupied properties should pay substantial council tax, and that by preventing the first, and enforcing the second, you significantly reduce both rent and house prices, alleviating the strain on poorer people.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So what happens when my tenants move out, and I have a period of months where its unnocupied, who owns it? Because if you're suggesting the government picks up the tab of the mortgage, council tax, bills and maintenance then I'm right with you.. That would be awesome.
No. They're suggesting that the government fine you outrageous sums for the crime of having your tenants leave and being unable to find someone to fill the vacancy. On top of you having to pay all the other taxes and bills you'd still have.
Not outrageous (by my definition), and not a fine, but I'd set unoccupied council tax at maybe three times occupied council tax. Enough that it's a significant driver to find occupants and reduce rents if need be, but not instantly crippling.
It would soon become crippling for me after a couple of months. I have a large savings so I'd be ok for a while, but what you're suggesting would put my council tax bill at about £500 a month.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So what happens when my tenants move out, and I have a period of months where its unnocupied, who owns it? Because if you're suggesting the government picks up the tab of the mortgage, council tax, bills and maintenance then I'm right with you.. That would be awesome.
No. They're suggesting that the government fine you outrageous sums for the crime of having your tenants leave and being unable to find someone to fill the vacancy. On top of you having to pay all the other taxes and bills you'd still have.
Not outrageous (by my definition), and not a fine, but I'd set unoccupied council tax at maybe three times occupied council tax. Enough that it's a significant driver to find occupants and reduce rents if need be, but not instantly crippling.
It would soon become crippling for me after a couple of months. I have a large savings so I'd be ok for a while, but what you're suggesting would put my council tax bill at about £500 a month.
Mine too. It would certainly encourage me not to own a second dwelling that was ever unoccupied if I didn't need to. Which is the point.
yes but the point is I dont want my property to be unnoccupied.
having to pay the mortgage, council tax and bills is more than enough. your solution is to punish me twice.. purely because some rich russians own empty properties. that's not really a very good premise..surely you can see that.
having to pay the mortgage, council tax and bills is more than enough. your solution is to punish me twice.. purely because some rich russians own empty properties. that's not really a very good premise..surely you can see that.
My solution is to force property prices down and encourage excess housing into the hands of the state to redress the decades of dwindling housing stock and skyrocketing prices that resulted from right-to-buy and barring councils using the proceeds to replace stock. It's not a reaction to corporations and billionaires buying entire blocks at a time. They're a late-stage symptom, not a cause.
It sounds like you want to punish hardworking property owners for things that aren't their fault.
fining me for unoccupied property isnt gong to get tenants in faster, all its going to do is make me poorer, and put more money in the hands of the government. ergo, its not really any solution to the problem your talking about is it? If anything its more likely going to make me put up rent prices to cover potential or previous losses.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: It sounds like you want to punish hardworking property owners for things that aren't their fault.
fining me for unoccupied property isnt gong to get tenants in faster, all its going to do is make me poorer, and put more money in the hands of the government. ergo, its not really any solution to the problem your talking about is it? If anything its more likely going to make me put up rent prices to cover potential or previous losses.
I don't want to punish them, I just couldn't care less about their businesses.
More money in the hands of the government is good. More property in the hands of the government is good. You can try and put up rents if you like, but hundreds of thousands of landlords would be put in the same position at the same time, flooding the market with properties and slashing market prices for both rent and property, so you're going to struggle more to find tenants with increased rents.
I think we're done here. Literally everything you're citing as negative results are the things I specifically hope would happen - I want life to be difficult for landlords. I want it to be hard to find tenants and expensive to have empty dwellings. This is the entire premise. Pointing out that this isn't what you want or that you don't think it's fair isn't really debating anything
Nfe the thing is the kind of person who owns a huge block of housing and keeps them empty is likely able to afford any kind of "punishment tax" you impose upon them for being empty unless you make the tax so insanely high that its never going to be approved.
So chances are you won't give down the rental prices all that much nor the number of potential rental or purchasable homes because that large block won't budge much. Instead you'll likely just hit all the small people who own two homes and rent one and who seriously don't want their rental home empty at all. They don't need punishing if its empty because if its empty they are already lowering the rental price.
The only way your scheme could work is if it were scaled, so a minimum duration of time empty (several months) coupled to a number of total properties owned which are empty. Ergo a very low if no fee if you've 1 empty property of 1 second property. But a much higher fee if you own 10 empty properties etc...
That said another aspect is second homes. They are not empty rentals they are simply a second homes and might be empty half the year or more at times. They certainly eat up local housing (esp in the countryside) to a significant degree. Of course some contribute to the economy because they are used as holiday homes. So a heavy tax on them could affect tourism in regions that rely heavily on a big tourist population.
My property isn't a business, its an insurance policy for when I need to buy my own property, or put money aside to look after my daughter as she grows up.
The fact that you keep grouping all landlords together, combined with thinking the government having more of people's money and business is a good thing; tells me you probably lean towards a certain misguided ideology, so yeah we're done. I'll just keep happily renting out my property until your lot seize the means of production.
The only way your scheme could work is if it were scaled, so a minimum duration of time empty (several months) coupled to a number of total properties owned which are empty. Ergo a very low if no fee if you've 1 empty property of 1 second property. But a much higher fee if you own 10 empty properties etc...
I'm all for scaling in addition - but that kinda stuff is easy for the extremely wealthy to dodge via setting up a pile of businesses to own a few at a time.
I don't except that the block-owners with hundreds or even thousands of empty properties can absorb the cost. Currently they can do so because those properties cost pennies to own - they aren't paying mortgages or council tax and their energy bills are virtually zero. They'll have factors fees but most of the time they'll own the factors. Suddenly you're paying several hundred pounds a month for every single one of them, probably halving the income of a rented flat on a 1-1 basis.
Things get worse for them fast when the market rents drop - which they would. Those people own a lot of properties for sure, so yeah they could still keep a lot of stock out of use to try and hold up their rented properties, but 45% of landlords have a single rented property (21% of the total rented dwellings in the UK) and 38% have 2-4 and many, hopefully most, of those folks would find themselves selling them on in fairly short order, so you're still flooding the market, even if Roman Abramovich's pals still want to hold on to empty bocks.
The fact that you keep grouping all landlords together, combined with thinking the government having more of people's money and business is a good thing; tells me you probably lean towards a certain misguided ideology
queen_annes_revenge wrote: My property isn't a business, its an insurance policy for when I need to buy my own property, or put money aside to look after my daughter as she grows up.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: My property isn't a business, its an insurance policy for when I need to buy my own property, or put money aside to look after my daughter as she grows up.
You already own a property.
a property I want to live in. my situation doesnt currently call for me to be living in a property owned by myself.. so having one that I can rent out makes financial sense.
The fact that you keep grouping all landlords together, combined with thinking the government having more of people's money and business is a good thing; tells me you probably lean towards a certain misguided ideology
Probably not the one you think.
Have a braw day!
It doesnt matter, the government seizing things from the populace is bad whichever side you fall on.
This is an interesting thread to me because I really can't decide which side of the fence to fall on. Both sides have really good arguments, and really problematic ones.
My mom lived in this apartment in Yonkers, NY when I was growing up. The rent prices in NY were, and are, outrageous - it was $1500 a month for a third floor walkup, and this was in 1995 or so, so I guess around $2500 a month adjusted for inflation or thereabouts. She lived in this place from 1998 to around 2014 or so. I'm not messing with the inflation calculator for every one of those almost 20 years, but she must have paid $500,000 in rent over that timeframe.
In 2014, the landlord decided to retire and move to Florida, and he sold the place. The new landlord decided he wanted my mom's apartment for his daughter, so when her lease was up, she had to be out in 30 days. At $500K, she probably paid for the house the triplex was housed in and quite a bit past that, but had nothing to show for it in the end.
This soured me quite a bit on long-term apartment living.
Ouze wrote: This is an interesting thread to me because I really can't decide which side of the fence to fall on. Both sides have really good arguments, and really problematic ones.
My mom lived in this apartment in Yonkers, NY when I was growing up. The rent prices in NY were, and are, outrageous - it was $1500 a month for a third floor walkup, and this was in 1995 or so, so I guess around $2500 a month adjusted for inflation or thereabouts. She lived in this place from 1998 to around 2014 or so. I'm not messing with the inflation calculator for every one of those almost 20 years, but she must have paid $500,000 in rent over that timeframe.
In 2014, the landlord decided to retire and move to Florida, and he sold the place. The new landlord decided he wanted my mom's apartment for his daughter, so when her lease was up, she had to be out in 30 days. At $500K, she probably paid for the house the triplex was housed in and quite a bit past that, but had nothing to show for it in the end.
