Savings and Investments thread

bobmunro said:g

Bugger all for me, £125 for the missus - 2x max holdings

golfaddick said:

Seems like Rachel from Accounts is taking the PB prizes to shore up the country 😃

PragueAddick said:

Anyone got an update on all those millionaires selling up? I ask because the FT, having a clear case of buyer's remorse for swallowing that rumour, now has a corker of an article which is currently the most read on the site. It is by Neal Hudson, who is " a housing market analyst and founder of the consultancy BuiltPlace". It is far too long to cut and paste and the FT hates it when subscribers do that, so I've got Claude to do an executive summary. But it's full of highly inconvenient facts and I highly recommend the full article if you can get hold of it.  

Executive Summary: London's Luxury Property Market Crisis

Bottom Line: London's high-end property market has been fundamentally broken for over a decade due to punitive taxation and poor economics, not recent non-dom rule changes. Despite prices being at decade lows, luxury homes remain economically irrational purchases.

Key Points:

Current Market Decline: Prime central London prices fell 3.7% in Q2 2025, with sales of £5m+ homes down 15% year-on-year. While blamed on wealthy non-doms fleeing new inheritance tax rules, this masks deeper structural issues.

Economic Reality Check: Using a £20m Mayfair mansion example:

• Crushing stamp duty: £2.3m for UK buyers, £3.7m for overseas buyers
• Terrible yields: Just 2.9% gross rental return vs. government bonds
• Capital destruction: Central London luxury homes down 22.4% nominally (-45% real terms) since 2014 peak
• Market dysfunction: Properties sit empty for months; the example mansion has been available to rent for a year

The Real Culprit - 2014 Stamp Duty Reform: The "killer blow" wasn't recent non-dom changes but stamp duty restructuring a decade ago. Moving from flat-rate to tiered system increased duty from 7% to 10.3% on £10m homes. Subsequent hits included additional duty on second homes (2016), Brexit uncertainty, and economic malaise.

Supply Glut Emerging: Properties for sale (£5m+) have surged 68% over three years vs. 26% for broader central London market, suggesting more downward pressure ahead.

Limited Appeal Remains: Trophy status, safe haven qualities, and cheap debt access via property-backed loans provide some attraction, but can't overcome the fundamentally broken economics.

Market Significance: Though only 0.1% of transactions, £5m+ homes represent 4.2% of transaction value and 11.3% of stamp duty revenue.

Conclusion: Even at decade-low prices with limited growth prospects and high interest rates, most buyers still consider London luxury properties overpriced. The author notes ironically that his favorite Mayfair pub was converted to a mansion in 2009 - given subsequent house price performance, "maybe they should have kept it as a pub."

The piece argues London's luxury market faces structural problems making it economically irrational regardless of political changes.

PragueAddick said:

Rob7Lee said:

PragueAddick said:

Anyone got an update on all those millionaires selling up? I ask because the FT, having a clear case of buyer's remorse for swallowing that rumour, now has a corker of an article which is currently the most read on the site. It is by Neal Hudson, who is " a housing market analyst and founder of the consultancy BuiltPlace". It is far too long to cut and paste and the FT hates it when subscribers do that, so I've got Claude to do an executive summary. But it's full of highly inconvenient facts and I highly recommend the full article if you can get hold of it.  

Executive Summary: London's Luxury Property Market Crisis

Bottom Line: London's high-end property market has been fundamentally broken for over a decade due to punitive taxation and poor economics, not recent non-dom rule changes. Despite prices being at decade lows, luxury homes remain economically irrational purchases.

Key Points:

Current Market Decline: Prime central London prices fell 3.7% in Q2 2025, with sales of £5m+ homes down 15% year-on-year. While blamed on wealthy non-doms fleeing new inheritance tax rules, this masks deeper structural issues.

Economic Reality Check: Using a £20m Mayfair mansion example:

• Crushing stamp duty: £2.3m for UK buyers, £3.7m for overseas buyers
• Terrible yields: Just 2.9% gross rental return vs. government bonds
• Capital destruction: Central London luxury homes down 22.4% nominally (-45% real terms) since 2014 peak
• Market dysfunction: Properties sit empty for months; the example mansion has been available to rent for a year

The Real Culprit - 2014 Stamp Duty Reform: The "killer blow" wasn't recent non-dom changes but stamp duty restructuring a decade ago. Moving from flat-rate to tiered system increased duty from 7% to 10.3% on £10m homes. Subsequent hits included additional duty on second homes (2016), Brexit uncertainty, and economic malaise.

