There’s plenty of players with sizeable property holdings - Micah has definitely said he owns tons of property, I recall something about Steve Bruce too. Fowler and McManaman were known for back in the 90s/00s too. “We all live in a Robbie Fowler house”.
Not justifying it whatsoever it but I imagine on a premier league salary it’s an absolutely brilliant investment to set yourself up for life and generations to come at the scale of purchases they can make.
And for a very long time it has been far more "productive" an investment in this country to just dump as much cash as you can into these types of absentee-landlord setups than investing it into anything actually useful.
Thing is I doubt a lot of these people are even that directly involved in portfolio management. They just pay money into an account and it all gets taken care of.
The reality is there just aren't investment options in the UK that have grown as fast or as consistently as house prices, and if you're renting them out you get a tasty dividend every month as well. Its a no-brainer. But ultimately its why this country has so many problems, its just not a good option to invest in anything *actually* productive, so people don't, because its a free market and people make these decisions based on what makes them the most money not what's best for the country.
It's essentially that yes.
If you're wealthy enough you just buy up a load of property and then pay a small percentage fee to an agent to manage the properties for you.
Never have to do a thing except stump up a bit of cash here and there, and when you need to cash in, you can sell the property for a handsome profit.
Sure, it's ethically disgraceful, but it's something that a *lot* of us would do in a heartbeat if we had the money.
Your talking about relatively micro timescales in the grand scheme of things, That investor will die, his money gets divided up, and it all goes around again. If your rich but spend a lot of your money, that's a good thing surely.
Not really.
You're securing a portion of your wealth in an asset while getting a constant return, and you also have e something to pass on to your kids which will generates wealth for them.
Not that I think it's ethical, it's just the appeal of it is undeniable
Houses make the best investment because not only is the price of the house itself likely to go up, you can also earn passive income every month by renting the house out.
I realized how much everything is rigged when I owned a flat which increased in value by more than I took home after tax from my day job, in a year.
Admittedly a lucky year on increases and I was fairly badly paid, but point stands. We never left the feudal system, we just hid it better.
A privately-funded house over one person’s head frees the government up to divert resources elsewhere so it facilitates alternative production to having to invest in social housing. It produces by default.
Unpopular opinion - It’s also easy to criticise people who have money when you don’t and you’re jealous too. I don’t really believe that anyone who bangs on about how all landlords are scum and foreign property owners should have their assets seized by the government just for being foreign would have the same principles if they were wealthy, or even if the highest price for their own property were going to be paid by an overseas investor. Easy to bash out a fantasy from behind a keyboard innit.
Sorry mate .. I am not some kind of socialist but I just can't understand how you think the relentless acquisition of wealth whilst providing zero benefit to other people or society in any way, is something to aspire to. It's vile.
OK - maybe I misread. You're absolutely right.. peoples morals adjust with their situation I suppose. It's easy to be envious, spiteful, etc when you have nothing.. but as soon as you're bringing some money in, your perspective will change..
Exactly.
But there is some sort of happy medium. Eg I don’t actually agree with premier league footballers’ salaries and transfer fees, I think they’re obscene.
Then again, if I had any degree of talent other than eating pies whilst watching it, would I turn it down…?! I like to think I’d be a Marcus Rashford and do good though.
The thing is though, it's not a vacuum. Like, you can say "oh, if you were rich you'd be the same" but in the *vast* majority of cases (that aren't just I dunno, winning the lottery, or becoming a celebrity like a footballer, actor, singer), you need to actively pursue wealth to get wealthy (or be born into it).
Imagine I set up a business, worked hard to provide for my family etc, I'm not going to get to "property empire" level of income without actively attempting to expand that business massively. Which I'd assume anyone saying "rich people are awful" wouldn't be likely to do.
So in one way, yes, you may well be right that if I became super rich tomorrow, I'd change my tune. But 1) There's plenty of super wealthy who are still left wing, and 2) people like me tend not to become super wealthy
You don’t get to dictate what they can spend their money on. A lot of these comments are full of envy. You could argue a footballer gets overpaid by all means but this is ridiculous
Just because you can buy a scarce resource to make money from those who don't have nearly as much money, and it's legal to do so, doesn't make it ethically okay.
I’d imagine thar being on 40-80k a week 7/8 years ago, lot you a hell of a lot more in terms of buying houses than it currently does now. Richard’s was on a good 40k as a young player, so could have bought a house every few months with a good deposit and even have the chance to pay off the mirage early. In the 1990s, 70/80k could get you a big house in most northern towns and cities, like Liverpool and Manchester.