This soured me quite a bit on long-term apartment living.
I think there are bad landlords and bad tenants but the vast majority fall squarely in the middle. I don't think landlords are inherently evil as some posters here are suggesting but it's also true not all tenants are scumbags trying to screw the landlord out of all their money while they live like kings for free.
In the case of your mother, it seems to me like that's just the downside of renting over owning. Not saying it doesn't suck, but there's always the possibility the landlord just decides to turf you out after the minimum notice period, regardless of how long you've lived somewhere. It was the main driver for me to buy my own place - I didn't want someone else to be able to come along and kick me out of my home. Not sure what you can do about that in the real world. Ideally it'd be great if people could be assured of renting the same place as long as they want, provided they're responsible tenants, but economic realities and the basic fact you're living in someone else's property makes that difficult to achieve.
Ouze wrote: This is an interesting thread to me because I really can't decide which side of the fence to fall on. Both sides have really good arguments, and really problematic ones.
My mom lived in this apartment in Yonkers, NY when I was growing up. The rent prices in NY were, and are, outrageous - it was $1500 a month for a third floor walkup, and this was in 1995 or so, so I guess around $2500 a month adjusted for inflation or thereabouts. She lived in this place from 1998 to around 2014 or so. I'm not messing with the inflation calculator for every one of those almost 20 years, but she must have paid $500,000 in rent over that timeframe.
In 2014, the landlord decided to retire and move to Florida, and he sold the place. The new landlord decided he wanted my mom's apartment for his daughter, so when her lease was up, she had to be out in 30 days. At $500K, she probably paid for the house the triplex was housed in and quite a bit past that, but had nothing to show for it in the end.
This soured me quite a bit on long-term apartment living.
This. . . I've made a couple comments here or there ITT, but still see a much larger picture, based on my local area, personal experiences, and my business education. In the situation you describe, there isn't anything illegal that went on, but I think many of us would say that it falls on the unethical side of the grey spectrum (IMO, it would be different if LL needed it for themselves, not for housing a dear family member).
An army buddy of mine shared a video post of some rich a-hole who got a bunch of money via real estate rentals telling millennials to NOT buy a house ever, that buying a house "ties you down" and will halt your career, while if you simply rent (with nothing to show for it, as you point out), and you get a promotion or a new job across the country its as "easy" as moving. . . Now, for most of us, this idea ought to seem ridiculous, because frankly it is. Most of the people who would be watching this particular rich a-hole live in large to medium-large metro areas of the US. The size and scope of these metro areas typically means that there is no shortage of "promotion"/work opportunities. . . Then there are the greater social issues that affect us all: you live in a city/town or wherever. You develop friendships/relationships with people, you game at one shop, know your favorite checkout person at the grocery store. In short, you extend yourself and have a social web (all of us do to some extent), and here's this guy saying that none of that matters one bit, you'll just rip all that out and move on like its nothing. . . . Puuuuullleeeeeese
Look. Renting is never a good idea unless you are in a situation that warrants it.
Young people tend to have no effin clue what they want to do and they might end up 2000 miles away in 12 months after breaking up with their BF/GF. So renting is for them.
Once you have a stable life/job and relation ship and have settled down. Buying seems like a no brainer. Buying more to leave more for your children seems like a no brainer too. How is someone trying to leave wealth for their children so they have to struggle less bad? You would have to stop the entire concept of inheritance and enforce it to level the playing field...Good luck with that
Argive wrote: Look. Renting is never a good idea unless you are in a situation that warrants it.
Young people tend to have no effin clue what they want to do and they might end up 2000 miles away in 12 months after breaking up with their BF/GF. So renting is for them.
Once you have a stable life/job and relation ship and have settled down. Buying seems like a no brainer. Buying more to leave more for your children seems like a no brainer too. How is someone trying to leave wealth for their children so they have to struggle less bad? You would have to stop the entire concept of inheritance and enforce it to level the playing field...Good luck with that
First, not everyone cares about their offspring, second buying needs to be possible in the first place where you are.
Argive wrote: Look. Renting is never a good idea unless you are in a situation that warrants it.
Young people tend to have no effin clue what they want to do and they might end up 2000 miles away in 12 months after breaking up with their BF/GF. So renting is for them.
Once you have a stable life/job and relation ship and have settled down. Buying seems like a no brainer. Buying more to leave more for your children seems like a no brainer too. How is someone trying to leave wealth for their children so they have to struggle less bad? You would have to stop the entire concept of inheritance and enforce it to level the playing field...Good luck with that
A) I don't think anyone has said there should be no renting. I'm all for it when people want it - I just want them to be doing it at low cost. Buying because you've settled down isn't a no brainer for some people, but they should also be getting quality housing at low cost. We already have enough dwellings for everyone, it is outrageous that they're so expensive and it is easily fixed.
B) I'd also like to see vastly increased inheritance taxes on private property, too, but that's a different argument.
Not Online!!! wrote: So you inherit an ancient mingvase a house, and some other stuff, and Instantly are forced to sell going against tradition and sentimental values.
Good idea.
I agree.
Joking aside: I said private property, not personal property, so not the vase (though it should already be in a museum). I also said increased taxation, not seizure.
Furthermore, tradition is no argument against anything.
Inheritance tax applies to a deceased person's estate in its entirety, not just any property left.
It's entirely possible that someone can die without leaving any property (by which I mean houses) at all yet still qualify for inheritance tax due to leaving an extremely valuable piece of jewellery, for example.
I personally think inheritance tax is a pernicious and evil thing. You work hard your whole life, paying tax on the things you buy, the property you own and sell and then when you die, the government takes yet another cut of your pie as you attempt to pass it on to family. Having dealt with two estates recently, I can tell you it adds an awful amount of stress and worry when dealing with what is already a traumatic situation.
Edit: Also, I should mention inheritance tax can put tremendous financial burdens on people. For example, you are left a property in a will by your parents. The property is worth £400k, for argument's sake. So you pass the inheritance tax threshold. The tax must be paid as part of applying for probate. But what happens if the house was all you were left? You need to sell the house to pay the tax. You can't sell the house until probate is granted. Therefore, the inheritance tax has to come out of your pocket and you have to try and recoup that by selling the house once probate is granted. There are numerous examples of people being put under terrible financial and emotional strain through no fault of their own but purely through being named in a will.
Firstly, I know it applies to an entire estate. That's why I specified that I'd increase it on private property - this is a particular problem in the UK as more than half of our wealth is in land and real estate, far higher than the rest of Europe and, I think, most of the globe. It's a major force in maintaining inequality and, again, in giving poorer people a very hard time of it in terms of access to affordable housing (he says, trying to drag it back towards the topic).
Secondly, obviously there are problems with how inheritance tax is applied - I'm not sure what I've said that implies I think any of these systems are effective or efficient! Advocating a massive overhaul doesn't mean keeping everything bar rates the same!
Like stuff I've advocated earlier, I'd be hit quite hard by this personally. I think I should be.
Note: I think it's worth remembering, for those vehemently opposed to the state having more control over property, at least in the UK, that almost all privately owned property was initially confiscated from the population and given over to the wealthy in the 18th century when Adam Smith and his peers were trying to find a way of getting more people into industrial rather than subsistence work.
filbert wrote: Inheritance tax applies to a deceased person's estate in its entirety, not just any property left.
It's entirely possible that someone can die without leaving any property (by which I mean houses) at all yet still qualify for inheritance tax due to leaving an extremely valuable piece of jewellery, for example.
I personally think inheritance tax is a pernicious and evil thing. You work hard your whole life, paying tax on the things you buy, the property you own and sell and then when you die, the government takes yet another cut of your pie as you attempt to pass it on to family. Having dealt with two estates recently, I can tell you it adds an awful amount of stress and worry when dealing with what is already a traumatic situation.
Edit: Also, I should mention inheritance tax can put tremendous financial burdens on people. For example, you are left a property in a will by your parents. The property is worth £400k, for argument's sake. So you pass the inheritance tax threshold. The tax must be paid as part of applying for probate. But what happens if the house was all you were left? You need to sell the house to pay the tax. You can't sell the house until probate is granted. Therefore, the inheritance tax has to come out of your pocket and you have to try and recoup that by selling the house once probate is granted. There are numerous examples of people being put under terrible financial and emotional strain through no fault of their own but purely through being named in a will.
Case in point. Screw the government and their taxes. I don't understand why anyone would want more taxes on anything.
filbert wrote: Inheritance tax applies to a deceased person's estate in its entirety, not just any property left.
It's entirely possible that someone can die without leaving any property (by which I mean houses) at all yet still qualify for inheritance tax due to leaving an extremely valuable piece of jewellery, for example.
