There is a deadly pandemic going on right now, like you haven’t noticed.
People are dying, people are being driven into poverty by loss of income as their employment streams dry up.
Britain, like so many countries around the world are facing the biggest health and economic crisis in living history that will quite possibly bankrupt once thriving economies.
We might very soon all go down the Swanee of mass unemployment, debt, a destroyed infrastructure but what is the view of landlords during this time? Its never a better time to be one.
I’m not easy to shock. I’m a been there. Got the T Shirt kinda guy but this week I read an article on the landlord website Landlord Vision Ltd that even left me dumbfounded at the sheer arrogance and insensitivity of the piece, titled “The buy to let sector is booming post Covid 19”
The article urging “Move quickly if you want a bargain” and snidely offering, with a tap to the side of the nose, this quite astonishing scam “Some landlords have even taken advantage of government bounce-back loans to fund their investments, using the cash to fund deposits. This is not allowed, but if investors pay the cash into a limited company and withdraw it as a director’s loan, it disguises the source of the money”.
Other choice quotes form the article:-
“The record-breaking supply of rental stock and demand from tenants for this time of year paints an optimistic picture for the summer months”
An optimistic picture? When people are dying and losing their homes?
“An increase in tenant activity combined with incentives such as reduced stamp duty, cheaper mortgage interest rates, and tax perks has prompted renewed interest in the buy to let sectors.”
How encouraging that even death and homelessness can prompt renewed interest in being a landlord.
The landlord community is in a difficult position right now.
Sympathy for them is pretty much at an all time low. I know landlords who, when asked what they do, wisely and steadfastly avoid letting anyone know.
Now is not the time to be flaunting astonishingly arrogant and self interested views like these, playing into the hands of people with little sympathy in the first place and at a time when government is drafting a hugely important new law called “The Renter’s Reform Act”.
Attitudes like this don’t advance the cause of landlords anywhere.
Is this article from Landlord Vision Ltd an isolated view of a single author or is it merely indicative of how landlords view Covid 19 as an investment opportunity?
By Ben Reeve Lewis
