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TODAY'S OTHER NEWS

Investment firm to buy and refurb thousands of low-EPC rental units

A property investment platform is to spend £1 billion buying and retrofitting thousands of homes in the private rental sector, The Times is reporting.

IMMO, a PropTech property investment platform, is to snap up over 3,000 homes across Britain and bring them up to an EPC C rating where possible.

The purchase programme runs until 2025 with the retro-fitting of energy efficient features to be completed by 2028, when it is thought likely that new EPC regulations will take effect. 

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The Times says IMMO already manages a £66m property portfolio in the UK and Germany and recently raised £63m in venture capital; its war chest also consists of an estimated £2 billion in investment by pension funds and insurance companies.

It wants to begin purchasing in October using data-based technology identifying homes that are likely to be relatively poor quality, in need of renovation, but sitting in areas of high potential yields.

“If you have three buy-to-lets, you might be facing a bill of more than £30,000. Most people have enough savings in the bank to get them through a couple of months, so suddenly getting a £30,000 bill is not an exciting prospect” explains IMMO’s head of sustainability, Anna Clare Harper, considering the prospects of her platform’s strategy. 

There’s a fast-growing focus in the private rental sector on the need to improve energy efficiency.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities says a typical buy to let would cost £7,650 to bring up to an  EPC C rating, but many other experts suggest the figure could be £10,000 or more. 

Meanwhile Savills has estimated that it will cost more than £300 billion to bring the entirety of the UK’s housing stock up to modern energy efficiency standards. 

IMMO wants to buy up to 10,000 homes across Europe by 2025. A third would be in the UK, where it has £1 billion to spend.

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  • George Dawes

    How awfully convenient...

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    The vultures 🦅 are starting to circle…… mine are going to FTB’s.

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    Totally! Who would want to buy up so much stock and have all the hassle of doing so much work to so many properties? People that want to pay below market value. So mine is going up for sale to owner occupiers.

     
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    Its what the continuous attack on individual landlords is all about, to get us out of the way for the big boys to take over, plain & simple. Everything they are doing and have done is to destroy us they’ll be no Section 24 for them, welcomed with open arms. It doesn’t matter what we have done, effort and sacrifices made over the years to create the industry that didn’t exist before.
    I went to LL / Council conference last night, another disaster virtually everything that was coming up on the big screen was anti-LL, and dare not question them. I was told there would be an opportunity to ask questions at the end, what use is that so much stuff going on when you get to the end the subject is lost, should be allowed to comment or challenge as it came up. LL must join Redress Scheme ? what for, how many more things are we required to join and who’s going to redress us. I was told to be quiet like everyone else just sit there like a lemons, not a word out of any of them while our Business goes down the pan, they must be as crooked as hell hiding behind the bush.
    It was a 2 hour meeting but I couldn’t hack the course and suffer the indignity, left after 45 minutes and wished them good luck.

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    My council adops the same technique, questions at the end of the meeting, not at the end of each individual presentation. One council barred me and two of my colleagues from attending any more meetings, all highly educated (Doctors and Lawers) professional landlords. Our collective crime was to ask too many questions and dominate the meeting.

     
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    I was in a meeting like this, mainly to do with HMO's. My experience was very similar to that which you had last night. I also walked out.
    Problem is we have no effective voice and whilst that remains the status quo we will not be heard

     
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    That's a marketing pitch. They obviously have no idea how much it will cost to get older properties to an EPC of 3. Didn't go very well with greenfelll tower, did it ?

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    Presumably all the tenants will be evicted to allow the upgrades to be done & then re-rented at a higher price.

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    IMMO only wants to buy up 3300 homes in Britain. That is a very small percentage of the private rental sector. It won't tackle the much wider problem of it being too expensive to bring houses to EPC C.

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    I did learn something from the LL Conference last night, 1.1 million are on Housing Benefit, while 27% of private Renters don’t work, are the Authorities targeting the wrong section of society. 45% of Renter’s have no savings but didn’t say why, I can fill that in, too many takeaways, iPhones Contracts, internet broadband , netflex
    etc, I am sure the 27% doing nothing can’t expect to save. When I was saving to get my first property I didn’t have any wasted money like that.
    21% PRS homes non decent that will be down to Regulation’s, excluding LL from his property, too scared to go there in case Tenants complain to Council. Property was far better maintained when LL had access and could keep everything right. How can you maintain a property remotely ?.

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    I had two people on Universal Credit in a two bedroom flat who didn't want to work because they wanted to party all night in clubs.

