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The Sun attacks ‘fatcat’ housebuilders with inflated fortunes thanks to Help To Buy

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Fatcat boss involved in leasehold scandal lives in one of his company’s newbuild homes

A FATCAT boss involved in the leasehold scandal lives in one of his company’s newbuild homes. But he has avoided the rip-off ground rent fees that have ruined the lives of other homebuyers. Ted Ayres, chief executive of property giant Bellway, bought his smart new home on a development in Kent, in December for £400,000.

The Sun has waded into the leasehold house and ground rent scandal by focussing on the lifestyle of the housebuilder bosses and ground rent barons.

They mark a strong contrast with the 100,000 leaseholders stuck in unsellable leasehold properties with aggressively escalating ground rents.

Lenders such as Nationwide and Santander have said publicly that they are not going to lend on this toxic products. Others, such as Barclays, will not lend on leasehold houses at all.

The Sun focuses on the housebuilder bosses such as Ted Ayres, of Bellway, and Pete Redfern, of Taylor Wimpey, living in substantial houses in the Home Counties … all of them freehold.

It throws in Redrow founder Steve Morgan and Jeff Fairburn, CEO of Persimmon, who appears to be in line for a Help To Buy driven bonus of c£100 million by 2021.

Herded up among the “fatcats” are William Waldorf Astor, the viscountcy and half-brother of Samantha Cameron.

For six years, he worked for controversial financier Vincent Tchenguiz, who was arrested by the Serious Fraud Office on wrong evidence in March 2011.

By gearing up his residential freehold portfolio, Vincent became one of the most formidable tycoons in the country and was poised to take over Sainsbury’s before the crash.

Another freehold fund founder mentioned in the article is James Tuttiett, of E&J Capital Partners, based in Winchester.

Sebastian O’Kelly, a joint trustee of LKP with Martin Boyd, is quoted saying:

“Fat cats? These bosses are morbidly obese moggies who have swallowed a cash sofa. Enough.

“Builders have been cheating ordinary people trying to buy homes — and the rest of us, as the taxpayer-funded Help To Buy scheme has fuelled these sales.

“Instead of paying themselves outrageous bonuses, they need to put right this injustice and help those whose homes are unsellable.”

Related posts:

Daily Mail turns up the heat on ‘fat cat’ housebuilder bosses Ratner moment for UK housebuilders, says Chris Blythe, CEO of Chartered Institute of Building Daily Mail attacks housebuilder bosses helping themselves to “mate’s-rates homes” Cramlington: The wet dream of housebuilders, where everything is sold leasehold First-time buyers facing £8,000 ground rents stuffed by plc housebuilders

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Comments

  1. The Government should be getting the accountants in and getting our tax payers money back in full with interest!

  2. Help to Buy supported by the DCLG and LEASE are still misleading homebuyers. Doubling ground rents and leasehold houses.are not excluded from equity loans despite the massive media coverage.

    As bankers, Javid and Sharma probably approve of property commoditisation. They will fight meaningful change with their mates Roger Southam and Essien.

  3. Excellent start, but there are several ‘Residential Freehold portfolio ‘ Barons’ ( living in a ( Freehold multi million pound house in NW8and their stooge directors of utterly disreputable ‘Managing Agent’ companies that have had multiple LVT judgements against them for effectively stealing from the leaseholders – they Must be named and shamed. We should NOT allow them to fly just under the radar! Its time these individuals with their spivvy practices were taken out of circulation. Had I not experienced the behaviour of these gangsters I would not have thought it possible that such behaviour was possible…….Shocking!

      • I really want to name a paticular individual who boasts / boasted on twitter of his “Pipeline of Ground Rent acquisitions ‘. His record as a ‘Freeholder’ / ‘Managing Agent Maestro’ is beyond risible. His stooge Director of a particular management company should be arrested and charged with Insurance among other misdemeanours. I have uncovered much filth and will not / cannot rest until this outfit is taken out!! ( Of circulation of course) I may go to the Newspapers!

        • Cont…. I will keep my powder dry until I am certain that they will be brought down. Hence no naming just yet.

