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Fred Jones

Human Being

10228 Profile Views

About Me

Electrically qualified, able to do minor building works, decorating and high quality cleaning.
Degree qualified in biochemistry instrument techology (I know how domestic things work or why they will never work and understand building regulations).
Old enough to know a lot about people, finances and common sense.

my expertise in the industry

Landlord in several areas of the country.

Fred's Recent Activity

I doubt this very much. The prices will go up as they always do due to inflation. The actual value of a property is based on salary available to spend, market supply of property and all the rest of it. If BTL is involved the rents achievable versus the costs of good/poor tenants are another factor. 2021 isn't very far away so a 12% drop right now is hardly a problem unless you are forced to sell.

From: Fred Jones 16 June 2020 22:22 PM

This sounds very much like a good old franchise operation. That is where the new, "Agent" has to buy in, not mentioned here but no one gives all this away without a significant buy in. I once looked at a lot of these schemes and gave up on them. The only people going to make any money, mostly from me, were the operators.

From: Fred Jones 16 June 2020 22:13 PM

Ammunition and any ability at all are vastly different concepts. Labour are all attack and nothing else.

From: Fred Jones 18 November 2019 11:06 AM

This is all getting to sound like, "Free beer tomorrow night"! The only real great improvement in energy efficiency would be to make all new builds have very high efficiencies and that they are built so that that efficiency will last for a hundred years even if the building falls apart or floods. Sorry that was a silly extra but it is to make a point. Badly built buildings always have or will have problems. The ,"Low Cost", mantra is self defeating.

From: Fred Jones 18 November 2019 11:01 AM

What is wrong with the Scottish system? You sahake hands on the sale and it is legally binding. If either side fails then they pay costs.

From: Fred Jones 01 November 2019 15:07 PM

I agree about Brexit and your other points. When me and mine bought our first house we had Harold Wilson And James Callaghan to contend with. They totally wrecked domestic property trading and then caused massive inflation which they tried to control with high interest rates. For those with big mortgages it was financial death by bank charges. The banks did not even want to take your house off you because they could not sell it either. We now have JC spouting all the same nonsense and both parties thinking that cancelling section 21 is a great idea. It is a damn stupid idea but I digress. People who are planning for bad property troubles are very astute in my book. The market will collapse at the same time as interest rates go up. Unless you can stand the 'heat' for high mortgage costs and low or non existent property sales then common sense says don't buy until sense prevails again. After all, if section 21 goes you will be able to sit in a rented house and not pay any rent. Financially that sounds great. Of course it is not sustainable and the councils will go after anyone they can to collect rates. In Wilson's day rates were not payable on empty properties.

From: Fred Jones 01 November 2019 15:03 PM

This has certainly been done in the past but it will cause all sorts of problems for the seller if they are under contact to the first agent and their contract simply says you will pay us £x when the property is sold. I have walked out of estate agents when they have tried that on me. I have always agreed to a short period of exclusivity and never an open ended agreement.

From: Fred Jones 26 October 2019 15:38 PM

A common misconception is that you can have a freehold on a flat which is one or several floors above ground level. You can't. If the freeholders below you decide to demolish then you are going to need some (mythical) skyhooks to preserve your freehold. The only real thing you can do is leave the freeholds with the management company and collectively buy out the management company. Whatever you do, you will never have personal control of your flat. Get used to the idea.

From: Fred Jones 18 October 2019 10:01 AM

If anyone is occupying a house then they are polluting what was once nature's green and pleasant land. It is impossible to live in a house which has destroyed a chunk of nature and have green credentials. If you want green credentials then live in a tent a regularly move around so that nature can recover from your activities whilst resident.

From: Fred Jones 03 October 2019 16:14 PM

Basically the buying and selling of property in the UK is a total mess and now councils are setting themselves up as vigilanty sheriffs of all they command to collect unearned tax/fees/licenses the system is becoming too complicated for poor mortals. You can take poor which ever way you wish. In my dealings I have found a very good solicitor. He has his own property interest as well and that is his interest. He also knows how to get the "best" out of other solicitors. Always interview a prospective solicitor about how they get on with property work. Another good bet is to ask the estate agent involved. I know this is frowned on but do it any way even if you just get a hint as to which way to walk down the street outside to look for a solicitor.

From: Fred Jones 21 March 2019 22:56 PM

From: Fred Jones 13 March 2019 22:51 PM

The whole of the country needs a shake up, not just property rentals. The mess we are seeing in the lettings sector is symptomatic of very real problems all the way to the top in government. Sorry, I can't tell the country how to sort it out. That would be inappropriate. I would be interfering with the devine right of administrators.

From: Fred Jones 13 March 2019 22:49 PM

Just look at the last two weeks in Parliament. They are utterly berserk. Councils are not a shadow of what they once were and with an essentially defunct government councils are running around like headless chickens and creating all sorts of crazy schemes. There is no one to stop them or even guide them with a national policy.

From: Fred Jones 13 March 2019 22:35 PM

All absolutely super of course until you get either or both rogue landlord or tenant. Why does it need yet another middleman to get in the way and take a profit out of other peoples' misfortune? The ideal tenancy is one where cash gets to the landlord and the tenant looks after the property for its condition but quickly contacts the landlord for essential repairs. If you are a tenant that includes reporting water leaks! That is all there is to it. (In theory)

From: Fred Jones 01 March 2019 18:29 PM

There was an estate agent in Leicester who did exactly this fifty years ago. Me and mine bought from them. We were very thoroughly grilled to see if we were real customers before they would even start thinking about accepting us as customers! We sold using the same agent a few years later. No problems at all, no chains and all the rest of it.