    I had foolishly permanently reduced the rent of the flat to Universal Credit level for two sharers because I took pity on them during the lockdown period. It was a mistake because of the amount of broken things and the filthy state of the flat.

    If tenants don't heat the property and dry clothes indoors there will be mould formation - and landlords will be blamed, not the tenants.

     
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    Ellie,
    I foolishly let to a family 3 years ago. Last year they had mould. They don't open the windows, can't afford to heat the property and have about 4 kids. They reported me to the council, and cost me thousands in mould remediation. Then sent no-win no fee solicitor letter with several lies in it to claim compensation.

    Always look after #1. I didn't but I will in future.

     
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    That sounds like an extremely unfair situation that you were placed in, Nick.

    Can you counterclaim for the cost of the mould remediation on the grounds that the tenants caused the mould? You might have to get an expert report to demonstrate that though.

    Consider whether the mould was there when they moved in. Do you have photographic evidence to show that it was free of mould when they first started renting your property?

    We really do have to be so careful when we choose people for the properties. However, it is still possible to be fooled.

     
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    Well best of luck to them, if they are going to be buying up the properties we don't want!! Will be an extra 3000 homes available for renters, which will help a bit with the shortage. Will be interesting to see how affordable the rents are though, once they have invested all that money they will want a decent return on it.

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    • S S
    • 26 July 2022 09:00 AM

    Teh key there is low EPC homes in high yield areas. So the houses may currently be rented to low income tenants but IMMO will be looking for HIGH yield so the rents once the property have bee brought up to EPC C will not be affordable

     
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    I fully expect corporate funded rental properties will push up market rents in the same way that corporate funded student ghettos have pushed up market rents for normal student properties.

    Landlords with decent properties don't have anything to worry about competing with the corporate funded properties.

     
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    Robert, you and I must operate in very similar situations. The corporate student ghettos here are eye wateringly expensive. I grabbed the opportunity over COVID to refurb all mine to a very high standard and all rented immediately. Rents are better than ever, and home owning guarantors all round. The council were even funding eco upgrades (lofts and cavities) so I'm now at EPC C on all of them apart from one. Now all we've got to do is kick the White Paper into touch !!

     
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    Robert - Spot on..... but i wonder if Gen Rent and Shelter are telling their ' Target Audience '......... i bet they are not !

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    They can't predict any consequences which are staring normal sensible people in the face - totally blinded by prejudice, jealousy and political dogma!

     
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    I've said it before and I'll say it again - Shelter and Gen Rant thrive on human misery! The more there is, the better for them and it justifies their grubby begging bowls that they trust in front of government and corporates who need to find a "worthy cause". Robert is also correct ....

     
  •  G romit

    "Big business mopping up after Government destroys the PRS" should the real title

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    Call yourself a proptech company and get yourself multi billion pounds worth of funding. Fascinating. What "data-based technology" are they using to find homes? Is this just marketing speak to say they are crawling rightmove and zoopla

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    Report them! You're not allowed to scrape rightmove..🤪🤪

     
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    Alex, yes, really it's a plea for funds! For these corporate let's to work the rents will be horrendous. However this is the conservative business model, put you out of business and hand it over to a favoured entity. Been done lots of times. Germans complained that metro cammmel were getting all the London underground trains, guess what, metro cammmel bankrupted, and all tube trains now built by Siemens.

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    Ellie. I have a 2 bed Flat in west London HM0 licence for four but only 2 occupants, there was 3 persons one left over 2 years ago the other 2 said they wanted it between the 2 of them and pay the full money, then Corona came and couldn’t pay, so £500. pm short for more than 2 years ( over £12k out of pocket) now its become the norm and not interest in getting anyone in.

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    Hi Michael. Are the two of them on one contract? If so generally they would be liable for the full amount of rent irrespective of how many people were living there. Both the tenants would be jointly and severally liable which means you can claim against either or both of them.

    The only issue is if you made a new agreement with them that the two of them could rent the flat for two thirds of the rent.

     
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    Tell them to get another in or S21 them. Rents are higher than ever in London.

     
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    Now is the time for all of us to review all tenancies, before the law changes, and S21 any tenants where there are issues with rent or any other problems.

     
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    Unfortunately Sad Landlord is Probably correct . I do not think Private Landlords will be able to afford to House less than Perfect Tenants. The less than perfect ones will probably include an awful lot of families.
    It is unlikely you will be able to get your property back without a long drawn out , Expensive to you only legal battle)
    I do realise the Government think all Tenants are rent paying, house cleaning, models of virtue. But we in the real world know different.

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    Perfect 5 * tenants only need to apply from now on in , all others will be rejected.

     
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