  4. House prices as a multiple of earning has risen to a level which can just about be supported by families because of very very low interest rates

    Employment prospects for the young is depressing with increased automation and pressure from overseas,where wage levels are a fraction of ours

    So the prices of property cannot realistically rise any further unless foreign money comes in and disrupts further the south east and London housing market

    Young people with student debts have a deduction rate of almost 45% on income over £21k when the governments NEST recommendations are followed

    Help to buy is an attempt to keep the market from correcting which has sucked many young people in and they could well end up regretting the day they bought

    With the exposure in the media of the problems created by certain practices in the leasehold market this may be the start of a correction in prices – which if it provides for a gentle decline would be what our housing market needs. However I suspect that as soon as prices are seen to be clearly falling it could well cause a avalanche and particular in the South East significant negative equity

  5. Good! An avalanche of falling Property prices would be a good thing in my view.Prices are ridiculously inflated in the South East. and foreign investors have made it impossible for “Normal’ folks to buy a home.What goes up must come down. It is imperative that the Leasehold market and the racketeering that is prevalent within it is rectified without delay. Let’s see what happens…..the Earth will still turn on its axis.

  6. So if Santander will not lend to leaseholders on this toxic product, why then do they advance the funds to the freeholders to purchase the toxic freeholds in the first place?

    • Micheal, you have raised a question that is causing a bit of embarrassment behind the scenes. A number of lenders lend to both developers and mortgage borrowers.

      • The Nationwide terms of read carefully on the CML handbook states that if the ground rent does not meet their new criteria that it should be referred to them

        Poor press coverage does not state this – but you can see that it gives the Nationwide some scope to still lend on a flat with terms fall outside their criteria – presumably where they have a financial interest in the developer

  7. Actually I am very confused about the ‘Help to Buy Scheme’.

    When I took our case to the tribunal the judge made a point that we were ‘tenants’. And the freeholder could ‘manage’ ‘his’ building as he saw fit. (Btw 100% of the leaseholders took the freeholder to the tribunal to appoint a court appointed manager, In most cases RTM or enfranchise would have been the answer, unfortunately, those avenues were not open to us for a technicality, but I digress….) anyway – since in the eyes of the law, leaseholders are “tenants” why is the Help to buy scheme wasting everyone’s money to ‘buy’ leasehold?

    • Exactly. It’s not help to buy. It’s help to rent, with long term rent paid in advance.

  8. I have raised criticism of this help to biy scheme in other posts. In fact, because of what it does, it should be called the “Help To Sell Scheme”.
    It actually helps these builders to sell houses, or mainly leases as we know.
    I even wonder that the government officials who authorised the scheme in the first place knew that was what they were doing

    • Actually I do not blame the housebuilders, or even the greedy, scammy freeholders. They simply saw an opportunity and they grabbed it, to make money- it’s the law that needs to change so that ‘opportunity’ never arises, Please parliament take note, do not leave this to the ‘goodwill’ of the freeholder.

      • Yes, what a disgraceful society we live in. If there is no law against it, then “fill your boots” and sod the plebs

    • Am I too much of a cynic to believe that house builders used help to buy to artificially raise prices? That whilst it may seem a great idea that buyers have access to “cheap” money they would have been better off if the home was 30,000 pounds cheaper?

  9. Not cynical. A rumour in the markets that Help to Buy is going to stop saw builders shares fall a few points. HTB increases demand, raises prices. boosts profits and make these cats fat. These builders are like junkies, dependent on their fix of HTB.
    I just can’t believe Javid has still taken no action. His inaction increases social injustice and for what purpose.

  10. Our economy is very dependant on the housing market and any reduction in prices will hit consumer expenditure as their perception of wealth will be reduced

    With interest rates being so low the longer it goes on the more difficult will be to ever increase them

    Government seems to see no way out other than to keep feeding the machine of house prices with Help to Buy.and trying to reduce the demand by increasing taxation on BTL investments .

    Taxation of real gains on the sale of principal price main residence may help lower demand

DIrection

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