Supply Glut Emerging: Properties for sale (£5m+) have surged 68% over three years vs. 26% for broader central London market, suggesting more downward pressure ahead.

Limited Appeal Remains: Trophy status, safe haven qualities, and cheap debt access via property-backed loans provide some attraction, but can't overcome the fundamentally broken economics.

Market Significance: Though only 0.1% of transactions, £5m+ homes represent 4.2% of transaction value and 11.3% of stamp duty revenue.

Conclusion: Even at decade-low prices with limited growth prospects and high interest rates, most buyers still consider London luxury properties overpriced. The author notes ironically that his favorite Mayfair pub was converted to a mansion in 2009 - given subsequent house price performance, "maybe they should have kept it as a pub."

The piece argues London's luxury market faces structural problems making it economically irrational regardless of political changes.

Whilst not selling up as such: Thousands of company directors leave UK after Labour’s tax changes

From last year’s October Budget until last month, 3,790 company directors reported leaving the UK, compared with 2,712 in the same period a year earlier, according to an analysis of Companies House filings by the Financial Times.

The analysis identified business figures whose departure from Britain was not previously known, including Mark Makepeace, founder of market index provider FTSE Russell, Bart Becht, former boss of Reckitt Benckiser, and Riccardo Silva, an investor in AC Milan and owner of Miami Football Club. Eddie Hearn, the prominent Essex boxing promoter, has also changed his residence to Monaco, along with John Reece, the finance director of Britain’s largest private company Ineos, the FT found.

Jolly good. Based on the above analysis, here's a little competition.

The following people can all  be characterised in two ways, both by words beginning with "c". Can you name the second way? 

Chris Farnell, Matt Southall, Paul Elliott, Laurence Bassini, Jacco van Seventer, Jon Hirst, Craig Freeman.

Huskaris said:

These secondary tariffs for countries like India are going to be interesting. 

It's something that is a great idea in order to up the pressure on Russia as they are targeting the places who are still buying Russian energy, but it begs the question, why hasn't it been done already?

I enjoyed the article below from the BBC. It does make me think that a lot of countries talk a good game on punishing Russia, but often they don't go all the way, and I'm not talking about weapons, I think I understand that, I'm talking about economics.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyp7lgyy4ro

Would really appreciate if that doesn't turn into a "who can say the meanest thing about Trump" competition, this thread should be above that :-)

Friend Or Defoe said:

Rob7Lee said:

PragueAddick said:

Rob7Lee said:

PragueAddick said:

Anyone got an update on all those millionaires selling up? I ask because the FT, having a clear case of buyer's remorse for swallowing that rumour, now has a corker of an article which is currently the most read on the site. It is by Neal Hudson, who is " a housing market analyst and founder of the consultancy BuiltPlace". It is far too long to cut and paste and the FT hates it when subscribers do that, so I've got Claude to do an executive summary. But it's full of highly inconvenient facts and I highly recommend the full article if you can get hold of it.  

Executive Summary: London's Luxury Property Market Crisis

Bottom Line: London's high-end property market has been fundamentally broken for over a decade due to punitive taxation and poor economics, not recent non-dom rule changes. Despite prices being at decade lows, luxury homes remain economically irrational purchases.

Key Points:

Current Market Decline: Prime central London prices fell 3.7% in Q2 2025, with sales of £5m+ homes down 15% year-on-year. While blamed on wealthy non-doms fleeing new inheritance tax rules, this masks deeper structural issues.

Economic Reality Check: Using a £20m Mayfair mansion example:

• Crushing stamp duty: £2.3m for UK buyers, £3.7m for overseas buyers
• Terrible yields: Just 2.9% gross rental return vs. government bonds
• Capital destruction: Central London luxury homes down 22.4% nominally (-45% real terms) since 2014 peak
• Market dysfunction: Properties sit empty for months; the example mansion has been available to rent for a year

The Real Culprit - 2014 Stamp Duty Reform: The "killer blow" wasn't recent non-dom changes but stamp duty restructuring a decade ago. Moving from flat-rate to tiered system increased duty from 7% to 10.3% on £10m homes. Subsequent hits included additional duty on second homes (2016), Brexit uncertainty, and economic malaise.

Supply Glut Emerging: Properties for sale (£5m+) have surged 68% over three years vs. 26% for broader central London market, suggesting more downward pressure ahead.

Limited Appeal Remains: Trophy status, safe haven qualities, and cheap debt access via property-backed loans provide some attraction, but can't overcome the fundamentally broken economics.

Market Significance: Though only 0.1% of transactions, £5m+ homes represent 4.2% of transaction value and 11.3% of stamp duty revenue.

