DAVID'S SOAPBOX

What is the most valuable asset most of us will ever own?

The answer must be our home.

The initial part of this comment will be to dwell on the attitude of parliament in two material ways to home ownership and how they treat you and your property rights.

If you were to go out shopping and forgot to lock your front door and when you came back you found your house occupied by strangers what would you do?

1. Would you phone the police and ask them to remove these creatures?

2. Would you kick the door open and remove the creatures using all reasonable force?

3. Would you feel sorry for the creatures and be happy that for as long as it took you to get a court order and a bailiff to remove them they could legally stay in the property destroying and defiling it bit by bit and go through all your personal items and papers?

I am not going to give you the answer because if you are interested may I suggest you e mail the Sussex police and ask them what their official policy is.

If you do not like the answer may I suggest that you contact your local MP?

Ask him/her what their stance is on so called squatters.

Please let me know the outcome as I am interested to see what the reaction is when it has to be put in writing.

My e mail address is david@engleharts.co.uk.

The next subject dear to my heart with regard to your and my main asset is Home Information Packs (HIPS).

These were brought in by the present government against the advice of the professional bodies who said it would achieve nothing and be a waste of money.

At a time when the American economy, which has a trigger effect on most of the rest of the world, threatens to go into recession and when property prices are at best stagnant if not near a downward readjustment I am sure we need, like a hole in the head, interference which helps add to the expense and problems in the property selling process.

The seller of a property must now by law incur considerable expense providing all sorts of information for a buyer.

This is just what the property market can do without when it is finely balanced.

The HIP includes an energy report which is yet another requirement from the disgraceful civil servants in Europe who so manage their own affairs that their auditors refuse to sign off their accounts and have so refused for several years.

Any attempt at whistle blowing ends up with the whistle blower in disgrace because it would seem that it is more important that we do not think negatively of the whole enterprise than that we pinpoint and deal with the crooks stealing our money.

Anyway one of the lame excuses for HIPS is that we promised to have energy reports as required by Brussels.

How pathetic. I understand that many of the recommendations which are suggested in the energy report will cost so much and save so little that it is unlikely to be cost effective.

My late mother and stepfather spent a tidy sum arranging for solar panels to be put in their home. The saving was marginal but the cost prohibitive and my mother was never able to work out why they did it save it had seemed a good idea to my step father at the time.

If you buy a property you have to pay stamp duty.

What if you don’t?

Simple.

The land registry will refuse to give you a title until you produce evidence that you have paid.

So what is to stop the land registry refusing to register new transactions until a useless energy report is produced.

There is nothing to stop this save it doesn’t grab a few headlines as much as promising to revolutionise property sales by HIPS.

I hope the days of glory gained by a few cheap headlines at the expense of property sellers come back to haunt those responsible possibly by them loosing their seats at the next general election.

Unless you have a seller with no need to buy and a buyer with nowhere to sell your property transaction is going to need care and attention and the nursing of a chain of transactions which can often be quite lengthy. HIPS do nothing for this and just waste money in setting up.

However and this is where you need to think about what sort of society parliament wants us to live in if you don’t get a HIP done you will be a criminal.

Yes.

If you do not do exactly what this government has decided as to how you market your most valuable asset you will be a criminal.

Going back to my opening comment about the creatures that have walked into your house you may also find that the police will say that if you attempt number 2 you will also be a criminal.

Also I would be surprised if the police had the slightest intention to get involved with my first suggestion so we are down to number 3.

It may be that you will get a different response when they are required to provide a written response. Only if more people push will anything get done to sort out the disgraceful attitude which allows squatters to get away with consistently causing criminal damage.

The gutter press used to go on about the cost of house purchase as if it were solicitors’ charges that were solely responsible for all the woes and expense of buying.

Stamp duty now bites at 3% over £250000 and 4% over £500000.

I used to hear stories of how that when people bought property in Spain and France because the purchase tax was so high, and I think also because of capital gains tax, there were two prices.

There was the official lower figure on which tax was paid and then there was the ‘brown envelope’ which at some sordid stage had to pass hands.
I really hope that we never sink to that level but I fear we will if property transactions are used as a milk cow and another means of taxing the hard working sector of our society to pay for the feel good giveaways that parliament loves so much.

I hope I am wrong about the ‘brown envelope’ cult in foreign countries but one hears stories and given the savings both in purchase tax and apparently capital gains type taxes there is logic behind the rumours.

I believe people will pay tax when they believe it is fair but when it is demonstrably not and is part of some class war against the ‘haves’ to please the ‘have not’ mob then problems will arise.

How can we speed up the property process?

The answer is that we don’t need to.

If you find me an empty property and a cash buyer there is little limit to how fast that transaction can complete.

However the real world isn’t like that.

When most people buy and sell they are dependant on other transactions.

There will be other properties to sell in the chain and mortgages to arrange.

This all takes time and many buyers and sellers are wary of incurring legal costs if the transaction isn’t in a closed chain and likely to complete.

A lot of checking is done, often by an estate agent, to see where everybody in the chain is.

Sadly people lie and sometimes a chain progresses to an advanced stage and it is then discovered that one of the parties cannot, after all, arrange for the finance they need and it all comes tumbling down.

The well off can arrange for a bridging loan to enable them to buy first and sell when they find someone. These are expensive and are dangerous in a falling market or if the expected sale price is unrealistic.
Last just a few words on one of my favourite subjects namely how lucky I feel at being able to work in Brighton and Hove. For many years the English climate used to get to me and I thought that one day I would maybe live abroad when and if I ever stopped working.

This was despite boring my daughter and her friends by saying that if you chose a number of subjects that mattered in life and then had a basket for every country in the world with points being awarded we in England would come first.

I read recently that some sort of more sophisticated study (in fairness mine was in my head!)was done and we came very high up and indeed ahead of countries like Switzerland France etc so perhaps my blatant bit of nationalistic propaganda wasn’t that far off the mark.

However what I have come to love about Brighton and Hove is its mix of people culture and habits and how despite that mix sometimes being at war with each other in the wider world they get on here.

It has all happened because we have lived together and all come to accept whatever difference, be it in sexual preferences or religious or national identities, as normal and not something to look down on or feel threatened by.

To me the most interesting thing is that we have not reached this stage of tolerance by legislation or being politically correct but just because we have.

Now there is a thought for the meddlers in power.

David Englehart

April 2008.