I personally think inheritance tax is a pernicious and evil thing. You work hard your whole life, paying tax on the things you buy, the property you own and sell and then when you die, the government takes yet another cut of your pie as you attempt to pass it on to family. Having dealt with two estates recently, I can tell you it adds an awful amount of stress and worry when dealing with what is already a traumatic situation.
Edit: Also, I should mention inheritance tax can put tremendous financial burdens on people. For example, you are left a property in a will by your parents. The property is worth £400k, for argument's sake. So you pass the inheritance tax threshold. The tax must be paid as part of applying for probate. But what happens if the house was all you were left? You need to sell the house to pay the tax. You can't sell the house until probate is granted. Therefore, the inheritance tax has to come out of your pocket and you have to try and recoup that by selling the house once probate is granted. There are numerous examples of people being put under terrible financial and emotional strain through no fault of their own but purely through being named in a will.
IMHO, inheritance tax is a GOOD thing in certain situations. Personally, I'm of the belief that there does need to be a threshold of value such that the "financial burdens" that the family face is tolerable. . . Hence why it boggles my mind that people in the US are so vehemently against an estate tax that doesn't even kick in until the value reaches multiple millions of dollars and therefore will never affect them.
filbert wrote: Inheritance tax applies to a deceased person's estate in its entirety, not just any property left.
It's entirely possible that someone can die without leaving any property (by which I mean houses) at all yet still qualify for inheritance tax due to leaving an extremely valuable piece of jewellery, for example.
I personally think inheritance tax is a pernicious and evil thing. You work hard your whole life, paying tax on the things you buy, the property you own and sell and then when you die, the government takes yet another cut of your pie as you attempt to pass it on to family. Having dealt with two estates recently, I can tell you it adds an awful amount of stress and worry when dealing with what is already a traumatic situation.
Edit: Also, I should mention inheritance tax can put tremendous financial burdens on people. For example, you are left a property in a will by your parents. The property is worth £400k, for argument's sake. So you pass the inheritance tax threshold. The tax must be paid as part of applying for probate. But what happens if the house was all you were left? You need to sell the house to pay the tax. You can't sell the house until probate is granted. Therefore, the inheritance tax has to come out of your pocket and you have to try and recoup that by selling the house once probate is granted. There are numerous examples of people being put under terrible financial and emotional strain through no fault of their own but purely through being named in a will.
IMHO, inheritance tax is a GOOD thing in certain situations. Personally, I'm of the belief that there does need to be a threshold of value such that the "financial burdens" that the family face is tolerable. . . Hence why it boggles my mind that people in the US are so vehemently against an estate tax that doesn't even kick in until the value reaches multiple millions of dollars and therefore will never affect them.
I view estate tax, and a good number of other taxes, as double taxation. They should be illegal. Personally, the only taxes that should exist are income tax and things like license fees on cars
I view estate tax, and a good number of other taxes, as double taxation. They should be illegal. Personally, the only taxes that should exist are income tax and things like license fees on cars
The person receiving the estate just got a massive income. Boom, income tax.
I view estate tax, and a good number of other taxes, as double taxation. They should be illegal. Personally, the only taxes that should exist are income tax and things like license fees on cars
The person receiving the estate just got a massive income. Boom, income tax.
The person who originally had the estate paid for it with income that was already taxed. Inheritances are gifts, and should not be taxed. Or at the very least, only cash inheritances should be taxed. If you get left the family home, you shouldn't have to go broke paying inheritance tax and property tax just to keep it in the family.
Property tax is doubly bad because its based on the current value of the house. I saw a story recently about an old veteran and his house. He added up all the property tax he had paid over the previous 20 years and it totaled more than what he originally paid for the house. He ended up having to sell his home because he couldn't afford the property taxes anymore as he was on a fixed income. Despite the fact his house was completely paid for decades ago.
The person who originally had the estate paid for it with income that was already taxed. Inheritances are gifts, and should not be taxed. Or at the very least, only cash inheritances should be taxed. If you get left the family home, you shouldn't have to go broke paying inheritance tax and property tax just to keep it in the family.
Property tax is doubly bad because its based on the current value of the house. I saw a story recently about an old veteran and his house. He added up all the property tax he had paid over the previous 20 years and it totaled more than what he originally paid for the house. He ended up having to sell his home because he couldn't afford the property taxes anymore as he was on a fixed income. Despite the fact his house was completely paid for decades ago.
Most of the places I've seen in the US with an inheritance tax, it doesn't even kick in until the value reaches around 10 million or so. . . if that makes one "go broke" then there's far more wrong. . . I truly doubt any of the Hiltons or Waltons are "going broke" when they pay inheritance tax.
filbert wrote: Edit: Also, I should mention inheritance tax can put tremendous financial burdens on people. For example, you are left a property in a will by your parents. The property is worth £400k, for argument's sake. So you pass the inheritance tax threshold. The tax must be paid as part of applying for probate. But what happens if the house was all you were left? You need to sell the house to pay the tax. You can't sell the house until probate is granted. Therefore, the inheritance tax has to come out of your pocket and you have to try and recoup that by selling the house once probate is granted. There are numerous examples of people being put under terrible financial and emotional strain through no fault of their own but purely through being named in a will.
I don't think the crime here is that there's an inheritance tax, but how did it ever get that low? Did no one adjust it for inflation over the past century or something? Account for the housing market exploding to 10x is value in the past 50 years? 400k pounds is like $500k US? There are parts of the US and the UK where a house that cheap is a steal, even if it's a piece of gak house. I don't know where this house is, but that just sounds like some let inheritance tax hit at a criminally low threshold. I don't even see how the collection is worth the paperwork that probably goes into the process.
IMHO, inheritance tax is a GOOD thing in certain situations. Personally, I'm of the belief that there does need to be a threshold of value such that the "financial burdens" that the family face is tolerable. . . Hence why it boggles my mind that people in the US are so vehemently against an estate tax that doesn't even kick in until the value reaches multiple millions of dollars and therefore will never affect them.
I view estate tax, and a good number of other taxes, as double taxation. They should be illegal. Personally, the only taxes that should exist are income tax and things like license fees on cars
It is a double tax in one sense (that the capital has had tax applied to it more than once) though not in another (that the person hasn't been taxed on that capital more than once). I don't see why that is innately bad, though?
Not Online!!! wrote: So you inherit an ancient mingvase a house, and some other stuff, and Instantly are forced to sell going against tradition and sentimental values.
Good idea.
I agree.
Joking aside: I said private property, not personal property, so not the vase (though it should already be in a museum). I also said increased taxation, not seizure.
Furthermore, tradition is no argument against anything.
Did i talk about seizure?
NO. i talked about beeing forced to SELL becuase you then have to pay the bill for the tax which you can't really afford then.
Simply put i honestly doubt you have an idea what the effect of an inheritance tax means.Infact i doubt you even know what a family buisness is or works like.
nfe wrote: I don't see why that is innately bad, though?
Because the rich say its bad and their cronies repeat it until it becomes true.
well it's bad out of a perspective of a libertarian.
Which is hillarious because equality of chances is needed to maintain a somewhat free market, making the ideology (and yes libertarianism is an ideology) oddly self defeating.
Not Online!!! wrote: So you inherit an ancient mingvase a house, and some other stuff, and Instantly are forced to sell going against tradition and sentimental values.
Good idea.
I agree.
Joking aside: I said private property, not personal property, so not the vase (though it should already be in a museum). I also said increased taxation, not seizure.
Furthermore, tradition is no argument against anything.
Did i talk about seizure?
NO. i talked about beeing forced to SELL becuase you then have to pay the bill for the tax which you can't really afford then.
Simply put i honestly doubt you have an idea what the effect of an inheritance tax means.Infact i doubt you even know what a family buisness is or works like.
I don't care if someone whose family own vases worth hundreds of thousands have to sell a property. I have pretty extensive experience of inheritance tax forcing the sale of a property, and it making that sale itself expensive, as it goes. Twice. I did say above that I don't think our inheritance tax system as is works.
I'm not sure why familiarity with family businesses is relevant but my entire mother's side of my family were small-business-owning Italian immigrants to Scotland. Me, my mum, two uncles, an aunt, two cousins, one of their wives, and my maternal grandparents all worked together in three different family businesses.
Inheritance tax is perfectly fair. We double tax things all the freaking time. Sometimes we even triple tax them, or quadruple tax them, depending on how one defines "tax." But inheritance tax that hits a value as low as 500k US is just stupid. The point of inheritance tax is break up the process of accumulating wealth in the top end of society (which even right now doesn't work well cause we put so many holes in it anyone with an inheritance worth taxing just weasels their way out). Smacking down Joe the Plumber because his family home sky rocketed in value because of the housing market is turning that purpose on its head.