Conclusion: Even at decade-low prices with limited growth prospects and high interest rates, most buyers still consider London luxury properties overpriced. The author notes ironically that his favorite Mayfair pub was converted to a mansion in 2009 - given subsequent house price performance, "maybe they should have kept it as a pub."

The piece argues London's luxury market faces structural problems making it economically irrational regardless of political changes.

Whilst not selling up as such: Thousands of company directors leave UK after Labour’s tax changes

From last year’s October Budget until last month, 3,790 company directors reported leaving the UK, compared with 2,712 in the same period a year earlier, according to an analysis of Companies House filings by the Financial Times.

The analysis identified business figures whose departure from Britain was not previously known, including Mark Makepeace, founder of market index provider FTSE Russell, Bart Becht, former boss of Reckitt Benckiser, and Riccardo Silva, an investor in AC Milan and owner of Miami Football Club. Eddie Hearn, the prominent Essex boxing promoter, has also changed his residence to Monaco, along with John Reece, the finance director of Britain’s largest private company Ineos, the FT found.

Jolly good. Based on the above analysis, here's a little competition.

The following people can all  be characterised in two ways, both by words beginning with "c". Can you name the second way? 

Chris Farnell, Matt Southall, Paul Elliott, Laurence Bassini, Jacco van Seventer, Jon Hirst, Craig Freeman.

That may be true, but we’re talking about money out of the country I thought not how good or bad a person they are!!

Matchroom are still based in the UK, how much money do we lose out on if Eddie Hearn changes his residence to Monaco?

Although 2.7k to 3.8k is a big jump percentage wise, it does seem like a small number in the grand scheme of things when 4.2 million people in the UK are self employed (number to drop drastically due to DieByTheSwords' Post).

Rob7Lee said:

Webby said:

After some advice from those in the know please. We own our property outright and have another house that I have run as a holiday let for the last few years, brings in an income of circa £30k per annum but after mortgage payments, council tax, utilities, staff costs etc we receive circa £15k a year. We are going to sell it next year and after paying the mortgage off and keeping a lump back of say 50k we will have about 400k to invest to hopefully provide an income so that we can stop working. We have 10k income from another rental so ideally need to achieve 15k to 20k annualy from the 400k invested which we can live on, but ideally do not want to eat into the £400k until we start to draw state pension. I am 58 and the wife 53 so a while to go before state pensions. I currenty own a letting business so do not really want to be a landlord with BTL as there are a lot of pitfaslls and worries around tenants etc and even the maintainence and upkeep of the holiday let is more work than we are looking for going forwards. I have been reading this thread for some time but do not really understand ISA and bonds etc, we will both be lower rate tax payers and most of our income will be covered by our tax free income allowances. Once we have sold and have the money ready to invest we would be happy to have specialist paid for advice but trying to work out if what we want is viable.

Speak to Golfie for formal advice.

you’ll need a 5% return which should easily be achievable. But tax will eat into that so things like ISA’s will help.

Huskaris said:

These secondary tariffs for countries like India are going to be interesting. 

It's something that is a great idea in order to up the pressure on Russia as they are targeting the places who are still buying Russian energy, but it begs the question, why hasn't it been done already?

I enjoyed the article below from the BBC. It does make me think that a lot of countries talk a good game on punishing Russia, but often they don't go all the way, and I'm not talking about weapons, I think I understand that, I'm talking about economics.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cwyp7lgyy4ro

Would really appreciate if that doesn't turn into a "who can say the meanest thing about Trump" competition, this thread should be above that :-)

Webby said:

After some advice from those in the know please. We own our property outright and have another house that I have run as a holiday let for the last few years, brings in an income of circa £30k per annum but after mortgage payments, council tax, utilities, staff costs etc we receive circa £15k a year. We are going to sell it next year and after paying the mortgage off and keeping a lump back of say 50k we will have about 400k to invest to hopefully provide an income so that we can stop working. We have 10k income from another rental so ideally need to achieve 15k to 20k annualy from the 400k invested which we can live on, but ideally do not want to eat into the £400k until we start to draw state pension. I am 58 and the wife 53 so a while to go before state pensions. I currenty own a letting business so do not really want to be a landlord with BTL as there are a lot of pitfaslls and worries around tenants etc and even the maintainence and upkeep of the holiday let is more work than we are looking for going forwards. I have been reading this thread for some time but do not really understand ISA and bonds etc, we will both be lower rate tax payers and most of our income will be covered by our tax free income allowances. Once we have sold and have the money ready to invest we would be happy to have specialist paid for advice but trying to work out if what we want is viable.