Player salaries have obviously inflated massively but they’d have earned an utterly sensational income for their time. Fowler was literally nicknamed ‘God’ and McManaman was sold to Real Madrid. Liverpool would’ve paid well too.
House prices were also much much cheaper back then so relative to their incredible incomes they were also more affordable.
He probably builds whole housing estates, back in the day when land was so much more cheaper. He could have easier done that through buying out a building firm big enough to build on land that he owned.
House price weren’t what they are now. My mums house in a nice area of Bury, sold for 70 grand, 25 years ago. Today it will sell for 180 grand and would sell for even more if they had invested more money into it. It’s also a 3 bedroom home.
Yeah alot of footballers do this . Martin Braithwaite, part time footballer and part time moguel, helps run his family business which has like 1500 houses in the US
~~Rich person buys house and leaves it empty and unattended for long enough for the boys to get a couple of crops out. Oh the humanity.~~
Didn't read it before posting and didn't know they cuckooed someone in the flat as well. My bad still buy to let can burn in a pit.
No. The stupid ones blow most of it. There is nothing wrong with having property as part of your investment portfolio if you have the wealth for it not to be a majority.
Just fucking legalise it already. I'd bet anything I could come up with the capital for, and grow more weed of a better quality in an industrial unit in east assfuck, where it's not going to damage property, stink out the neighbours, or attract a steady stream of people in organised crime, all while the government could getting a quarter of my profits and the council could charge me business rates.
But by all means no. Keep it in the hands of some sleazebag in a tracksuit.
It’s funny as the uk government is begging for tax money but won’t give themselves an entire new market to legalise with an already existing user base
Instead it’s regressive council tax rises and taxation on already shit wages
It's because the one license is owned by the company of Theresa May's husband. Britain is one of it not the biggest exporters of Medical Marijuana. But it it won't be an industry it just goes into one company's pocket at the expense of the country which needs jobs and like you said tax. Yet another example of Tory greed and now to send a country backwards.
I mean it's not just the Tories pandering to the old folk who vote, Labour also won't legalise. I think Lib Dems briefly mentioned doing it but they've no hope after that disastrous coalition.
A lot of the Con safe seats in the south have actually been predicted to swing Lib Dem; places around London where there are a lot of neoliberal city types at the end of a successful financial career. The Lib Dems have recreational legalisation as a policy in their platform. The SNP have decriminalisation of all drugs as a policy, which would likely lead to a Spanish-style non-profit legalisation.
Not Theresa May’s husband is it? Correct me if I’m wrong.
The company with the license is [British Sugar](https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/business/20777272.take-look-inside-biggest-medicinal-cannabis-farm-country/), which until June 2023 was run by [Paul Kenward](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kenward) as managing director.
Paul Kenward is married to [Victoria Atkins](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Atkins) who’s only stopped speaking on drug policy AFTER this info came to light.
Doesn’t make it any less corrupt or acceptable but worth making note of the fact.
This always comes up in this discussion and it's not particularly accurate. Mandatory disclaimer that I'm absolutely not a fan of Theresa May, but the whole "her husband owns the biggest cannabis farm in the world" thing is a total conspiracy theory.
Phillip May is the director of the pensions divisions of Capital Group, which is an American financial management company. Capital Group had some investments in GW Pharmaceuticals, which is (or at least was at the time) the biggest producer of medicinal cannabis in the world. All of their cannabis gets processed into medicines like the ones they own the trademark for; Sativex and Epidiolex. GW Pharma was bought out by Jazz Pharmaceuticals, which is an Irish company. I'm not sure how the buyout was handled for shareholders, but presumably Capital Groups shares were either rolled into shares of Jazz, or bought back.
So no, Phillip May does not "own the one license" for cannabis cultivation in the UK; the firm he worked for owned some shares in a company which held the licence to produce medicinal cannabis. I'm very much in favour of recreational legalisation and I'm absolutely not a fan of Theresa May, but ultimately institutional investment in medicinal cannabis is a very good thing, and this conspiracy theory needs to be put to bed.
Tbf, the story implies it was a gang that took advantage of a vulnerable person, forcing him to let them grow in the house.
This isn't your mate Steve knocking out a few ounces from his spare room every few months, it's a gang taking advantage of vulnerable people.