Someone in the UK should set out to fix that. Raise the tax to a much higher level in exchange for tighter controls on the new level so people can't weasel out of it so easily. But of course that won't happen because nothing that should be simple ever is.
Inheritance tax is perfectly fair. We double tax things all the freaking time. Sometimes we even triple tax them, or quadruple tax them, depending on how one defines "tax." But inheritance tax that hits a value as low as 500k US is just stupid. The point of inheritance tax is break up the process of accumulating wealth in the top end of society (which even right now doesn't work well cause we put so many holes in it anyone with an inheritance worth taxing just weasels their way out). Smacking down Joe the Plumber because his family home sky rocketed in value because of the housing market is turning that purpose on its head.
Someone in the UK should set out to fix that. Raise the tax to a much higher level in exchange for tighter controls on the new level so people can't weasel out of it so easily. But of course that won't happen because nothing that should be simple ever is.
Yes, we do double and even triple tax stuff. That's ethically wrong.
I shouldn't be taxed both when I get my paycheck and when I spend my paycheck and just for owning stuff I bought with my paycheck. Any children I have shouldn't have to get taxed when I leave them my stuff.
My parents have a fairly nice house on a couple acres, and its worth several times what they paid for it. The unfortunate thing is that it is unlikely that myself or any of my siblings would be able to keep the house if and when we inherit it. We're probably going to be forced to sell it and all we'll get is whatever equity is left. Money is nice, and it would be a good chunk of change, but it wouldn't be worth losing the house we all grew up in.
If anything, property and inheritance tax is antithetical to the ideal of everybody owning their own home. Something everybody here who has been bagging on landlords wants for everybody. Property and inheritance tax quite often forces people out of homes.
The only way you should get taxed on property is when you sell that property, and you should only get taxed on any increase in value the property had between the time you bought it and when you sold it. If you bought a house for $100k and sold it for $200k you should only pay tax on the $100k increase.
LordofHats wrote: But inheritance tax that hits a value as low as 500k US is just stupid. The point of inheritance tax is break up the process of accumulating wealth in the top end of society (which even right now doesn't work well cause we put so many holes in it anyone with an inheritance worth taxing just weasels their way out). Smacking down Joe the Plumber because his family home sky rocketed in value because of the housing market is turning that purpose on its head.
Someone in the UK should set out to fix that. Raise the tax to a much higher level in exchange for tighter controls on the new level so people can't weasel out of it so easily. But of course that won't happen because nothing that should be simple ever is.
The threshold is actually lower here in the UK - it is currently £350K I believe.
Not Online!!! wrote: So you inherit an ancient mingvase a house, and some other stuff, and Instantly are forced to sell going against tradition and sentimental values.
Good idea.
I agree.
Joking aside: I said private property, not personal property, so not the vase (though it should already be in a museum). I also said increased taxation, not seizure.
Furthermore, tradition is no argument against anything.
Did i talk about seizure?
NO. i talked about beeing forced to SELL becuase you then have to pay the bill for the tax which you can't really afford then.
Simply put i honestly doubt you have an idea what the effect of an inheritance tax means.Infact i doubt you even know what a family buisness is or works like.
I don't care if someone whose family own vases worth hundreds of thousands have to sell a property. I have pretty extensive experience of inheritance tax forcing the sale of a property, and it making that sale itself expensive, as it goes. Twice. I did say above that I don't think our inheritance tax system as is works.
I'm not sure why familiarity with family businesses is relevant but my entire mother's side of my family were small-business-owning Italian immigrants to Scotland. Me, my mum, two uncles, an aunt, two cousins, one of their wives, and my maternal grandparents all worked together in three different family businesses.
Please try again. You could even do it politely?
If you regard this as impolite then i frankly can't help you.
Secondly the mingvase was an exageration but stuff like memento mories fastly add up.
Thirdly: so then, did they bankrupt? Were they forced to sell to some faceless multi billion company that instantly "optimized" and fired half the people, destroying the local rural industry Basis and vastly diminishing local tax income?
LordofHats wrote: But inheritance tax that hits a value as low as 500k US is just stupid. The point of inheritance tax is break up the process of accumulating wealth in the top end of society (which even right now doesn't work well cause we put so many holes in it anyone with an inheritance worth taxing just weasels their way out). Smacking down Joe the Plumber because his family home sky rocketed in value because of the housing market is turning that purpose on its head.
Someone in the UK should set out to fix that. Raise the tax to a much higher level in exchange for tighter controls on the new level so people can't weasel out of it so easily. But of course that won't happen because nothing that should be simple ever is.
The threshold is actually lower here in the UK - it is currently £350K I believe.
Yeah, wow. I don't blame you or anyone else for complaining about that. That's, in the metaphorical French, fething stupider than a rattlesnake at a petty zoo.
Grey Templar wrote: So what would a good threshold be if you were to raise it?
I personally couldn't even begin to agree with anything less than a couple million. Especially since its the sum total of the entire inheritance.
Nope. Couple million is basically where everyone who wants inheritance tax is (a robust system would routinely adjust for inflation and shifting market value too, but that takes work). The current US inheritance tax is maybe too high, but I'll settle for leaving it exactly where it currently is and overhauling the system so it's not so easy to avoid paying it. Hell, raise the threshold even higher, decrease the actual amount taxed, close the loopholes, and the outcome would still probably be a net positive.
Not Online!!! wrote: So you inherit an ancient mingvase a house, and some other stuff, and Instantly are forced to sell going against tradition and sentimental values.
Good idea.
I agree.
Joking aside: I said private property, not personal property, so not the vase (though it should already be in a museum). I also said increased taxation, not seizure.
Furthermore, tradition is no argument against anything.
Did i talk about seizure?
NO. i talked about beeing forced to SELL becuase you then have to pay the bill for the tax which you can't really afford then.
Simply put i honestly doubt you have an idea what the effect of an inheritance tax means.Infact i doubt you even know what a family buisness is or works like.
I don't care if someone whose family own vases worth hundreds of thousands have to sell a property. I have pretty extensive experience of inheritance tax forcing the sale of a property, and it making that sale itself expensive, as it goes. Twice. I did say above that I don't think our inheritance tax system as is works.
I'm not sure why familiarity with family businesses is relevant but my entire mother's side of my family were small-business-owning Italian immigrants to Scotland. Me, my mum, two uncles, an aunt, two cousins, one of their wives, and my maternal grandparents all worked together in three different family businesses.
Please try again. You could even do it politely?
If you regard this as impolite then i frankly can't help you.
Secondly the mingvase was an exageration but stuff like memento mories fastly add up.
Thirdly: so then, did they bankrupt? Were they forced to sell to some faceless multi billion company that instantly "optimized" and fired half the people, destroying the local rural industry Basis and vastly diminishing local tax income?
Because that happened to some of my relatives.
I know it was an exaggeration. I was treating it with the frivolity it deserved. That said, I don't really care what the value is for private property. I don't care that my family had to sell on houses that my parents grew up in (because what else would we do with them?). I care that the system places a financial burden on you before you can sell them - but that you have to pay tax on the property, I think that's absolutely fine.
One business was dissolved at retirement. Two were dissolved when folk wanted to change career. The most successful one (where I worked, initially owned by an aunt and uncle then later by their sons) eventually went into administration when the bank changed overdraft terms after struggling for a while with supermarket competition (it was a pet store chain). 163 jobs lost.
So what? What does this have to do with anything under discussion?
Grey Templar wrote: So what would a good threshold be if you were to raise it?
I personally couldn't even begin to agree with anything less than a couple million. Especially since its the sum total of the entire inheritance.
Nope. Couple million is basically where everyone who wants inheritance tax is (a robust system would routinely adjust for inflation and shifting market value too, but that takes work). The current US inheritance tax is maybe too high, but I'll settle for leaving it exactly where it currently is and overhauling the system so it's not so easy to avoid paying it. Hell, raise the threshold even higher, decrease the actual amount taxed, close the loopholes, and the outcome would still probably be a net positive.
See, unless you put it at a couple million you're still punishing people who can't afford the property tax just because their parents home has massively increased in value(but haven't actually gained any other wealth).
For example, my parents home is worth nearly $1.2 million. And while its a nice house, its far from the nicest house in the area so many other people will be in the same boat. Most of that value comes from the 2.5 acres. Its worth about 4 times what they bought it for 30 years ago.
I'm sure it would be nigh impossible for my siblings and I to cough up enough money to keep the home when we get to that point. Especially if the property values in the area keep climbing, which they will given its the Bay Area. Not even the last recession really hurt the property value that much, it just kept it from climbing more than usual.
