42% of Right to Buy properties are now rented out by private landlords. Many to the very Councils who sold them on the cheap. This is the economics of the madhouse.
Some are part of insurance company's portfolio of investments
Wait, how does that work? Housing isn't a very liquid asset, so what do insurance companies want with them?
Yield.
You mean taking profit from the rental income? So an alternative revenue stream to the whole insurance side of the business? Are insurers particularly likely to get into holding large rental portfolios for any logical reason related to insurance?
So.
There are two things at work here:
(1) Insurance companies take premium in today, but only have to pay out claims at some point in the future. If it takes you 18 months on average to pay claims, you effectively have someone else's money for a year and a half. Owning things like property allows you to benefit from hanging onto that money,
(2) Insurance regulators like insurance carriers to have lots of reserves. Some needs to be liquid. But some they are more relaxed about. And you want to maximise the returns on your reserves.
Great & moving Arena on the Everly Brothers on BBC4 just now which I'd seen before but forgotten how good it was. Lots of resonances for the modern USA, not least glimpses of the dirt poor mining country from which they came which is probably even more dirt poor now. Don and Phil had different political outlooks which contributed to their recurring schisms and a final estrangement.
Great & moving Arena on the Everly Brothers on BBC4 just now which I'd seen before but forgotten how good it was. Lots of resonances for the modern USA, not least glimpses of the dirt poor mining country from which they came which is probably even more dirt poor now. Don and Phil had different political outlooks which contributed to their recurring schisms and a final estrangement.
I saw them support Simon & Garfunkel 18 years ago, they were great.
42% of Right to Buy properties are now rented out by private landlords. Many to the very Councils who sold them on the cheap. This is the economics of the madhouse.
Some are part of insurance company's portfolio of investments
That's as maybe. The policy was intended to encourage folk to own their own home. Not own some other bugger's home.
Absolutely.
If insurance companies are choosing to earn a massive profit on people's homes then they should be taxed accordingly.
If they don't want to pay the tax, they're more than welcome to put the homes back on the market.
There is an irony here
They invest in homes to provide in part pension income to their pensioner clients
I believe Legal and General have these investments and are expanding their portfolio
42% of Right to Buy properties are now rented out by private landlords. Many to the very Councils who sold them on the cheap. This is the economics of the madhouse.
Some are part of insurance company's portfolio of investments
That's as maybe. The policy was intended to encourage folk to own their own home. Not own some other bugger's home.
Absolutely.
If insurance companies are choosing to earn a massive profit on people's homes then they should be taxed accordingly.
If they don't want to pay the tax, they're more than welcome to put the homes back on the market.
There is an irony here
They invest in homes to provide in part pension income to their pensioner clients
I believe Legal and General have these investments and are expanding their portfolio
I guess that's the nub. Too many are viewing housing as investments and not as a place to live.
42% of Right to Buy properties are now rented out by private landlords. Many to the very Councils who sold them on the cheap. This is the economics of the madhouse.
Some are part of insurance company's portfolio of investments
That's as maybe. The policy was intended to encourage folk to own their own home. Not own some other bugger's home.
Absolutely.
If insurance companies are choosing to earn a massive profit on people's homes then they should be taxed accordingly.
If they don't want to pay the tax, they're more than welcome to put the homes back on the market.
There is an irony here
They invest in homes to provide in part pension income to their pensioner clients
I believe Legal and General have these investments and are expanding their portfolio
If they were investing in the technologies of tomorrow instead then we could solve the housing crisis and Britain's chronic lack of productive investment in one fell swoop.
Great & moving Arena on the Everly Brothers on BBC4 just now which I'd seen before but forgotten how good it was. Lots of resonances for the modern USA, not least glimpses of the dirt poor mining country from which they came which is probably even more dirt poor now. Don and Phil had different political outlooks which contributed to their recurring schisms and a final estrangement.
I was watching it but have turned in now, got it on record.
42% of Right to Buy properties are now rented out by private landlords. Many to the very Councils who sold them on the cheap. This is the economics of the madhouse.
Some are part of insurance company's portfolio of investments
That's as maybe. The policy was intended to encourage folk to own their own home. Not own some other bugger's home.
Absolutely.
If insurance companies are choosing to earn a massive profit on people's homes then they should be taxed accordingly.
If they don't want to pay the tax, they're more than welcome to put the homes back on the market.
