To my amazement, our place was recently valued at £3.5 million. It’s a tribute to all the hard work, expense and loving restoration work that has gone into it over three decades. It also puts us firmly in the sights of Rachel Reeves and the “mansion tax”, strongly rumoured to be introduced in her 26 November Budget, which will impose an annual 1 per cent levy on any property worth over £2 million.
Outsiders spying a substantial house like ours probably assume we are rolling and think “Rich bastards! They deserve everything they get!” In fact, as entrepreneurs and business owners, we have shouldered huge risks, experiencing much loss and failure along with the successes, en route to our current difficult situation. And if our recent valuation proves accurate, and the Chancellor introduces a property tax, we will almost certainly have to sell up.
My husband and I upped sticks in the early 1990s and moved with our three children, all under 6, from Birmingham to rural South Worcestershire. We were desperate to realise our dream of bringing them up in the country. Finding a dilapidated seven-bedroom farmhouse flanked by a handful of tumbledown outhouses and stables plus an uninhabitable labourer’s cottage, set in 15 acres of sheep paddocks for £390,000 was an exciting moment but also very daunting. How would we pay the mortgage if either of us lost our job?
My husband, who is 12 years my senior, was running his own small engineering business, which he had worked round the clock to build up over 25 years, while I was working in a publicity consultancy. Although we were both earning well at the time – around £100,000 each in a good year – there were no guarantees that this would continue and the failure rate among small businesses is notoriously high.
We took the plunge and over the years spent hundreds of thousands of pounds improving the whole property, which the estate agent had optimistically referred to as a “doer-upper”, though perhaps a more realistic term would have been “money-pit”. Using local contractors, we renovated the unusable swimming pool, restored the derelict tennis court, bought an extra 30 acres of neighbouring paddocks and set up a small-scale horse livery business. A neighbouring farmer paid £1,500 each year to graze sheep on part of the land.
Sadly, my husband’s engineering firm folded around 20 years ago when two bigger clients’ businesses failed, but after finding new jobs for all but one of his 30 former employees, he threw himself into making our place “wash its face” more profitably. He converted an outhouse into a second rental property and transformed the labourer’s cottage into a neat, well-appointed bungalow, where my late parents lived for several years once they were too frail to cope on their own.
The rents from our (mainly delightful) tenants on rolling shorthold tenancies have kept us afloat, while I have diversified into tutoring and writing website copy. We even hire out our home as an occasional film location to make up some of the shortfall as the income from my publicity work gradually dries up.
It was a huge shock when, six years ago, my husband, once so bright and energetic, was diagnosed with vascular dementia. Now, aged 83, he is confused, incontinent and confined to a wheelchair, dependent on me to feed and wash him, with carers coming several times a day. However, he remains adamant that after all the joys and sorrows that we’ve experienced here, from bereavements and illness to numerous parties, charity concerts, village gatherings and two memorable weddings, this is the only place he ever wants to live.
At 72, I just about get by, running the property with help from a part-time handyman and our children, who come home often to their “happy place”, bringing gangs of friends.
Neither cottage is currently rented as both tenants moved on recently. And finding fresh incumbents looks an increasingly problematic option, given all the extra regulations inflicted on private landlords by the new Renters’ Rights Bill, which received Royal Assent this week. Its scrapping of no-fault evictions will make it nigh on impossible to eject even a bad tenant. There will also be swingeing penalties for any landlord who makes a minor, unwitting mistake amid the swathes of newly-introduced red tape.
The system, heavily skewed in favour of tenants, often enables them to escape scot-free, however cynical or abusive their behaviour. Our farming neighbours discovered this to their cost, after racking up tens of thousands in legal bills to evict a family of criminal fraudsters who sat tight for six months, owing £35,000 in unpaid rents and utilities, until the bailiffs arrived. Our neighbours will be lucky to see a penny of those debts repaid.
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Now, as part of the legion of “land rich, cash poor” pensioners, owning one of the 160,000 houses in the UK valued at over £2 million, we are liable to the proposed mansion tax. It will mean I must find an extra £15,000 a year when money is already very tight – most of my earnings go on £50,000 a year care fees.
We are being hit in spite of the fact that we have paid literally millions in taxes over the years, employed dozens of people and injected tens of thousands into the local economy via building and farming projects, accommodation fees, contractors’ wages and the like. We fear we will have no choice but to sell up – that’s if we can find a buyer.
How ironic if Reeves’s very desperation to “soak the rich” further weakens the already depressed market for multi-million pound properties, down a shocking 8.1 per cent on the year, according to the estate agent Savills. Given the dwindling pool of buyers with deep enough pockets to afford these places and the combined deterrent effect of the Mansion Tax and the stonking stamp duty charges on those forced to downsize, it will probably bring in only a fraction of the estimated £2 billion it’s expected to raise.
With luck, as the high-end market plummets, the valuation of our place might even dip below the magic £2 million mark – and Reeves can go whistle for her Mansion Tax at someone else’s “stately pile”.
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