In difficult times one can find out who your friends are. Neighbours can be good or bad. In 2013, I had some personal difficulties. Solutions were found however. People were on the whole very kind and many gave me advice. Some of the advice I took. Some of the advice was ignored. For instance, the estate agent suggested I put my house on the market at a price 10% lower than the price I had insisted upon and suggested that I would have to accept a further 10% reduction to sell the property. In the end I sold the property at the price I was asking. My plan was to invest half the proceeds in certain UK equities to increase my dividend income. A neighbour, seeking to be helpful, gave me some advice as to what to do with this money. “Bricks and mortar!” he said, and went onto strongly to advise me to but a small property and let it on an assured short hold tenancy. I thanked him for his advice and completely ignored it!
Letting residential property is something that should be the preserve of the very wealthy for it is a foolish policy for a person possessing average or modest wealth to purchase a single property with a view to letting.
Letting properties should be done on a large scale to gain economies such as in house administration, contracted maintenance and a spread of properties to allow for vacant properties when tenants move out and a new tenant has to be found.
The realities of this are daily demonstrated to me where I live. I live in what was described as a two bedroom flat. It is no longer a two bedroom flat as the larger (by 6 inches in one direction) room is now the office where I am typing this article from and is therefore a one bedroom flat.
The building in which my flat is contains four flats. My flat is on the first floor. Immediately below me there is a duplicate flat in size which is near duplicate in floor-plan. Next to me on the first floor is a one bedroom flat and below that flat, another one bedroom flat. Thus there are two two bedroom and two one bedroom flats in the building. Next to the building there is an identical building and thus there are eight flats. Of the eight flats, half (four) are lived in by their owners. The other half (four) are letting properties. Two of these landlords have had to face loosing tenants – and income – recently as one tenant leaves and they have to wait whilst the letting agent advertises for another tenant. All of which has to be paid for. By the landlord. The four landlords are all private individuals of modest means.
In addition to the above “challenges” there have been other “challenges” that have not been experienced by the landlords but instead by their tenants neighbours – the owner occupiers. These “challenges” have been the behaviour of some tenants. A former tenant was a elderly lady who kept the property in very poor condition. This posed a very great challenge for the owner to get the property into a letable condition after the tenant had left. Whilst this tenant was in residence disturbances included drug taking and anti-social behaviour. Happily this is no more.
The rental income is typically £550 pcm for a two bedroom flat.
Now, it would be possible for me – if let us say my Premium Bond came up and I won £1 million – to find a very quiet tenant for my property who would keep the property in immaculate order and would even offer to pay me a premium over the market assessed rent of say, £700 pcm.
Such a tenant would be a female sex worker who would sub let to a colleague, a fellow female sex worker. The tenant would pay me £700 pcm and receive £350 pcm from her sub tenant. These two women would use the property as premises from where they could conduct their trade in relative safety. It could be viewed as a “win-win” situation. The women would gain two fold. Firstly they would acquire safe working premises and secondly they would be paying a quarter of what a criminal “pimp” would be charging.
However, there is a problem. A big problem. This “win-win” solution is illegal!
Were I so stupid to enter into such an arrangement and were caught by the police I would end up in prison. Not only that; the CPS would apply POCA (Proceeds of Crime Act) to confiscate the flat and all monies I had received. Not to compensate victims but to help pay for the police!
This – at long last – brings us to the title of today’s article.
You see, UK membership of the EU is illegal.
Under the British Constitution NO foreign power can have precedence in this land. Furthermore, Her Majesty the Queen took a solemn oath in June 1953 to govern us according to OUR laws and Customs. The laws and customs of the European Union were not mentioned!
This state of affairs however does NOT obscure the truth of the following statement by the excellent Doctor Richard North below:
“On one hand our MPs can vote for a deal imposed on us by the EU, which would leave us much worse off than we are now. On the other, we can drop out of the EU with “no deal” for what Mrs May only coyly calls “uncharted territory” although she must now realise this would be a far greater disaster than her own “bad deal”.”
Source: http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=87115
Speaking the Truth unto the Nation
