5 ms·

Were I wishing to resolve the issue of property prices, I would do it using two things: The first is to take the pricing system used on London buses (£1.40 per

by Ntrails 12y ago

Were I wishing to resolve the issue of property prices, I would do it using two things: The first is to take the pricing system used on London buses (£1.40 per trip, wherever you're going), and apply it nationally (probably a £1) to re-nationalised railways. This would require huge subsidies, though I believe it to be worthwhile. I'd like to see counter arguments though. Secondly I'd probably look at large increases in stamp duty on non-primary homes, and changes to make renting a property less attractive through lending rules/regulation and taxation. The ability to finance rented properties at 90% leverage requires too little capital, and lending rules are too generous to landlords compared to tenants. If rental properties required 50% equity by landlords (as a plucked from the air example) you'd see a rather fewer leveraged to the hilt property "moguls" and less competition. Obviously more building would help, but I think it's only part of the problem.

tomelders 12y ago
I'm a big believer in renationalisation of the railways for this very reason. When you look into commuting from outside London, the price of a season ticket scuppers your plans.
- Ntrails 12y ago
  I looked at commuting from the midlands. £9,000 a year. It's actually a joke. In all seriousness though - very low prices on public transport should incentivise people out of cars. Weekend/day trips around the UK away become significantly more attractive. And above all it moves some of the money out of London. The obvious downside is higher passenger numbers, more capacity required, and no money to fund it. It'd take someone with far more domain specific knowledge to appreciate the complexities - for now it's my go to "one policy to change the country" when asked :)
lmm 12y ago
> The first is to take the pricing system used on London buses (£1.40 per trip, wherever you're going), and apply it nationally (probably a £1) to re-nationalised railways. This would require huge subsidies, though I believe it to be worthwhile. I'd like to see counter arguments though. The railway network doesn't have the capacity for the number of people who would use it at those prices. The reason a Virgin ticket from London to Birmingham costs 40 quid and has to be booked months in advance isn't just because beardy Branson likes money, it's also because there are a lot of people who want to travel quickly between London and Birmingham. So unless you want Soviet Union style decade-long waiting lists for season tickets, you'd have to build dozens of new mainlines. Look at how much fuss, public enquiries and so on there have been around HS2 - and that's a single line, being built to relieve what everyone knows is the busiest line in the UK. In China they just build the high-speed lines and citizens know better than to complain, but you'd never get away with that here. And if you were somehow able to make it work, you might make London more attractive to live in, not less. For young people who like to go out in the evening, nothing compares to living in London - the trains are pretty good for commuting to your job, but less so for coming back from a night out (for solid engineering reasons that are hard to overcome, the railway needs a bit of "downtime" once a day or certainly once a week). So you might end up with people who work in e.g. Guildford preferring to live in London and commute out. > Secondly I'd probably look at large increases in stamp duty on non-primary homes, and changes to make renting a property less attractive through lending rules/regulation and taxation. The ability to finance rented properties at 90% leverage requires too little capital, and lending rules are too generous to landlords compared to tenants. If rental properties required 50% equity by landlords (as a plucked from the air example) you'd see a rather fewer leveraged to the hilt property "moguls" and less competition. London contains the world's finest exploiters of financial regulations; you're going to struggle to make assets un-leverable when there are willing buyers and sellers on each side. Most likely you'd end up with a layer of either legal avoidance or outright corruption, with e.g. poor tenants forced to become the "owner of record" of the house they live in, under a contract where the financial benefits still accrue to the rentier. What would help, I think, is to tax income from increased property values exactly like any other income. It's not going to be a popular policy with voters (temporarily embarrassed millionaires), and there would be costs to assessing property values fairly, but it would eliminate a lot of market distortion if you had to pay the same taxes on your housing investments as you do on your stocks or ordinary income. Eliminating tax breaks for charitable foundations would also eliminate a huge class of exploits, but again good luck getting that one past the voters.
- Ntrails 12y ago
  The reason a Virgin ticket from London to Birmingham costs 40 quid and has to be booked months in advance isn't just because beardy Branson likes money, it's also because there are a lot of people who want to travel quickly between London and Birmingham. (I did giggle btw) They can charge more on lines which are popular, using cost as a form of rationing. That's completely contrary to "public" transport as I see it. I agree, there aren't enough trains. There isn't the capacity. And I can be certain that of the extra expense of the line Branson is only getting a cut (because he paid more for the right to operate that route). I can't speak to increasing capacity because I know so little about the technicalities. I certainly don't imagine it's easy. I note at least one comment invoked the double decker carriages (which we don't do) as an example - but God knows what that would look like to implement. I can totally understand someone not wanting Guildford though, and support any policy that helps them. London contains the world's finest exploiters of financial regulations I agree, but disagree that this is an argument for anything - I was merely stating a concept not anything that could be used as a basis for law. The obvious solution is to use business debt to cover the excess lever, thereby avoiding the problem. The fact is that as a first time buyer I cannot get a mortgage with monthly payments at 70% of my current rent. Yet if I rented it out for that rental income the maths changes and I can. There is a fundamental flaw somewhere and I don't believe that I should have easier finance - I think rental properties need to have harder terms. Unrelated, sometimes I think the reason we get in such a mess is because people ostensibly like me become ministers, and with sod all depth of understanding proceed to fiddle with things for a few years and then move on...
  - tomelders 12y ago
    So the trains that Virgin run aren't actually owned by Virgin. As it happens, they have to lease the actual engines and carriages from ROSCOs (Rolling stock operating companies). This is the way Thatcher set it up and is one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated by her government. It turns out it's more expensive to lease a train from any of the ROSCO's than it would be to buy one. But the train operators aren't allowed to buy them. They're basically an oligopoly. Every time the government looks at them, they conclude that they're uncompetitive and in need to regulating. However, as with most things related to government and huge sums of private cash, the regulation never happens. The ROSCO's are unregulated and free to charge what they want. The train operators are forced to use them. This is one of the main reasons that train fares are so expensive. They are also the reason that our rail networks capacity can't be increased. They basically hold the rail network to ransom. They should be dissolved and their rolling stock should be seized since they basically stole it from the tax payer in the first place.

by Ntrails 12y ago

tomelders 12y ago

I'm a big believer in renationalisation of the railways for this very reason. When you look into commuting from outside London, the price of a season ticket scuppers your plans.

