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Are you a UK-based property investor. I’m on a property newsletter and this came in which I have to alert all of you to…

Peter Esders, a property lawyer, said ‘Just to confuse things even more I was at a Budget review breakfast yesterday and the view of the speaker was that CGT may have a further rise in the normal budget in April. The coalition document states that they will raise CGT rates to ‘Similar or close to those applied to income’ and the budget the other day said that the rate for 2011-2012 will be decided by the Chancellor in the future.’

Something all property investors ought to keep in mind.

Calling all property investors and future property investors, tenants, students, estate agents and lettings agents!!!!

I can’t believe the UK government intend to introduce a law that will spell the death of private renting. Here is my email wording, verbatim, that I sent to my MP. Please feel free to copy the who content, change the MP name for your local MP name, change your name etc and send it off immediately! This proposed law MUST BE STOPPED! Please take action now otherwise the law will be introduced and everyone will be adversely affected.

To find your local MP click this link and follow the easy steps: http://www.rla.org.uk/html/studentificationEmail.shtml

Dear Jim,

Today I received the following email:

Dear Gareth

I am writing to ask you to act urgently and make your voice heard – tell your MP and the Government why you believe the Government’s change to Planning Use Classes Order is bad for the Private Rented Sector, both for landlords and tenants.

Popularly called Studentification – these new powers could affect any rented property not currently rented by a family or related group.

After April 6th 2010 if you want to let what has been a family house or flat to three or more unrelated people such as:
- nurses sharing,
- a family with a lodger,
- students,
- young professionals,
- migrant workers,
- even the elderly

YOU WILL NEED PLANNING PERMISSION

If you have an existing shared house or flat which you let to a single person or a family you will lose the right – once they have moved out – to let it again to sharers WITHOUT OBTAINING PLANNING PERMISSION.

You will have to pay £335 and wait 8 weeks and probably longer for planning permission before you can legally rent to them. Even then you may be refused planning permission.

And all because Secretary of State John Denham will not listen to the combined voices of landlords and tenants, students, letting agents and local retailer organisations (RLA, British Property Federation, National Union of Students) who are against the measures.

You can make a difference by emailing your MP and the Government NOW

Click here to send our letter and make your voice heard.

Please do it Now – time is very short.

Yours sincerely

Alan Ward
Chairman
RLA

I can’t tell you how furious I am and how I feel about this crazy law.

Please do not support the measure to introduce new Planning Class Orders.

This will make renting to groups of nurses, teachers, young professionals, immigrant workers, the elderly and any unrelated groups, totally impractical.

“Studentification” was stated in the Rugg report (November 2008) to be a minor issued not requiring legislation.

The RLA has submitted a detailed case against the Statutory Instrument ( http://www.rla.org.uk/news/news.shtml?post=143 ). I and they urge you not to support this measure which will do untold damage to the Private Rented Sector. The Planning Class Orders will kill the private rented sector for non HMO sharers and HMO sharers alike.

Please, please, please help John Denham to see sense and to change his plan to implement this law without proper consideration of the (obvious to me) unintended consequenses of his actions. If you could pass a copy of this email on to him too he might get a feel for the depth of ill-feeling towards this plan.

Yours sincerely,

Gareth C Thomas

revealsarticle,pension

I heard a BBC report a couple of days ago that claimed that the UK’s top 100 companies lost a combined total of 96 billion pounds from the value of their pension funds. Further digging around lead me discover the full source of this information and it makes for very interesting reading! Here is the introductory part of the article to give you a flavour and decide whether you want to read it or not:

Lane Clark & Peacock survey reveals largest ever deficit for FTSE 100 pensions schemes

The financial crisis has plunged FTSE 100 companies’ UK pension schemes into a £96 billion deficit, more than double the £41 billion estimated a year ago, according to the 16th annual Accounting for Pensions report from Lane Clark & Peacock LLP (LCP), a leading firm of consulting actuaries.

The deficit, which is calculated using data from mid-July 2009, is the largest recorded shortfall recorded under the IAS19 accounting standard currently used for pension schemes.

If you want to read it all, you can find the full article, published on the website of Lane, Clark and Peacock, Actuaries and Consultants here.

What surprises me though is not the actual amount of the deficit or the fact that employers and other pension fund providers are waking up to the fact that they are not going to be able to keep paying people well into retirement. What surprises me is the fact that the general populace in the UK still bemoan the losing of pension rights and benefits, yet don’t seem to want to do anything about it! Most people view share dealing as risky. I know I do! But for some reason it seems okay to hand over your hard-earned cash to a faceless nameless individual or group of individuals (those supposedly VERY clever people in the fund management industry in the City!) and expect them to do any better than you could throwing darts at a dartboard as a stock selection strategy.

I admit I do pay into my employers pension as they match my contributions up to 2%. It’s free money as far as I’m concerned (although I am worried about it’s true value when I come to take the benefit) and I would be silly not to take it. However I am not relying solely on pensions to provide for me and my family in my retirement. I look to other forms of investment, which people deem even riskier, like investing in overseas off-plan property.

Well I’ve done my due diligence on overseas off-plan property investment and I can say with confidence that the strategy and business plan the developer is employing is far safer than anything the UK Government (for my state pension) or my current employer can offer.  In about seven years time I should be able to officially “retire” on a “pension” of around 80,000 pounds a year (before tax!). Not bad for someone who’ll be aged only 50.

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