There is an irony here
They invest in homes to provide in part pension income to their pensioner clients
I believe Legal and General have these investments and are expanding their portfolio
Iirc, from my days on a local government pension panel, insurance companies (along with pension funds and other financial companies) have long been heavy investors in commercial property. This has obviously been a bit of a drag anchor recently, so they have all been moving heavily into residential as a buffer. It's extending into other large commercial areas. I've definitely read something about this recently but googling hasn't found it for me
Great & moving Arena on the Everly Brothers on BBC4 just now which I'd seen before but forgotten how good it was. Lots of resonances for the modern USA, not least glimpses of the dirt poor mining country from which they came which is probably even more dirt poor now. Don and Phil had different political outlooks which contributed to their recurring schisms and a final estrangement.
I saw them support Simon & Garfunkel 18 years ago, they were great.
S+G were big fans.Their ambition might have been to support the EB. You can tell the feeling was mutual. A similarly ill-matched pair in character. But from relatively greater privilege. Love them both.
Starmer calling for higher taxes on unearned income to replace the tax on workers. Done right it could make the Tories very uncomfortable as they will have to leap to the defence of landlords and personal service tax dodgers.
Is a teacher with 1 home she lets out in addition to her marital home making more in 'unearned income' than a hedge fund manager?
Yes. She's a landlord, however you try and dress it up.
So are 2.6 million other Brits, they provide a service to those who want to rent, it is as much earned income in a free market economy as anything else.
If nobody wanted to rent there would be no rental income to be earned
Nobody wants to pay rent, you sort of have to though, if you can't buy a house and you don't want to freeze to fucking death.
Can I congratulate you on the uniform excellence of your posts to date? I do hope you are a genuine newcomer to the site, rather than another lapidary sex toy maker.
Thanks, but I don't think I get the lapidary reference, so perhaps I'm being teased in some sly way?
@Leon ekes out a slender living by knapping flint dildoes. He is sometimes wrongly accused as being the alter ego of other former posters.
Suspect Amazon will go for the free to air option, if they can find a carriage partner on commercial terrestrial telly. The advertising revenue will be huge on ITV or Channel 4. I can’t see why they’d choose BBC given there can be no ads.
Sky’s carriage with C4 for the cricket WC final was a huge success.
The legacy of 9/11 is the permanent eclipse of America. It was completely dominant in 2001, now it is approaching a failed state at war with itself, where a coup attempt is no bar to being a leading candidate for the presidency.
Hard to disagree with this. Which is the next top superpower though?
China is the obvious candidate but I was reflecting on this the other day. Surely the ability to invent and develop new technologies will be a big factor in deciding power structures in the years ahead.
Can anyone think of a single significant technological invention to come out of China in the last few hundred years?
Edit: I'm not allowing "covid-19" as an answer.
The Romans invented the whoopee cushion
I'm not sure that's really an answer to my challenge.
What have the Chinese ever done for us?
Tea, tofu, printing, gunpowder ...
Edit: silk, too. Joseph Needham probably made a full list in his works, which i have never read.
Yep. So nothing in the last 1000 years.
Superpowers are not built on sweat alone.
I little bit of the same hubris that meant that Singapore would never fall to the Japanese, and that British motorcycles would always dominate.
China has a lot of people and they are not automatons. There is and always has been a vibrant culture of creativity in China, and China has a long history of learning from other countries and cultures as part of that.
It's not hubris, it's a genuine question. China has the population, the resources, the organisation, to become what it is: the workshop of the world.
I genuinely don't see the invention and development of new ideas though. Maybe that's just where we are in time, and those innovations will come.
Racist drivel
Don't be silly - there is nothing racist about my drivel at all!
I am simply questioning whether China can become the pre-eminient global superpower without also being the leading global technical innovator, as every former global leading power has done before.
Now the answer might be: 'yes it can'. Or it might be: 'China is already the leading global technical innovator'.
Or perhaps, as others on here have hinted, maybe China's path to being the pre-eminent global superpower is not certain.
China has an average IQ (at least on the coast) 5 points higher than the white west. It has a 2500 year old tradition of global if complacent supremacy. It has been (in the past) incredibly inventive, albeit this ingenuity was stifled by its own lazy sense of hegemony. ‘Why bother?’ - was the thinking. ‘We are already the Middle Kingdom - Centre of the World’
It will invent again
Right now, FWIW, China has the world’s largest supercomputer and boasts the most advanced form of AI - beyond GPT-3
China is also not hamstrung by woke causes unlike the west which increasingly obsessed about diversity over merit
Damn! Those bloody wokists ruining everything again, eh?
Sure but when you promote diversity over merit things start to gradually fall apart....I would say the quality of mps for example is much reduced since diversity became a thing
I don't think that's the only factor: I'm sure I (or most of the denizens of this board) could become MPs if they wanted to.
But it combines being poorly paid relative to most professions, with antisocial hours, abuse on Twitter, and constant media invasion into your private life.
I mean, why bother?