Not Online!!! wrote: So you inherit an ancient mingvase a house, and some other stuff, and Instantly are forced to sell going against tradition and sentimental values.
Good idea.
I agree.
Joking aside: I said private property, not personal property, so not the vase (though it should already be in a museum). I also said increased taxation, not seizure.
Furthermore, tradition is no argument against anything.
Did i talk about seizure?
NO. i talked about beeing forced to SELL becuase you then have to pay the bill for the tax which you can't really afford then.
Simply put i honestly doubt you have an idea what the effect of an inheritance tax means.Infact i doubt you even know what a family buisness is or works like.
I don't care if someone whose family own vases worth hundreds of thousands have to sell a property. I have pretty extensive experience of inheritance tax forcing the sale of a property, and it making that sale itself expensive, as it goes. Twice. I did say above that I don't think our inheritance tax system as is works.
I'm not sure why familiarity with family businesses is relevant but my entire mother's side of my family were small-business-owning Italian immigrants to Scotland. Me, my mum, two uncles, an aunt, two cousins, one of their wives, and my maternal grandparents all worked together in three different family businesses.
Please try again. You could even do it politely?
If you regard this as impolite then i frankly can't help you.
Secondly the mingvase was an exageration but stuff like memento mories fastly add up.
Thirdly: so then, did they bankrupt? Were they forced to sell to some faceless multi billion company that instantly "optimized" and fired half the people, destroying the local rural industry Basis and vastly diminishing local tax income?
Because that happened to some of my relatives.
I know it was an exaggeration. I was treating it with the frivolity it deserved. That said, I don't really care what the value is for private property. I don't care that my family had to sell on houses that my parents grew up in (because what else would we do with them?). I care that the system places a financial burden on you before you can sell them - but that you have to pay tax on the property, I think that's absolutely fine.
One business was dissolved at retirement. Two were dissolved when folk wanted to change career. The most successful one (where I worked, initially owned by an aunt and uncle then later by their sons) eventually went into administration when the bank changed overdraft terms after struggling for a while with supermarket competition (it was a pet store chain). 163 jobs lost.
So what? What does this have to do with anything under discussion?
In total?
It shows that the concept of inheritancetax as is, is terrible and damaging longterm to rural areas of a country and tax income overall.
Therefore i am surprised you still deem it agreeable.
The threshold for US estate tax was $5.5 million in 2016. No one but fringe lunatics no one listens to want it to be much lower than that. Currently the tax is $11 million, which pretty much everyone who isn't against the tax thinks to too high. As a point of comparison, in 2016 about 55-56,000 estates in the US actually qualified for estate tax. Exemptions and legal loopholes effectively tanked that number down to something link 10,000. The current tax is only applicable to about 2,000 estates, and no one knows yet how many will actually pay anything as a result of the exemptions and legal loopholes. We probably won't know for years.
No one is talking about taxing $1.2 million in assets. It's not worth it and no one is that much of a douche... Except in Britain apparently.
In total?
It shows that the concept of inheritancetax as is, is terrible and damaging longterm to rural areas of a country and tax income overall.
Therefore i am surprised you still deem it agreeable.
Sorry you've lost me.
How is a chain of pet stores going into administration evidence of inheritance tax being 'terrible and damaging longterm to rural areas of a country and tax income overall'?
Even more outrageous than the council tax I already pay? wow
Excommunicatus wrote:
You could easily solve that problem by throwing money at the court/tribunal system, but ironically people who like to complain about the courts often also don't like to pay taxes for things like courts.
No one is talking about taxing $1.2 million in assets. It's not worth it.
Really? Wow. That's £950k. It'd buy you a very attractive property in London. Only 16,119 sold for £1m+ in 2017. 90,000 homes were sold just in June. Setting a limit that high would lose the treasury tons of money in the UK.
No one is talking about taxing $1.2 million in assets. It's not worth it.
Really? Wow. That's £950k. It'd buy you a very attractive property in central London. Only 16,119 sold for £1m+ last year. Setting a limit that high would lose the treasury tons of money in the UK.
Oh, it's definitely a lot. No joke.
But I suspect some cultural differences probably come into play here since we're talking US and UK at once. I consider myself a pretty "feth the rich with a rusty rod and deny them medical care like they deny it to everyone else" kind of guy (exaggerating... maybe ), and I'm not on board with an inheritance tax that hits any lower than very well off multi-million dollar estates. I'm not interested in punishing children from inheriting from their parents. I just don't want a society that's blind to the inequities and power disparity that comes from generational accumulations of wealth in the highest stratum of society. Power is power. A rich douche bag down the street is just as capable of stealing your quality of life and liberty as anyone in the government. It's a natural check on the power of the rich to take some of their wealth and put it elsewhere from time to time, like education or clean drinking water... not that that gak ever works out mind you, because again, the most simple things in the world are never simple. People have to complicate the feth out of it.
Excommunicatus wrote: Or, you abolish private property and just remove the institutional framework that allows the dragons to hoard their piles of coin.
All that does is mean there is only 1 dragon, the government. Which is far worse than what we have now.
Excommunicatus wrote: Or, you abolish private property and just remove the institutional framework that allows the dragons to hoard their piles of coin.
All that does is mean there is only 1 dragon, the government.
Excommunicatus wrote: Or, you abolish private property and just remove the institutional framework that allows the dragons to hoard their piles of coin.
Excommunicatus wrote: Or, you abolish private property and just remove the institutional framework that allows the dragons to hoard their piles of coin.
All that does is mean there is only 1 dragon, the government. Which is far worse than what we have now.
Amen, but these people are convinced that the government actually cares about them..
That is £325k tax free, after which everything over it gets taxed at 40%.
So leaving someone a £1m house means that you are paying 40% on (£1,000,000 - £325,000) = £675k left over. That comes out to a tax of £270k. That seems pretty high, but:
If you leave everything above that £325k to a spouse, civil partner, charity or community amateur sports club then they pay no inheritance tax. If you give your home to children or grandchildren the tax free amount can increase up to £475k. If your estate is below the tax free threshold you leave your estate to your spouse or civil partner, then the unused threshold gets added onto their tax-free threshold. If you leave 10% of your estates net worth to charity then the tax rate is reduced to 36%. And finally, you can give gifts to people. If you die 7 years after the gift was given, no inheritance tax is paid on it. If you die before that 7 year cut-off, the amount of inheritance tax you pay depends on how long ago the gift was given.
So if you and your spouse both own half of that £1m property, you can both give £475k of it to your kids, tax free. Meaning you are actually only paying inheritance tax on the remaining £50k.
In total?
It shows that the concept of inheritancetax as is, is terrible and damaging longterm to rural areas of a country and tax income overall.
Therefore i am surprised you still deem it agreeable.
Sorry you've lost me.
How is a chain of pet stores going into administration evidence of inheritance tax being 'terrible and damaging longterm to rural areas of a country and tax income overall'?
I have worked part time on my village / small cities administration.
The effects of buisness, local based producing buisness, or stores regardless, going out due to taxation or beeing forced to sell has a severe impact on money the local branch of government has.
Due to this the area died a slow painfull death, money got tighter, social spending had to be cut to the most baseline.
Infact even the infrastructure has suffered.
Only recently due to higher living costs in the greater Zürich area more income was generated due to workers beeing forced out of the City into the more rural parts ( my Region) which was in no way enough to stem the bleeding of money though.
Excommunicatus wrote: Or, you abolish private property and just remove the institutional framework that allows the dragons to hoard their piles of coin.
All that does is mean there is only 1 dragon, the government.
Alternative view: it's everyone.
Not in a representative democracy.
With a entrenched political elite.
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LordofHats wrote: And that just sounds like a ludicrously overcomplicated tax scheme XD
It, willfully is so often.
In order for certain super rich to be able to avoid it for buying election victories for certain other people.
And so long the system is representative democracy so long you will see this always.
And that leads to apathy or voting for protest parties.
I think that once you've started tacking on numerous exemptions you've effectively overcomplicated taxation, which only serves to benefit people who can afford lawyers
In total?
It shows that the concept of inheritancetax as is, is terrible and damaging longterm to rural areas of a country and tax income overall.
Therefore i am surprised you still deem it agreeable.
Sorry you've lost me.
How is a chain of pet stores going into administration evidence of inheritance tax being 'terrible and damaging longterm to rural areas of a country and tax income overall'?
I have worked part time on my village / small cities administration.
The effects of buisness, local based producing buisness, or stores regardless, going out due to taxation or beeing forced to sell has a severe impact on money the local branch of government has.
