This is spot on, but I wouldn't let the water companies of the hook....we've slept walked into this situation, mainly due to the actual water part and the importance of it not being at the very top of anyones outcomes list.
Not letting them off the hook, some of then haven't been reporting accurately the number of times they're having to do it to avoid penalties. Its just the fact that people think nationalisation would stop the discharges. It won't. They'll continue to get worse without central government intervention and investment whoever is in charge of water.
I think it will tax casual private landlords out of business. Anybody with a decent property portfolio will just transfer them all to a company or some other structure that they are then in control of.
Illustrating the point rather well there
Firmer regulation to stop all profiteering out of third party house ownership then, esp targeting larger operations. Try and get it back to majority owner occupied and the rest public owned.I think it will tax casual private landlords out of business. Anybody with a decent property portfolio will just transfer them all to a company or some other structure that they are then in control of.
Limited company will be able to offset income against costs and pay dividends and directors salary. The offset costs will include a car for the company director as a justified business expense so he can visit his properties and other jolly old boys stuff like that
You'd need to run the numbers to know if that's feasible?
Too add....buy to let is just another asset class where people will place their money to earn a return.
Thing is though is it's one of the things where you have to ask yourself "why?" Because governments (actually both Labour and tory) have hammered landlords already and rents have risen as a result. I work in the banking industry and working for a traditional incumbent it *was* a bit of a stich up, but now you have all these digital challenger banks disrupting the market and the larger banks have had to change their offering to customers to avoid losing customers.
What looser regulation exists around BTL mortgages? Corporate BTL yes, as a corporate BTL mortgage isn't regulated under MCOB rules. A consumer BTL mortgage (taken out by the type of landlord Gutterboy wants to get rid of from the market) is as regulated as a residential loan.
Well if *all* profits are put into infrastructure then there isn't a viable private enterprise there anymore. But let's say you nationalise them all. Thames water for example has had to be bailed out and last pre-tax profits were £157 million. That would barely pay for one extra treatment plant let alone the complete rebuild of built-upon victorian architecture we are often largely working with. So no, if water companies were nationalised, the government would firstly likely have to pump money in just to make most of the operation basically viable, even prior to thinking about meaningful investment.
£1.7 billion across the whole country is barely enough to put a new treatment centre in every county. To redesign the sewer system completely for current and future use will cost 100s of billions. Possibly even over £100 billion for any county with several large cities where highly complex subterranean work will be required across the entire built up area. Hence nationalisation would make almost zero difference to the fundamental problem facing water treatment.
Not regulated by the FCA.