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Everybody complains that it’s the bankers in the City that are the fat cats in London. Well not so!

Look at this interesting little fact I discovered today.

£52,786 is what a traffic warden in Tower Hamlets earned last year including bonuses.

That’s where our tax pounds are going…into the pockets of the fat cat “gutter bandits”. It’s no wonder unskilled and uneducated members of our society are queuing up to get a job as a traffic warden. What a great way to earn so much money without having to study hard and take examinations in finance, like the City workers are having to do just to keep their jobs!

Nice work Tower Hamlets…

1. They all bend the truth (alot) about the number of “waiting tenants” they have for property like yours that tenants are desparate to rent from you and they will let your property TODAY with a holding deposit too.
2. They take holding deposits from prospective tenants and charge big fees for “administration” of the referencing process.
3. They don’t, as a matter of course or good practice, credit check tenant applicants. One agent told me it’s because we the landlord aren’t advancing the tenant any credit, the tenant pays their rent in advance, so no credit checks required. I wasn’t going to waste my time to educate the man (nice though he was!).
4. They jealously guard their “leads” from everybody and think only of the amount of commission they are going to get from the deal.
5. Agents don’t work in the best interests of anybody but themselves. The landlord AND the tenant pays for the service and neither party gets that good of a deal.
6. They whack on hidden charges at the end (usually at the point of monies being transferred to the landlord) so that you can’t do anything but accept the charge or dispute it and try to take them to court (which oftentimes is not a good idea, to throw good money after bad).
7. They rush tenants into making rash decisions quickly.
8. They don’t check whether the landlord is happy to begin the referencing process, they just start the referencing process and it’s very difficult for a landlord to back out without incurring some costs just because they get a bad “feeling” about the prospective tenants. The agent works on the basis that unless some negative information is found, why would a landlord want to reject the tenant!
9. The agent misrepresents the landlord and markets the property inappropriately.
10. The agent competes with the landlord’s own advertising on Gumtree.com by spamming Gumtree with duplicate adverts at lower prices just to entice tenants to go through them (which costs ALL parties much more money).

If you’ve got any more experiences about letting agents then post a comment below and tell me.

I’m a landlord and I’m going through a situation right now which is sucking up masses of my time to
deal with, again caused by a so-called lettings agent called Taylor Tate Limited of www.taylortate.com. Everybody beware of this company, they are a bunch of shysters.

I placed and advert on Gumtree and within a few days received an enquiry from this company claiming they could let my property out in a week on a no let, no fee basis. I rejected their advance at first on the basis I did not want any agents acting on my behalf. Frankly they are ALL useless!

Then this guy, John Phillips from Taylor Tate Limited, got back to me and said he would only charge me £500 plus VAT to let the property. I thought why not, nothing to lose. How wrong was I!!

The long story short is this: the agent was instructed by me to find FOUR sharers. They found FIVE sharers and proceeded to mislead me into agreeing a tenancy to five students. Now anybody that knows even a little about HMO regulations knows that a property of 3 storeys or more, with 5 or more sharers forming 2 or more households is an automatically licenceable HMO, with all the expense of sinks, fire doors, fire alarm system etc etc.

Well apparently Taylor Tate didn’t know this and then tried to dupe the prospective tenants into signing up to an agreement illegally by signing only four persons but he told them “it would be okay to move 5 people in, just don’t tell the landlord”. This is an illegal act and I was liable for a fine of up to £20,000 plus all the rent paid by the tenants was returnable!

So the five boys paid Taylor Tate nearly £5,000 and so far they’ve only got back £2,046, a loss of just under £3,000! Taylor Tate are refusing to refund them all their money back and threatening legal action against me for breach of contract. Of course there was no valid contract so I’m not going to pay them any of their fee for non-performance. I’ve lost no money other than the fact I could’ve had four rent paying tenants in the property a week ago, so until I find some new tenants I’m losing money.

To summarise, everybody (landlords and tenants) beware of Taylor Tate at http://www.taylortate.com as they are fraudsters, pure and simple.

The taxman has lost a protracted inheritance tax (IHT) test case that confirms estates letting land and residential property to third parties qualify for business property relief.

The ruling is key to property owners and estate planners as the ruling means these properties are exempt from IHT.

The case concerning the estate of the Late Lord Balfour was first heard by a tax tribunal in 2009. Then, Lord Balfour’s executors were granted permission to appeal a determination by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) that disallowed property let by the estate from IHT.

One of the main factors of the case was whether a traditional landed estate carrying on a variety of activities qualified for business property relief as a trading entity.

In general, tax rules consider letting land and residential property as an investment rather than a business, which puts them squarely in assets charged to IHT.

HMRC lost the case and appealed the result. The judgment was handed down today.

The Upper Tribunal disallowed the appeal, letting the previous verdict in favour of Lord Balfour’s executors stand.

HMRC has reserved the right to take the matter to a higher court after reviewing the result.

Until HMRC announce their intentions, estate planners and solicitors are still in doubt over whether landed estates qualify for IHT exemption even though HMRC has lost the argument twice in court.
Opinion from Magic Money Tips

Why on earth can’t UK HMRC accept that they’ve lost their case TWICE and move on. They are such money-grabbing (expletive deleted for the sensitive readers amongst you) and they contradict themselves at every turn. If a person lets property, and they have two or more properties, then it’s a business and NOT an investment and as such should be brought into line with all the available reliefs set aside for businesses, such as rollover relief and business property relief.

Come on HMRC, now is the time to accept you can’t operate double standards and to cut the bureaucracy you’ve helped to create. That’s the only real way the UK taxpayer can reduce the mountain of debt left to us by the last Government. Reduce the bureaucracy thereby reducing the number of overpaid fat cat civil servants thereby reducing the wage bill of the public sector, thereby reducing the Government spend and borrowings against public sector debt requirement.

Article Source: http://www.themoneycentre.net/knowledge/news/LLN/Issue1/article7.htm

Money Is The Root Of All Evil! What rubbish! Money is just a means to an end. A common quote is often misquoted. It’s not that “money is the root of all evil”. The quote should be “the LOVE of money is the root of all evil”.

Money is a good thing. It’s far better to have money than not to have money. There’s no nobility in poverty. Every individual on this planet should strive to ensure they have enough money to first survive, then thrive, then give, in that order. If you are poor and have debts, then pay your debts off first before giving to church or charity. YOU are the charity in this case, but just don’t get yourself into debt again. Resolve to turn your life around for the betterment of yourself and everybody around you.

Take this as an opportunity to change your life and then when you’ve changed your life you’ll be able to change the lives of others for the better, and THAT is when you understand the true purpose of money. It is to be put to work, to make more money and in turn used wisely to help others. Once you have an abundance of money in your life, you will naturally gravitate to doing good things with that money.

Finally, remember this. Money doesn’t change you. If you are an a-hole before you became rich, you are an even bigger a-hole when you become rich! If you are a nice, happy type of person while you are poor, then when you are rich you will be just the same (usually), happy and nice but just alot richer!

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