Local properties acquired by offshore companies

[Tim Lund]

OVER the last year Private Eye has revealed the extent of ownership of British land by offshore companies, generally for tax avoidance and often to conceal dubious wealth. Now the Eye has created an easily searchable online map of these properties, revealing for the first time the British property interests of companies based in tax havens. Using Land Registry data released under Freedom of Information laws, and then linking more than 100,000 land title register entries to specific addresses, the Eye has tracked all leasehold and freehold interests acquired by offshore companies between 2005 and 2014.

Here are what they have round here



and here is the link

If anyone else knows more, you can email them on offshore@private-eye.co.uk

NB - I might previously have posted this in the thread Transparency, but that is now only accessible to logged in users. If further posts on this thread stray from the local and factual, I hope Admin can consign them to the Pub, without affecting this OP.

I might also add that I have no problem with overseas ownership of properties per se - it's just the lack of transparency which for me is a problem.

[Sydenham Syd]

OVER the last year Private Eye has revealed the extent of ownership of British land by offshore companies, generally for tax avoidance and often to conceal dubious wealth. Now the Eye has created an easily searchable online map of these properties, revealing for the first time the British property interests of companies based in tax havens. Using Land Registry data released under Freedom of Information laws, and then linking more than 100,000 land title register entries to specific addresses, the Eye has tracked all leasehold and freehold interests acquired by offshore companies between 2005 and 2014.

Here are what they have round here



and here is the link

If anyone else knows more, you can email them on offshore@private-eye.co.uk



NB - I might previously have posted this in the thread Transparency, but that is now only accessible to logged in users. If further posts on this thread stray from the local and factual, I hope Admin can consign them to the Pub, without affecting this OP.

I might also add that I have no problem with overseas ownership of properties per se - it's just the lack of transparency which for me is a problem.

Massively interesting. This was the site that you kindly dug up some info about on a previous thread I started - this has planning already doesn't it? I thought it was owned by a chap who lives in Chelsea, so I assume it is a shell company owned by an overseas investor?

This is the site with the graffiti and blue hoardings right?

[Tim Lund]

I didn't know about the guy living in Chelsea, although I have spoken to him, and he sounds very English. Could be Chelsea - I don't go there that often, and I don't follow it on Channel 4 either.

There is a local developer who I have actually met - and I believes lives somewhere like Telegraph Hill - who has owned some other properties not on this map, via a British Virgin Islands registered company.

Just edited to the thread title to 'overseas', and forget my dislike of scare quotes.

Would that Private Eye were more careful about whipping up xenophobia

And just edited again to offshore companies, with no need for scare quotes. And apologies to Private Eye, who did not use the language of overseas investors, but offshore companies, which are clearly quite different things.

[Sydenham Syd]

Just looked back at this thread and the company was based in Seagrave Rd - Fulham area - apols, not Chelsea

https://sydenham.org.uk/forum/viewtopic ... 634#p99276

[Tim Lund]

That was the previous owner.

[leenewham]

When you look at it across London it's worrying.

Nothing to do with xenophobia in case anyone tries to spin it that way, but look at the dots and where they have the heaviest groupings. In the most expensive areas there are loads. In areas where land is less expensive, the areas are far darker.

What does this tell us?

Investment isn't about building homes, it's about investment and returns. It's about top end, higher margin which pushes prices up. The rush to buy property is driven more by investment than by need. As such house building is working for the wrong market. We should be building homes for people, not pension funds.

If we don't build homes at the bottom end of the market, if we tend to build homes as investments to be traded, prices wont go down.

If we don't make buying and selling easier, prices wont go down.

If we carry on building the over priced crap we are currently building without any infrastructure, London will be destroyed by thoughtless, ugly profiteering with no actual benefit to Londoners.

[Tim Lund]

When you look at it across London it's worrying.

Nothing to do with xenophobia in case anyone tries to spin it that way, but look at the dots and where they have the heaviest groupings. In the most expensive areas there are loads. In areas where land is less expensive, the areas are far darker.

What does this tell us?

Investment isn't about building homes, it's about investment and returns. It's about top end, higher margin which pushes prices up. The rush to buy property is driven more by investment than by need. As such house building is working for the wrong market. We should be building homes for people, not pension funds.

If we don't build homes at the bottom end of the market, if we tend to build homes as investments to be traded, prices wont go down.

If we don't make buying and selling easier, prices wont go down.

If we carry on building the over priced crap we are currently building without any infrastructure, London will be destroyed by thoughtless, ugly profiteering with no actual benefit to Londoners.

I'm asking Admin to move this to the Pub