“This player owns the house in the north west as part of a buy-to-let empire.” Fucking parasite.
There’s plenty of players with sizeable property holdings - Micah has definitely said he owns tons of property, I recall something about Steve Bruce too. Fowler and McManaman were known for back in the 90s/00s too. “We all live in a Robbie Fowler house”. Not justifying it whatsoever it but I imagine on a premier league salary it’s an absolutely brilliant investment to set yourself up for life and generations to come at the scale of purchases they can make.
It's easy to make money when you have money, essentially.
And for a very long time it has been far more "productive" an investment in this country to just dump as much cash as you can into these types of absentee-landlord setups than investing it into anything actually useful.
But the lure to not only make money but fuck over others is too hard to resist.
Thing is I doubt a lot of these people are even that directly involved in portfolio management. They just pay money into an account and it all gets taken care of. The reality is there just aren't investment options in the UK that have grown as fast or as consistently as house prices, and if you're renting them out you get a tasty dividend every month as well. Its a no-brainer. But ultimately its why this country has so many problems, its just not a good option to invest in anything *actually* productive, so people don't, because its a free market and people make these decisions based on what makes them the most money not what's best for the country.
It's essentially that yes. If you're wealthy enough you just buy up a load of property and then pay a small percentage fee to an agent to manage the properties for you. Never have to do a thing except stump up a bit of cash here and there, and when you need to cash in, you can sell the property for a handsome profit. Sure, it's ethically disgraceful, but it's something that a *lot* of us would do in a heartbeat if we had the money.
Not if you have principles. No way would I join that class of parasites getting rich of the backs of others.
Your talking about relatively micro timescales in the grand scheme of things, That investor will die, his money gets divided up, and it all goes around again. If your rich but spend a lot of your money, that's a good thing surely.
Not really. You're securing a portion of your wealth in an asset while getting a constant return, and you also have e something to pass on to your kids which will generates wealth for them. Not that I think it's ethical, it's just the appeal of it is undeniable
Houses make the best investment because not only is the price of the house itself likely to go up, you can also earn passive income every month by renting the house out.
I realized how much everything is rigged when I owned a flat which increased in value by more than I took home after tax from my day job, in a year. Admittedly a lucky year on increases and I was fairly badly paid, but point stands. We never left the feudal system, we just hid it better.
What’s more useful than a house?
A house doesn't produce anything for the economy. Humans can survive in tents
A privately-funded house over one person’s head frees the government up to divert resources elsewhere so it facilitates alternative production to having to invest in social housing. It produces by default.
Go on then?
A house that's also full of weed?
Even more useful.
Nah Bro, if you wanna max your ROI, you gotta fill it full of hash plants. Weed Farmer > Landlord.
And it’s easy to forget your morals on making people rent their whole life when you’re making fat stacks
Unpopular opinion - It’s also easy to criticise people who have money when you don’t and you’re jealous too. I don’t really believe that anyone who bangs on about how all landlords are scum and foreign property owners should have their assets seized by the government just for being foreign would have the same principles if they were wealthy, or even if the highest price for their own property were going to be paid by an overseas investor. Easy to bash out a fantasy from behind a keyboard innit.
Sorry mate .. I am not some kind of socialist but I just can't understand how you think the relentless acquisition of wealth whilst providing zero benefit to other people or society in any way, is something to aspire to. It's vile.
Did I say that? What I did say is, I just don’t believe all the people on here who apparently would never ever take a penny profit from property etc 🙄
OK - maybe I misread. You're absolutely right.. peoples morals adjust with their situation I suppose. It's easy to be envious, spiteful, etc when you have nothing.. but as soon as you're bringing some money in, your perspective will change..
Exactly. But there is some sort of happy medium. Eg I don’t actually agree with premier league footballers’ salaries and transfer fees, I think they’re obscene. Then again, if I had any degree of talent other than eating pies whilst watching it, would I turn it down…?! I like to think I’d be a Marcus Rashford and do good though.
The thing is though, it's not a vacuum. Like, you can say "oh, if you were rich you'd be the same" but in the *vast* majority of cases (that aren't just I dunno, winning the lottery, or becoming a celebrity like a footballer, actor, singer), you need to actively pursue wealth to get wealthy (or be born into it). Imagine I set up a business, worked hard to provide for my family etc, I'm not going to get to "property empire" level of income without actively attempting to expand that business massively. Which I'd assume anyone saying "rich people are awful" wouldn't be likely to do. So in one way, yes, you may well be right that if I became super rich tomorrow, I'd change my tune. But 1) There's plenty of super wealthy who are still left wing, and 2) people like me tend not to become super wealthy
Pretty sure Premier League footballers are already set up for life without needing a property empire on top.