Ntrails 12y ago
I looked at commuting from the midlands. £9,000 a year. It's actually a joke. In all seriousness though - very low prices on public transport should incentivise people out of cars. Weekend/day trips around the UK away become significantly more attractive. And above all it moves some of the money out of London. The obvious downside is higher passenger numbers, more capacity required, and no money to fund it. It'd take someone with far more domain specific knowledge to appreciate the complexities - for now it's my go to "one policy to change the country" when asked :)

lmm 12y ago

> The first is to take the pricing system used on London buses (£1.40 per trip, wherever you're going), and apply it nationally (probably a £1) to re-nationalised railways. This would require huge subsidies, though I believe it to be worthwhile. I'd like to see counter arguments though. The railway network doesn't have the capacity for the number of people who would use it at those prices. The reason a Virgin ticket from London to Birmingham costs 40 quid and has to be booked months in advance isn't just because beardy Branson likes money, it's also because there are a lot of people who want to travel quickly between London and Birmingham. So unless you want Soviet Union style decade-long waiting lists for season tickets, you'd have to build dozens of new mainlines. Look at how much fuss, public enquiries and so on there have been around HS2 - and that's a single line, being built to relieve what everyone knows is the busiest line in the UK. In China they just build the high-speed lines and citizens know better than to complain, but you'd never get away with that here. And if you were somehow able to make it work, you might make London more attractive to live in, not less. For young people who like to go out in the evening, nothing compares to living in London - the trains are pretty good for commuting to your job, but less so for coming back from a night out (for solid engineering reasons that are hard to overcome, the railway needs a bit of "downtime" once a day or certainly once a week). So you might end up with people who work in e.g. Guildford preferring to live in London and commute out. > Secondly I'd probably look at large increases in stamp duty on non-primary homes, and changes to make renting a property less attractive through lending rules/regulation and taxation. The ability to finance rented properties at 90% leverage requires too little capital, and lending rules are too generous to landlords compared to tenants. If rental properties required 50% equity by landlords (as a plucked from the air example) you'd see a rather fewer leveraged to the hilt property "moguls" and less competition. London contains the world's finest exploiters of financial regulations; you're going to struggle to make assets un-leverable when there are willing buyers and sellers on each side. Most likely you'd end up with a layer of either legal avoidance or outright corruption, with e.g. poor tenants forced to become the "owner of record" of the house they live in, under a contract where the financial benefits still accrue to the rentier. What would help, I think, is to tax income from increased property values exactly like any other income. It's not going to be a popular policy with voters (temporarily embarrassed millionaires), and there would be costs to assessing property values fairly, but it would eliminate a lot of market distortion if you had to pay the same taxes on your housing investments as you do on your stocks or ordinary income. Eliminating tax breaks for charitable foundations would also eliminate a huge class of exploits, but again good luck getting that one past the voters.

Ntrails 12y ago
The reason a Virgin ticket from London to Birmingham costs 40 quid and has to be booked months in advance isn't just because beardy Branson likes money, it's also because there are a lot of people who want to travel quickly between London and Birmingham. (I did giggle btw) They can charge more on lines which are popular, using cost as a form of rationing. That's completely contrary to "public" transport as I see it. I agree, there aren't enough trains. There isn't the capacity. And I can be certain that of the extra expense of the line Branson is only getting a cut (because he paid more for the right to operate that route). I can't speak to increasing capacity because I know so little about the technicalities. I certainly don't imagine it's easy. I note at least one comment invoked the double decker carriages (which we don't do) as an example - but God knows what that would look like to implement. I can totally understand someone not wanting Guildford though, and support any policy that helps them. London contains the world's finest exploiters of financial regulations I agree, but disagree that this is an argument for anything - I was merely stating a concept not anything that could be used as a basis for law. The obvious solution is to use business debt to cover the excess lever, thereby avoiding the problem. The fact is that as a first time buyer I cannot get a mortgage with monthly payments at 70% of my current rent. Yet if I rented it out for that rental income the maths changes and I can. There is a fundamental flaw somewhere and I don't believe that I should have easier finance - I think rental properties need to have harder terms. Unrelated, sometimes I think the reason we get in such a mess is because people ostensibly like me become ministers, and with sod all depth of understanding proceed to fiddle with things for a few years and then move on...
- tomelders 12y ago
  So the trains that Virgin run aren't actually owned by Virgin. As it happens, they have to lease the actual engines and carriages from ROSCOs (Rolling stock operating companies). This is the way Thatcher set it up and is one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated by her government. It turns out it's more expensive to lease a train from any of the ROSCO's than it would be to buy one. But the train operators aren't allowed to buy them. They're basically an oligopoly. Every time the government looks at them, they conclude that they're uncompetitive and in need to regulating. However, as with most things related to government and huge sums of private cash, the regulation never happens. The ROSCO's are unregulated and free to charge what they want. The train operators are forced to use them. This is one of the main reasons that train fares are so expensive. They are also the reason that our rail networks capacity can't be increased. They basically hold the rail network to ransom. They should be dissolved and their rolling stock should be seized since they basically stole it from the tax payer in the first place.