Mayor Sadiq Khan’s Plans For London Housing – If He Wins
September 18, 2015
A YouGov poll in August 2015 found that 42% of the public thought Tessa Jowell would be the best Labour Candidate for Mayor, Sadiq Khan was in second place with 21%. But the mayoral candidates are elected by their respective parties. London Labour party members had to vote for party leader and London Mayor on the same ballot paper, so Tessa Jowell’s candidacy was killed off by the same lurch to the left that saw Corbyn’s landslide victory as leader. Sadiq Khan won in the […]
I’m in Madrid this week and I’m struck by the level of interest here in the Calais frontier debacle and humanitarian crisis. There are regular updates on TV news and the national newspaper El Pais featured a full page article on the government’s latest proposals for yet another Immigration Bill. Even the waiter in my local café was telling me about the five year prison sentence that awaits UK landlords. Of course the logic that there is an immigration crisis in Calais and […]
The chancellor pulled a number of rabbits out of the hat in his Summer 2015 budget statement. Although many column inches had been dedicated to the loss of buy to let tax ‘perks,’ the landlord community was not expecting the measure to actually materialise. Until April 2017, landlords will be able to set all mortgage finance costs against rental income, but thereafter relief will only be applicable at the basic tax rate, albeit phased in over 4 years. The big questions are who will this […]
In its latest Financial Stability report the Bank of England commented that buy to let could pose a risk to financial instability, especially if interest rates rise. The theory is that this could cause landlords to fall into negative cashflow, where their rental payments no longer cover the cost of the mortgage payment. This could force them to sell in a hurry, potentially destabilising the housing market.
I was in New York for the general election and had the luxury of watching the results at the leisurely time of 5pm onwards. I was as shocked as everybody else when I heard the broadcasters’ exit poll and watched in amazement as the results unfolded. I suspected that we might find ourselves in a 1992 scenario where Labour support had been overestimated and so I wasn’t totally surprised that the Conservatives were the largest party, though I didn’t expect them to get a small […]