Due to this the area died a slow painfull death, money got tighter, social spending had to be cut to the most baseline.
Infact even the infrastructure has suffered.
Only recently due to higher living costs in the greater Zürich area more income was generated due to workers beeing forced out of the City into the more rural parts ( my Region) which was in no way enough to stem the bleeding of money though.
Your trying really hard to force an example here. The business didn't go down due to tax or having to sell up. Likewise, nothing I've said would do so either. Unless your business is specifically renting property. Then it would, but I don't care.
Heck, to the contrary, the big bad businesses that come in and kill local businesses are usually the folks who're benefitting from generations of inherited property and tax avoidance!
Excommunicatus wrote: Or, you abolish private property and just remove the institutional framework that allows the dragons to hoard their piles of coin.
All that does is mean there is only 1 dragon, the government.
Alternative view: it's everyone.
Not in a representative democracy.
With a entrenched political elite.
I mean it should be pretty obvious given I'm advocated outlawing renting at profit, hammering unoccupied properties, pushing up inheritance tax, and, in an ideal world, simply having no private property, that the entrenched political elite aren't going to stay very entrenched long in my thought experiment world, so that's no argument against anything I've suggested.
LordofHats wrote: And that just sounds like a ludicrously overcomplicated tax scheme XD
It isn't as different as you'd think over here. . . As I mentioned earlier, one cannot simply "give" their house to their kids (legally), excepting in certain instances (ie, their Will). One cannot sell their real property to offspring for $1 or some other ridiculous sum, as under ethics laws and other statutes governing real estate it is viewed as an unfair or "predatory" transaction. . . One can however, sell their house to offspring for say, $250,000 when the market value on the home is$4 or 500k, as that is viewed as much more of a "fair offer" that one may accept from a stranger.
In the event of a death, depending on the real property value, the inheritors may pay tax on it as though it were a brand new purchase to them. If the property is below that threshold they pay the much lower "transference" fees (ie, taxes and fees associated purely with the filing of paperwork and are not shaped by property value. . . they are typically mere pennies on the dollar of your loan when you purchase a home yourself so you'll rarely notice them). As noted earlier, one issue with inheritance taxes in the US is the ease at which they are avoided by those who can afford the legal team to do so (often-times this involves use of trusts, charity organizations, or other legal vehicles where the inheritor still "owns" and has use of the property without de facto ownership) Another example of the miniscule transfer fees I'm referring to would be giving an automobile to another person: to transfer the title legally, you pay like 50 bucks (in my state its around 40 bucks, but they add the "sales tax of the value of the vehicle" to that price as well, so my county will be a bit more than others)
Of course, I am talking in sweeping generalities here, and what may apply in one state won't apply in another, or may apply differently.
Quite a bit of it is tied to other industries. . . For instance, I am reminded of a camping group that I grew up in (very similar in vein to the Boy Scouts of America). We had an annual camping trip to the same spot every year. Each "Outpost" of this camping group in the state came to this annual event. As it was a national/international organization, obviously it has liability insurance. . . When we secured the location for this camping event, insurance came in and said, "we cannot insure your event as is, because the property owner cannot lend you the use of land. Under the laws and regulations governing us, you MUST be renting the property". So, the following year, the camping group secured a "rental agreement" with the property's owner. Our rent was $1 per year. . . And as the owner had previously agreed to our use sans payment, we turned the "paying the annual rent" thing into a ceremony wherein we'd "pay" him in ridiculous ways that nominally added up to 1 dollar (one year it was a bag of wooden nickels)
LordofHats wrote: And that just sounds like a ludicrously overcomplicated tax scheme XD
It isn't as different as you'd think over here. . .
Oh I know it's like that here too.
I just think the exemptions are a whole other kettle of problems in the tax structures I'm familiar with. It's a situation where I question if we really need (all of) them, and if they really serve a useful purpose.
In total?
It shows that the concept of inheritancetax as is, is terrible and damaging longterm to rural areas of a country and tax income overall.
Therefore i am surprised you still deem it agreeable.
Sorry you've lost me.
How is a chain of pet stores going into administration evidence of inheritance tax being 'terrible and damaging longterm to rural areas of a country and tax income overall'?
I have worked part time on my village / small cities administration.
The effects of buisness, local based producing buisness, or stores regardless, going out due to taxation or beeing forced to sell has a severe impact on money the local branch of government has.
Due to this the area died a slow painfull death, money got tighter, social spending had to be cut to the most baseline.
Infact even the infrastructure has suffered.
Only recently due to higher living costs in the greater Zürich area more income was generated due to workers beeing forced out of the City into the more rural parts ( my Region) which was in no way enough to stem the bleeding of money though.
Your trying really hard to force an example here. The business didn't go down due to tax or having to sell up. Likewise, nothing I've said would do so either. Unless your business is specifically renting property. Then it would, but I don't care.
Heck, to the contrary, the big bad businesses that come in and kill local businesses are usually the folks who're benefitting from generations of inherited property and tax avoidance!
Excommunicatus wrote: Or, you abolish private property and just remove the institutional framework that allows the dragons to hoard their piles of coin.
All that does is mean there is only 1 dragon, the government.
Alternative view: it's everyone.
Not in a representative democracy.
With a entrenched political elite.
I mean it should be pretty obvious given I'm advocated outlawing renting at profit, hammering unoccupied properties, pushing up inheritance tax, and, in an ideal world, simply having no private property, that the entrenched political elite aren't going to stay very entrenched long in my thought experiment world, so that's no argument against anything I've suggested.
Sure i am forcing an exemple, because i have an actual one. What have you?
your thought experiment is still representative.
The representatives then have all the power.
That is literally the same issue then as you have now, well sans the big companies.
So long in such a system power is compounded into a representative organ so long your system inherently does not achieve the point of everyone owning everything.
Sure i am forcing an exemple, because i have an actual one. What have you?
You don't have an example. Here's the conversation:
1. You asked if any of our family businesses went bankrupt.
2. I told you that one went into administration due to supermarket competition and a bank lending change.
3. You said that was evidence of inheritance taxation being 'terrible and damaging longterm to rural areas of a country and tax income overall'.
4. I asked you to clarify why, because the end of the business had nothing to do with inheritance tax.
5. You shift a bit, saying that you've worked in local administration and that businesses being forced to sell or dying due to taxation impact the local economy.
6. I point out that you're trying very hard to make the example fit, because this is still nothing to do with why the business died.
7. You claim, again, that you have an example. I think what you mean is the example you've just given about working in local administration - but that is a long way from what you were attempting to use to demonstrate your point earlier.
You can really prove a little difficult to follow.
Not Online!!! wrote: your thought experiment is still representative.
The representatives then have all the power.
That is literally the same issue then as you have now, well sans the big companies.
So long in such a system power is compounded into a representative organ so long your system inherently does not achieve the point of everyone owning everything.
You're making a lot of assumptions here.
It's probably worth getting back to discussions about property.
LordofHats wrote:I think that once you've started tacking on numerous exemptions you've effectively overcomplicated taxation, which only serves to benefit people who can afford lawyers
So... exactly the situation we have now? I'm guessing that what with being in the U.S. (according to your flag) you haven't read the Income Tax Act, or the Excise Act. I have, unfortunately, and they're both ridiculously convoluted.
I am in no way under the impression that 'government' - as that word is used in a Capitalistic system - cares for me. I am well aware that I am just another resource to be exploited to them. What you'd need is some sort of local, representative body of governance. Don't know what you'd call them. Soviets, maybe? Anyway, yeah, a whole bunch of them, in some sort of union.
Sure i am forcing an exemple, because i have an actual one. What have you?
You don't have an example. Here's the conversation:
1. You asked if any of our family businesses went bankrupt.
2. I told you that one went into administration due to supermarket competition and a bank lending change.
3. You said that was evidence of inheritance taxation being 'terrible and damaging longterm to rural areas of a country and tax income overall'.
4. I asked you to clarify why, because the end of the business had nothing to do with inheritance tax.
5. You shift a bit, saying that you've worked in local administration and that businesses being forced to sell or dying due to taxation impact the local economy.
6. I point out that you're trying very hard to make the example fit, because this is still nothing to do with why the business died.
7. You claim, again, that you have an example. I think what you mean is the example you've just given about working in local administration - but that is a long way from what you were attempting to use to demonstrate your point earlier.
You can really prove a little difficult to follow.
Not Online!!! wrote: your thought experiment is still representative.
The representatives then have all the power.
That is literally the same issue then as you have now, well sans the big companies.
So long in such a system power is compounded into a representative organ so long your system inherently does not achieve the point of everyone owning everything.
You're making a lot of assumptions here.