Oh I agree. The explosion of salaries in the city and law since the 1980s hasn't helped
Being an MP pays £81,000/year.
While that compares very poorly to the City or law, it doesn't look that great relative to being a software developer with a decade's experience, or a GP, or even a chartered accountant.
Sure: but most GP practices are owned by the partners, with maybe one or two salaried doctors. The BMA says that the vast majority of GPs earn between £70k and £100k. Most, therefore, earn more than MPs.
Suspect Amazon will go for the free to air option, if they can find a carriage partner on commercial terrestrial telly. The advertising revenue will be huge on ITV or Channel 4. I can’t see why they’d choose BBC given there can be no ads.
Sky’s carriage with C4 for the cricket WC final was a huge success.
Am I right in thinking you are have a bet on a Emma win at 100/1?
Suspect Amazon will go for the free to air option, if they can find a carriage partner on commercial terrestrial telly. The advertising revenue will be huge on ITV or Channel 4. I can’t see why they’d choose BBC given there can be no ads.
Sky’s carriage with C4 for the cricket WC final was a huge success.
Am I right in thinking you are have a bet on a Emma win at 100/1?
If only! I think you have mistaken me for someone else (sadly!)
Suspect Amazon will go for the free to air option, if they can find a carriage partner on commercial terrestrial telly. The advertising revenue will be huge on ITV or Channel 4. I can’t see why they’d choose BBC given there can be no ads.
Sky’s carriage with C4 for the cricket WC final was a huge success.
Am I right in thinking you are have a bet on a Emma win at 100/1?
If only! I think you have mistaken me for someone else (sadly!)
My apologies, there is definitely a regular on here who has a few pennies on at that crazy price.
Suspect Amazon will go for the free to air option, if they can find a carriage partner on commercial terrestrial telly. The advertising revenue will be huge on ITV or Channel 4. I can’t see why they’d choose BBC given there can be no ads.
Sky’s carriage with C4 for the cricket WC final was a huge success.
Am I right in thinking you are have a bet on a Emma win at 100/1?
I put a bet on her on Thursday before the semi-final. It was only 6/1 though.
Suspect Amazon will go for the free to air option, if they can find a carriage partner on commercial terrestrial telly. The advertising revenue will be huge on ITV or Channel 4. I can’t see why they’d choose BBC given there can be no ads.
Sky’s carriage with C4 for the cricket WC final was a huge success.
Am I right in thinking you are have a bet on a Emma win at 100/1?
If only! I think you have mistaken me for someone else (sadly!)
My apologies, there is definitely a regular on here who has a few pennies on at that crazy price.
"the money could have been raised by taxing the incomes of landlords, and those who buy and sell large quantities of financial assets, stocks shares".
Expect Rishi may steal that in the Autumn statement
The missing point in this controversy is not just the unfairness but it is the billions short of what is needed
Wealth tax Big_G.
1% per annum of individual wealth above £1m would net £170bn per annum.
And see entrepreneurs and investors find more friendly tax jurisdictions
There is a case for taxing the wealthy but £1m is too low, not that I would qualify
If the wealthy elite want to leave the country rather than pay their taxes, I say let them go. But if they want to remain British citizens and/or they want to keep their flat in London or house in the Cotswolds, thay can pay their 1% on them.
What about dual nationals who left as children and then made a million somewhere else? You want to cut their ties with the UK even though they have never "fled the country"?
I was in my first proper job after graduating, and that day all the management were offsite at a planning event. After the first plane hit one of my friends got a call from his mum (like SE) saying what had just happened and so a group of us went into the main meeting room which had a tv and saw the second plane hit shortly afterwards.
By contrast I was in my room packing up to go to uni.
Sometimes reading these posts make me feel OLD.
Sheer nonsense, Your Majesty.
They certainly make me feel old, and actually how quite young to us oldies our colleagues on here are
You ain't old, old bean. Are you going to call the world whippersnapper?
South Wales beckons.
I actually am quite enjoying reading colleagues recollection of that dreadful day
For all our differences we are an excellent and unique discussion forum
I'm missing a few of the old regulars though: Bluest Blue, Peter the Punter, Ave It and even MysticRose (though she was irritating). And @Barnesian hasn't posted for a while.
I hope it does not mean that we need an obituary wall. At least one of us has made provision for his executors to notify us (I think I remember who, but won't risk it as it might be tactless if I get it wrong!).
I think that's very thoughtful. I have on occasion PMd lapsed posters to urge them to at least post once in a while to let us know they are ok.
I guess we could all leave a modest donation to PB in our wills. That would allow the editors to know when we've popped it and post a suitably gushing obit.
"Benpointer was a stalwart poster of boring lefty stuff that frequently generated the response it deserved."