From: Fred Jones 17 February 2019 09:31 AM

Might it be that the great cheap property sell off has started because there is no money left in letting? The next worry will be that few people who need these properties will be able to get mortgages to buy them.

From: Fred Jones 24 January 2019 09:59 AM

I can see tenants being well and truly fleeced unless there are so many builder managed let properties that there is some competition. Bad tenants will get a very rough ride once big companies put their mark on them. I am not the least bit sorry about that but some "nice" people will be. Minimum three year lease will trap tenants if they soon realise that a property does not suit. That is speculation of course but I have a bad experience of a builder owned freehold on a leased property. Tenants will not have an agent to mediate for them, quite the opposite.

From: Fred Jones 13 December 2018 22:08 PM

I have experienced this sort of thing several times over the years as a buyer.You point out the problem and the agent simply says no comment, you will have to ask a surveyor. If the agent agrees with you they know you will ask for a lower price or if they refuse to comment you might just be daft enough to go ahead and get trapped to the point where you have to complete and take whatever comes. Caveat emptor. It's absolutely infuriating and can be a huge time waster if a lot of travel is involved.

From: Fred Jones 11 April 2018 13:35 PM

I live in a small village near Cambridge (Cambs, CB5). The houses are here are all highly valued but guess who the owners of many of the best houses are? Our local self employed builders of course! Our trained, capable young men will not slave away for pay close to the minimum wage. They learn about property investment, keep in close touch with local agents and so on work on a much higher plane of capability. They probably/usually still work on their own building sites but they do not work for anyone except themselves. If they need specialist labour it comes from their mates who are working for themselves as electricians, plumbers and so on. It is all very incestuous but the result is that when low cost homes are built by a big company they are pretty horrible by the standards of the rest of the village. Even the buyers who have any sense soon spot this and spend their cash on well built houses which of course puts their prices up which is great for our local builders. This is where the use of cheap labour comes in. Skilled foreigners will do what they are asked to do and that can be good or bad work. Unskilled locals will do what they can. Digging trenches and putting up fences come to mind. Fixing guttering is another one. All this goes on under a cloud of endless regulation and know it all politics. I don't have any answers. We need a highly intelligent dictator to sort our mess out but a good first shot would be to tighten up on building quality. Low cost houses can not be cheaply built to get the low cost and make a big profit for an investment company. Look at those old Victorian houses which are still valued as homes. Bringing in foreign house buyers is having the same effect as the NHS using agency staff and, well, foreign staff. A very considerable amount of money is "lost" between the builder building and the occupier moving in. That "lost" money should be being used to build better low cost houses and thus reducing rents/purchase prices as well as well. We need to get investors right out of the building business and let the "doers" in the business do the work for decent money.

From: Fred Jones 08 October 2016 12:10 PM

I don't want to be off subject too much but when I started working in property I had just left the very high tech science industry. Something about being too old to think straight any more by their standards. Science and academia are riddled with procedural thought, ideas and just plain bitching. A lot of it is to do with gaining some sort of position. As you guys are finding out, the one who can make the best regulation and get them enforced with exams gets the kudos. Never mind those who do not need examining and regulating. Those people are upstarts who must be kept out of the work at all cost. They would undermine the exam and accepted opinion, 'you see'. Of course they do not mean exam. They mean the position the exam gives you. A manager I once worked for said, "Those that can do, do and those that can't teach". Instinctively I always see regulators and procedural experts as trouble. They do not fit my ethos of getting on as best you can. Even looking after property you have to have exams for this and that perhaps except for painting. I can do electric and plumbing. It is so easy compared to building electronic chemistry instruments safely. (I have an electric C&G now so that I can be regulated). I can not give any true answers to what is needed but I will back up what many have said. Use good agents both for property and letting and if you are into leasehold property flats then look for flats that have been built properly and have good block management agents in place. I can confirm that if you get any of that wrong then it will cost you. I never, ever deal with some one who I can not talk to face to face. There are details a portal can never provide. Portals are there to advertise. That is it. Ideally stop there. The skill our whole country needs at present is to get get rid of vast numbers of regulators, examiners and know it alls and give the 'doers' a chance to shine. I would say that if these people have never run a good business in the property industry, in our case, then it is they who should be examined before they are allowed to pontificate to the rest of us. How can we turn that table around? As always there are exceptions to sweeping generalisations. Greatness is spotting them and allowing them to flourish. Unfortunately spotting greatness never come into any exam syllabus that I have ever heard of.

From: Fred Jones 18 June 2016 10:57 AM

Errr... Forgive me for stating the obvious..... You do not need to put your digital adverts anywhere in particular. Google will still find them. All that is needed is for someone (an estate agent?) to put up a simple html interface on a page with a link to the estate agent (or private vendor) who provides a one liner such as, "50 properties available today in Little Snoring" and an HTML link to their own site. It would be good to allow users to search the page, again with Google local but nothing more is needed.

From: Fred Jones 08 May 2016 15:48 PM

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