It's probably worth getting back to discussions about property.
Spoiler:
If you regard this as impolite then i frankly can't help you.
Secondly the mingvase was an exageration but stuff like memento mories fastly add up.
Thirdly: so then, did they bankrupt? Were they forced to sell to some faceless multi billion company that instantly "optimized" and fired half the people, destroying the local rural industry Basis and vastly diminishing local tax income?
Because that happened to some of my relatives.
i meant this exemple but he, again reading what was said and wrongly appointing it either out of malice or lazyness is fine nowaday.
LordofHats wrote:I think that once you've started tacking on numerous exemptions you've effectively overcomplicated taxation, which only serves to benefit people who can afford lawyers
So... exactly the situation we have now? I'm guessing that what with being in the U.S. (according to your flag) you haven't read the Income Tax Act, or the Excise Act. I have, unfortunately, and they're both ridiculously convoluted.
As is, I am advised, the U.S. tax code.
isn't some of the statelaw especially obstuse to make a tax harbor?
Like i read somewhere that delaware is quite notorious for that.
You'd think with certain people caring oh so much about a certain debt, that maybe they'd try and fix the most obvious problem in the US Tax Code: how easy it is for filthy rich people to pay less than they owe.
Excommunicatus wrote: Or, you abolish private property and just remove the institutional framework that allows the dragons to hoard their piles of coin.
All that does is mean there is only 1 dragon, the government. Which is far worse than what we have now.
For sure, if you think abolishing private property is the only step in the process.
I have yet someone to explain to me why, if i buy a run down property,invest a lot of money to make it livable and then rent it out at market price. (Doing all of the work and taking all of the risk) they think the government should step in take it and sell it on to someone else...
Sure i am forcing an exemple, because i have an actual one. What have you?
You don't have an example. Here's the conversation:
1. You asked if any of our family businesses went bankrupt.
2. I told you that one went into administration due to supermarket competition and a bank lending change.
3. You said that was evidence of inheritance taxation being 'terrible and damaging longterm to rural areas of a country and tax income overall'.
4. I asked you to clarify why, because the end of the business had nothing to do with inheritance tax.
5. You shift a bit, saying that you've worked in local administration and that businesses being forced to sell or dying due to taxation impact the local economy.
6. I point out that you're trying very hard to make the example fit, because this is still nothing to do with why the business died.
7. You claim, again, that you have an example. I think what you mean is the example you've just given about working in local administration - but that is a long way from what you were attempting to use to demonstrate your point earlier.
You can really prove a little difficult to follow.
Not Online!!! wrote: your thought experiment is still representative.
The representatives then have all the power.
That is literally the same issue then as you have now, well sans the big companies.
So long in such a system power is compounded into a representative organ so long your system inherently does not achieve the point of everyone owning everything.
You're making a lot of assumptions here.
It's probably worth getting back to discussions about property.
Spoiler:
If you regard this as impolite then i frankly can't help you.
Secondly the mingvase was an exageration but stuff like memento mories fastly add up.
Thirdly: so then, did they bankrupt? Were they forced to sell to some faceless multi billion company that instantly "optimized" and fired half the people, destroying the local rural industry Basis and vastly diminishing local tax income?
Because that happened to some of my relatives.
i meant this exemple but he, again reading what was said and wrongly appointing it either out of malice or lazyness is fine nowaday.
I see. When you quoted my response to your question, entirely dedicated to answering your question, and said that 'It shows...' you weren't referring to the quoted post but to an earlier thing you said. I'm not sure what the second clause means.
As I say, you can be difficult to follow.
Think I'll call it a day, there.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Argive wrote: I have yet someone to explain to me why, if i buy a run down property,invest a lot of money to make it livable and then rent it out at market price. (Doing all of the work and taking all of the risk) they think the government should step in take it and sell it on to someone else...
Argive wrote: I have yet someone to explain to me why, if i buy a run down property,invest a lot of money to make it livable and then rent it out at market price. (Doing all of the work and taking all of the risk) they think the government should step in take it and sell it on to someone else...
1. Do you think the government has the capacity to run such an enterprise efficiently? 2. Do you think there is the capacity to run that and make more housing? 3. How do you propose to reverse this without taking properties from people? Even if these stay as they are these will be passed onto people children etc.
Look I get that you are coming at it from a place of compassion and Im with you all the way. We should help people in our society. There needs to be more public affordable housing built I dont disagree. But hinking private landlords are to blame I disagree with...Ive previously given you some examples and points and youve just hit back with ideology. Your thinking is that its somehow cheaper, I don't understand. In order to ascertain that claim you'd have to work out:
1. How much it costs per unit(say 3 bed) to build - (And if you look at the reality of government enterprise you need to add at least 20% for inefficiency and I think that's being generous) 2. What are the running costs the government would have to sustain 3. How do you price the rent accordingly?
have you actually thought about these numbers?? Please do these before you start saying its cheaper than to keep paying benefits to landlords for ZERO of the risk and having bargaining power for better conditions. 25% of households... Think about the amount of money that would be needed to sustain that! We can't sustain things the way they are now. It is not sustainable in reality. It is, of course, sustainable in an ideal utopia.
Things are as good as they have ever been. You fix inequality through education, creating opportunities for private enterprises, less state interferance and higher wages.
Excommunicatus wrote: Or, you abolish private property and just remove the institutional framework that allows the dragons to hoard their piles of coin.
All that does is mean there is only 1 dragon, the government. Which is far worse than what we have now.
For sure, if you think abolishing private property is the only step in the process.
Yup, after that all other businesses need to be nationalised, and strictly regulated by government, wealth redistributed, so everyone becomes richer (but actually poorer) quality of life improves (worsens) etc etc. Before you know it you've got enemies of the state doing hard labour in the gulag.
1. Do you think the government has the capacity to run such an enterprise efficiently?
2. Do you think there is the capacity to run that and make more housing?
3. How do you propose to reverse this without taking properties from people? Even if these stay as they are these will be passed onto people children etc.
1. The government. No. A government. Yes.
2. Currently. No. With sufficient funding. Yes.
3. As I've said, hammer people who purposefully keep properties empty to significantly reduce market rates and prevent renting at profit. If someone wants to have dwellings as a way of storing money or because they want two homes, fine, but they'll pay for it. Most landlords would sell their extra properties - and at the drastically reduced market value. The state is well set to purchase them. This requires significant initial investment, but the vast reduction in housing benefit makes up for it swiftly.
Ive previously given you some examples and points and youve just hit back with ideology.
Hmm. You stated there was no shortage of council housing. I gave you the numbers, you immediately disregarded almost all of those waiting on homes by removing the number in receipt of housing benefit* , saying that they're just all on the list because they fancy a cheaper house, and said that because 25% of the population are in private rents** they must be affordable. You also stated that social housing was 'throwing money at hovels'. I responded that social housing is cheaper than housing benefit (because it isn't paid at market rates) and that there are a number of stipulations in most council areas that regulate who can be on the council housing waiting list, so people waiting on it have a demonstrable need, and that most hovels having money thrown at them are private lets that allow DSS residents, because the shortage of social housing means the state is left having to fork out for substandard accommodation at the prices set by the landlords. You did not reply.
I'm not wholly convinced that is 'just hit[ting] back with ideology'.
*methodologically bonkers, because tons of people getting housing benefit are in houses they like and will have to move a long way for a council house - like all those people in big London homes the Daily Mail likes to call benefits scroungers - or are on it temporarily - I've been on it three times, but I've never been on the council housing list - so are not making up the numbers.
**implying that those are distinct from housing benefit claimants, though they constitute a high number of private rents - about 40% of private lets in Wales, about 23% in Scotland, and about 27% in England
Your thinking is that its somehow cheaper, I don't understand. In order to ascertain that claim you'd have to work out:
1. How much it costs per unit(say 3 bed) to build - (And if you look at the reality of government enterprise you need to add at least 20% for inefficiency and I think that's being generous)
2. What are the running costs the government would have to sustain
3. How do you price the rent accordingly?
1. There are already 216,000 empty dwellings in England (as of 11th March 2019), you don't actually need to build swathes of new homes if you can force these back into the market.
2. I don't know, but scaled, cheaper than the average private landlord. No taxes, no mortgages.
3. Ideally, at running cost (nationally, with cheaper regions subsidising more expensive ones so the minimum wage family in the expensive area aren't hammered relative to the minimum wage family in the cheap area).
