Correction: Government policy driving down demand for flats among home buyers.
Slow handclaps all round for @Keir_Starmer, @SteveReedMP and @mtpennycook
Starmer puts rent-seeking lawyers before the people.
Number 10 caved to lawyers for oligarchs and kleptocrats by dropping the SLAPPs crackdown.
On Wednesday, the government junked promised Right to Manage reforms to protect the gravy train for lawyers acting for Big Freehold.
@HarryScoffin@FreeLeasehlders Its killing the first step in the housing ladder, in an economy, a signifcant part of which is reliant on increasing house prices, despite this labour have decided to side with the elites, the landowners.
Keir Starmer has learnt precisely nothing from Labour’s local elections drubbing.
Instead of reforms so leaseholders can take rightful control of their homes and chainsaw wasteful spending, we get a Bill that props up the service charge racket to keep the property mafia happy.
@Phillip_Oakman@MWHoyle19@SCP_Hughes@KirstieMAllsopp The biggest driver of house price growth and affordability is the banks. They now lend 5x your income and will lend on 2 incomes, so double, essentially 10x a single person's salary.
@Phillip_Oakman@MWHoyle19@SCP_Hughes@KirstieMAllsopp All the stock? Around 20% of the market is private btl, with the vast majority owning just 1. The Government have been taxing small landlords out of the market for sometime now - restrict supply and prices rise - simple economics.
@Phillip_Oakman@MWHoyle19@SCP_Hughes@KirstieMAllsopp Simple supply and demand economics means no G intervention. There has been significant Government intervention in the rental market, which has sent rents sky high. Simple supply and demand would me lots of landlords competing for fewer tenants putting downward pressure on rents
What is so offensive to you about a transfer of wealth from one party to another?
Was the COVID VIP fast-track for MPs, or the GFC bank bailouts, anything but a transfer of wealth from one party to another?
Or lowering building safety standards so unscrupulous providers could plaster our high-rises with flammable cladding - unsellable anywhere else -for outsized profits? The list of examples is vast.
Those 'transfers' were made to address what were seen as urgent problems in the public interest - and they just got done. There were winners and losers in service of that interest. They happened; it sucked more for some than others, some made out like bandits, and life went on. Why do you think enfranchising leaseholders is any different?
Freeholders have had an excellent run (in their eyes) for decades, using every lever, threat, bullying tactic and harassment possible to extract every penny from leaseholders without delivering anything in return. Time is up on that. It has no place in a modern society.
I don’t care at all if ground rent funds go bust, or if hot pension fund or private equity money - seeking fat and lazy returns that add nothing productive to society but cause millions of leaseholders unnecessary financial difficulty - has to move digitally from one asset to another. Good riddance.
What are you defending? The 'legal right' of a small number to scam millions because outdated laws allow it? Why would you defend such a thing?
Perhaps the decades of battles lost and won have made you too war weary, too tired to win the war and end the freehold-leasehold system for good. The highest purpose of 'leasehold knowledge' is to make itself redundant as fast as possible.
When the freehold-leasehold system ends, the only thing worth noting is that millions of people will be freed from draconian financial servitude; 'working people will have more money in their pockets', and finally have the dignity of owning and managing their homes how they see fit. That's the win, that's the endgame. The rest is just the journey to get there.
When it ends, 'international investors', pension funds and financial markets will either not care or barely notice. Those who'll notice are the perpetrators and beneficiaries of a lazy, immoral business model, long past its use-by date and I have no time or mercy for them. They'll just have to find a hopefully more productive purpose that benefits society.
You and the LKP team have earned your place at the victory parade, but there's work to do yet. Let's fast-track that transfer of wealth from the freehold parasites into the hands of the millions who've been bled dry for decades. It's long overdue.
@Keir_Starmer Free the cladding hostages from this insane endless prison.
Peppercorn my ground rent.
Abolish leasehold making an affordable path to commonhold for existing
Do what u promised & what leaseholder elected u to do.
@dc_lawrence Upwards extensions? Freeholders who love this, not sure about the leaseholders that would have no say in it and would suffer with years of building work and reduction in thier property value.
@dc_lawrence@WendyWhittakerL builders need an incentive to build, real house prices falling for several years now, supply is greater than demand in most parts of UK. London went on a massive building frenzy with the tech boom after fin crash, there is now a glut of flats in London pushing prices lower.
@polluterpaysbsb@BBCNews What do you do with a building that has a masonry exterior but combustible insulation and issues with cavity barriers, surely stripping all the walls down is overkill.
@TerryGW0@matt_talon@afneil Putin may well want to take over Ukraine, but can't dismiss the fact that if they joined NATO nukes would be in easy reach of Moscow, if Putin allowed this his position as Head of Russia is untenable. Bay of Pigs springs to mind.
@petermengerink@KirstieMAllsopp@mpp_gtto@RICSnews@NatWest_Help@TSB@HalifaxBank@BBCNews Gov could backstop the banks like they did for the banks during the financial crisis, this would allow people to buy and sell. buildings will get fixed, but it looks like it will take many many years, in the meantime people cannot sell and are stuck with a depreciating asset.