"On this sad occasion Cyclefree will no longer have the last word. (Or in her case, the last thousand words.) And by the way she told me to tell you that. One of our bossier and more opinionated posters."
"kjh has sadly corrected hyufd's maths for the last time"
42% of Right to Buy properties are now rented out by private landlords. Many to the very Councils who sold them on the cheap. This is the economics of the madhouse.
Some are part of insurance company's portfolio of investments
Wait, how does that work? Housing isn't a very liquid asset, so what do insurance companies want with them?
No surprise, the party was facing heavy losses in the local elections next year in the Home Counties unless they did
It's disappointing a governing party, ahead in most polls and with a majority of 80, hasn't got the courage to pursue a course of action it clearly thinks necessary to improve or alleviate the housing crisis in this country.
If you lose a few seats and a few Councillors, so what? Isn't it more important to do the right thing for the country even if you are damned for it than to constantly back away from any serious change at the first sign of electoral disadvantage?
Let's have a debate about this - let's have the developers explain how they would resolve the issue - let's talk about land-banking, overdevelopment and the like. Let's talk about how new developments transform existing communities and what can be done to mitigate/alleviate this.
To the outsider, it appears the Conservatives are the Party of the developer not the party of the local community. In truth, of course, the Conservative Party (and other parties too) should be looking at the bigger picture.
There are 1.1 million houses already with planning permission, better to get developers to get them built yes and stop land banking before building all over the greenbelt without any real input from the local community.
Locally losing councillors here in Epping Forest is a bigger matter than the general election, we have one of the safest Tory seats in the country at Westminster level but locally lots of councillors vulnerable to the LDs and Greens and Independents on a 'protect the greenbelt' platform which could mean we lose the Tory majority on the council and go to NOC.
The fix for landbanking is to keep issuing planning permission at such a rate developers can't sit on land to constrain supply, as if they do, it just means other houses are built instead.
That said, given the lead-time to get planning permission, I'm not surprised there are a million houses with planning issued and not yet built - developers don't want peaks and troughs in building (they have to lay off and take on staff etc). If we're building 250k houses a year, that's a four year buffer - that's probably the sort of size of one would want as a developer, given planning for any particular development can take literally take years to approve, and the whole playing field might be tilted in any direction without much warning by government decree.
There's something very dodgy in that stat.
A pure 4 year buffer is impossible, because Planning Permission lasts 3 years.
Probably a combination of PP being used for far more than just "things that will get built" - one of many tools in risk management as land comes up for development, for example. Also, not all PPs granted are buildable.
For a construction company to maintain a stable workforce, they need far more than a 4 year pipeline - they need land ready to put into the process for a number of years beyond that, as the whole thing often takes a decade or more.
Suspect Amazon will go for the free to air option, if they can find a carriage partner on commercial terrestrial telly. The advertising revenue will be huge on ITV or Channel 4. I can’t see why they’d choose BBC given there can be no ads.
Sky’s carriage with C4 for the cricket WC final was a huge success.
Comments
There are two things at work here:
(1) Insurance companies take premium in today, but only have to pay out claims at some point in the future. If it takes you 18 months on average to pay claims, you effectively have someone else's money for a year and a half. Owning things like property allows you to benefit from hanging onto that money,
(2) Insurance regulators like insurance carriers to have lots of reserves. Some needs to be liquid. But some they are more relaxed about. And you want to maximise the returns on your reserves.
They invest in homes to provide in part pension income to their pensioner clients
I believe Legal and General have these investments and are expanding their portfolio
I've definitely read something about this recently but googling hasn't found it for me
Sky’s carriage with C4 for the cricket WC final was a huge success.
CON: 37% (-6)
LAB: 33% (+3)
LDM: 12% (+1)
GRN: 8% (-1)
RFM: 5% (+3)
Via @FindoutnowUK, 6-8 Sep.
Changes w/ 13-15 May.
MRP Seat Forecast:
CON: 311 (-75)
LAB: 244 (+72)
Via @FindoutnowUK, 6-8 Sep.
Changes w/ 13-15 May.
https://twitter.com/ElectionMapsUK/status/1436439050337017860?s=19
Not a pollster that I have seen before, but BPC registered.
Quite a swing since their May MRP.
New Thread
A pure 4 year buffer is impossible, because Planning Permission lasts 3 years.
Probably a combination of PP being used for far more than just "things that will get built" - one of many tools in risk management as land comes up for development, for example. Also, not all PPs granted are buildable.
For a construction company to maintain a stable workforce, they need far more than a 4 year pipeline - they need land ready to put into the process for a number of years beyond that, as the whole thing often takes a decade or more.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/tennis/58514875