However, we can look at some current data that show us that social housing is much cheaper for the government than private lets:
Additionally, here is the IFS (hardly a lefty gang) on why housing benefit costs have doubled in housing benefit since the early 2000s https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/13940
'The main drivers of the increase in spending have been the rapid expansion of the private rented sector alongside increased rents in social housing, in part because cheaper council housing has been in decline...Rents in the private sector are much higher than those in the much-diminished local authority sector. So the benefit system has a bigger job to do than it had in the past. A system that looked manageable when it was mostly supporting those facing below market rents in the social sector and a relatively small private sector looks much harder to maintain as it provides support to increasing numbers facing full market rents in a much-expanded private sector. Low levels of owner-occupation are passing on substantial costs to the public purse.'
TL/DR: social housing stock has gone down so more claimants are in private rents and they're much more expensive.
Things are as good as they have ever been.
You fix inequality through education, creating opportunities for private enterprises, less state interferance and higher wages.
That's why we have continually increasing inequality, I guess.
1. Do you think the government has the capacity to run such an enterprise efficiently? 2. Do you think there is the capacity to run that and make more housing? 3. How do you propose to reverse this without taking properties from people? Even if these stay as they are these will be passed onto people children etc.
1. The government. No. A government. Yes. 2. Currently. No. With sufficient funding. Yes. 3. As I've said, hammer people who purposefully keep properties empty to significantly reduce market rates and prevent renting at profit. If someone wants to have dwellings as a way of storing money or because they want two homes, fine, but they'll pay for it. Most landlords would sell their extra properties - and at the drastically reduced market value. The state is well set to purchase them. This requires significant initial investment, but the vast reduction in housing benefit makes up for it swiftly.
Ive previously given you some examples and points and youve just hit back with ideology.
Hmm. You stated there was no shortage of council housing. I gave you the numbers, you immediately disregarded almost all of those waiting on homes by removing the number in receipt of housing benefit* , saying that they're just all on the list because they fancy a cheaper house, and said that because 25% of the population are in private rents** they must be affordable. You also stated that social housing was 'throwing money at hovels'. I responded that social housing is cheaper than housing benefit (because it isn't paid at market rates) and that there are a number of stipulations in most council areas that regulate who can be on the council housing waiting list, so people waiting on it have a demonstrable need, and that most hovels having money thrown at them are private lets that allow DSS residents, because the shortage of social housing means the state is left having to fork out for substandard accommodation at the prices set by the landlords. You did not reply.
I'm not wholly convinced that is 'just hit[ting] back with ideology'.
*methodologically bonkers, because tons of people getting housing benefit are in houses they like and will have to move a long way for a council house - like all those people in big London homes the Daily Mail likes to call benefits scroungers **implying that those are distinct from housing benefit claimants, though they constitute a high number of private rents - about 40% of private lets in Wales, about 23% in Scotland, and about 27% in England
Your thinking is that its somehow cheaper, I don't understand. In order to ascertain that claim you'd have to work out:
1. How much it costs per unit(say 3 bed) to build - (And if you look at the reality of government enterprise you need to add at least 20% for inefficiency and I think that's being generous) 2. What are the running costs the government would have to sustain 3. How do you price the rent accordingly?
1. There are already 216,000 empty dwellings in England (as of 11th March 2019), you don't actually need to build swathes of new homes if you can force these back into the market. 2. I don't know, but scaled, cheaper than the average private landlord. No taxes, no mortgages. 3. Ideally, at running cost (nationally, with cheaper regions subsidising more expensive ones so the minimum wage family in the expensive area aren't hammered relative to the minimum wage family in the cheap area).
However, we can look at some current data that show us that social housing is much cheaper for the government than private lets:
Additionally, here is the IFS (hardly a lefty gang) on why housing benefit costs have doubled in housing benefit since the early 2000s https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/13940
'The main drivers of the increase in spending have been the rapid expansion of the private rented sector alongside increased rents in social housing, in part because cheaper council housing has been in decline...Rents in the private sector are much higher than those in the much-diminished local authority sector. So the benefit system has a bigger job to do than it had in the past. A system that looked manageable when it was mostly supporting those facing below market rents in the social sector and a relatively small private sector looks much harder to maintain as it provides support to increasing numbers facing full market rents in a much-expanded private sector. Low levels of owner-occupation are passing on substantial costs to the public purse.'
TL/DR: social housing stock has gone down so more claimants are in private rents and they're much more expensive.
Things are as good as they have ever been. You fix inequality through education, creating opportunities for private enterprises, less state interferance and higher wages.
That's why we have continually increasing inequality, I guess.
I will humor you.. Trying to spin what I say into a "Daily Mail" narrative and not going out and putting some work in and calculating anything and just saying "I dont know but cheaper coz the government would do it" "no but it could be" just shows its a discussion about ideology rather than facts or reality. Do you have any first hand experience working in the NHS or local authority so you can make any claims about efficiency? I have and I do. And that's why I left. Of course I have no evidence to show how inefficient these institutions are. But would ask you to seriously consider any past experience dealing with any government body you have dealt with, and have an honest think whether your experience screamed efficiency...
The funniest thing is there are already measures that can be put in place to combat Long term non-occupaied properties where local authorities can take over management. Case study islington Originally at 6 months then pushed back to 2 years (because their cronies would not be able to speculative buy). Obviously steps were taken and then immediately back tracked when it hit the very rich. And yet you still think government has the capacity to deal with the housing issue without private landlord. Ok...
Those empty dwellings. Why are they empty? And how many of those are high rise projects owned by international corporations for speculative buying, and how many by private landlords(who would rent them out to make profit because profit at all costs according to you) These are not empty to push rent prices up like you seem hellbent on asserting.
The housing shortage and empty dwellings appear to have very little to do with buy to let ventures of private people whom you want to target, and who already pay 50% more council tax if property unoccupied for 6 months or more. The problems is multinationals, wealthy ex pats etc. Who speculative buy... Landlords at least offer a service. And if they charge 7% more for the risk they take I think that is only fair. You can disagree and we don't need to discuss it further.
I highly recommend you have a honest look at the state of play. Funding is hardly the issue. Mismanagement is and you don't fix that with taking from people to make more funding. MAX the efficiency of the systems in place and then we can talk about some sort of re-distribution of wealth. Until that point lets not eh ?
I mean on some things people will just go around in circles and so on and opinions will vary and thats just being humins..
We have gone waaaaay out in the deep end anyway from the original question haha. I hope the OP has had his question answered.
I think we can all agree to buy if possible, and always check everything if you are renting to avoid nasty surprises?
You should probably try harder. Because as a casual reader with no stake in either direction, you're coming off as a bit of an arrogant tosser with remarks like these. It's the sort of thing people who go around boasting about their supposed IQ of 180 say.
Note:- I am not saying you are one. I am saying that is how you read. He's given you a fairly logical, concise response within the confines of a casual forum post, and hasn't been offensive in the slightest. In exchange, you just keep calling him ideologically blinkered and acting like you're talking to an idiot. None of that is polite, or conducive to good discussion.
Try to visualise that you're talking to a stranger a good friend just introduced as an old pal from school in the pub . Nfe's just got the round in from the counter, he's handed you your drink, and your friend has said, 'So what about all this housing malarkey then?'
You should probably try harder. Because as a casual reader with no stake in either direction, you're coming off as a bit of an arrogant tosser with remarks like these. It's the sort of thing people who go around boasting about their IQ of 180 say.
Note:- I am not saying you are one. I am saying that is how you read. He's given you a fairly logical, concise response within the confines of a casual forum post, and hasn't been offensive in the slightest. In exchange, you just keep calling him ideologically blinkered and acting like you're talking to an idiot. None of that is polite, or conducive to good discussion.
Try to visualise that you're talking to a stranger a good friend just introduced as a old pal from school in a pub . Nfe's just got the round in from the counter, he's handed you your drink, and your friend has said, 'So what about all this housing malarkey then?'
Ohhh boy.... you know what, you're coming off as a bit of an arrogant tosser with remarks like these. It's the sort of thing people who go around boasting about their IQ of 180 say telling people whats what...
Note:- I am not saying you are one. I am saying that is how you read. As someone has given a fairly logical, concise response within the confines of a casual forum post, and hasn't been offensive in the slightest. In exchange, just call him names veiled as pleasantries and acting like you're talking to an idiot and are massively condescending. None of that is polite, or conducive to good discussion.
Sorry man, had to troll you coz it was easy....
I don't really think you paid attention to both sides and somehow. That's ok though. We are having a fairly good discussion without you trying to stir the pot. Nfe can easily speak up for himself if I have offended him, he is very capable and articulate. If you don't have anything to add other then to be condescending and name calling maybe give it a miss next time?
Asking someone to have a discussion on the same arena I.e. Asking to accept the reality of how things work now and operate within that, as opposed to what could be is not insulting. Sorry if you got offended.
(I'm only speaking for the 