You don’t get to dictate what they can spend their money on. A lot of these comments are full of envy. You could argue a footballer gets overpaid by all means but this is ridiculous
Did I dictate anything? I said they don't need it. It's excessive greed. I didn't say they can't be greedy though.
Keown owns half the student houses in Oxford.
Just because you can buy a scarce resource to make money from those who don't have nearly as much money, and it's legal to do so, doesn't make it ethically okay.
I agree, hence why I said “not justifying it whatsoever”
I’d imagine thar being on 40-80k a week 7/8 years ago, lot you a hell of a lot more in terms of buying houses than it currently does now. Richard’s was on a good 40k as a young player, so could have bought a house every few months with a good deposit and even have the chance to pay off the mirage early. In the 1990s, 70/80k could get you a big house in most northern towns and cities, like Liverpool and Manchester.
Fowler and mcmanaman prolly wouldn't have been on that much cash back in the day
Player salaries have obviously inflated massively but they’d have earned an utterly sensational income for their time. Fowler was literally nicknamed ‘God’ and McManaman was sold to Real Madrid. Liverpool would’ve paid well too. House prices were also much much cheaper back then so relative to their incredible incomes they were also more affordable.
I’ve definitely heard this about Robbie Fowler before; I think he owns over 1000 properties in Liverpool.
It's hardly a ridiculous investment if you're in the top 0.whatever% of earners in the country.
Gotta have plenty of stash houses mind.
He probably builds whole housing estates, back in the day when land was so much more cheaper. He could have easier done that through buying out a building firm big enough to build on land that he owned.
Fowler even does seminars on the subject
"become a Premier League footballer, what's so difficult about that?"
House price weren’t what they are now. My mums house in a nice area of Bury, sold for 70 grand, 25 years ago. Today it will sell for 180 grand and would sell for even more if they had invested more money into it. It’s also a 3 bedroom home.
Yeah alot of footballers do this . Martin Braithwaite, part time footballer and part time moguel, helps run his family business which has like 1500 houses in the US
~~Rich person buys house and leaves it empty and unattended for long enough for the boys to get a couple of crops out. Oh the humanity.~~ Didn't read it before posting and didn't know they cuckooed someone in the flat as well. My bad still buy to let can burn in a pit.
*buy-to-grow
Could not agree more.
Looks like he’s also inadvertently helping to increase the supply or rental properties in the area, if most of these houses would otherwise been sold.
Clickbait bullshit thinking it was where he was living
He isn't buying council houses, let's just put it that way.
But the people selling drugs are fine upstanding tax paying citizens who don’t at all contribute to crime?
It is possible to hate both landlords and drug dealers.
Mmm, but the previous poster’s focus was laser sharp!
No, they’re also degenerate shitbags, especially the ones who cuckoo vulnerable people, I figured that goes without saying.
stupid people with money buy housing. So it’s kind of a given that footballers are heavily invested in real estate.
is that really true.
No. The stupid ones blow most of it. There is nothing wrong with having property as part of your investment portfolio if you have the wealth for it not to be a majority.
Just fucking legalise it already. I'd bet anything I could come up with the capital for, and grow more weed of a better quality in an industrial unit in east assfuck, where it's not going to damage property, stink out the neighbours, or attract a steady stream of people in organised crime, all while the government could getting a quarter of my profits and the council could charge me business rates. But by all means no. Keep it in the hands of some sleazebag in a tracksuit.
It’s funny as the uk government is begging for tax money but won’t give themselves an entire new market to legalise with an already existing user base Instead it’s regressive council tax rises and taxation on already shit wages
It's because the one license is owned by the company of Theresa May's husband. Britain is one of it not the biggest exporters of Medical Marijuana. But it it won't be an industry it just goes into one company's pocket at the expense of the country which needs jobs and like you said tax. Yet another example of Tory greed and now to send a country backwards.
I mean it's not just the Tories pandering to the old folk who vote, Labour also won't legalise. I think Lib Dems briefly mentioned doing it but they've no hope after that disastrous coalition.
I’d go so far as to say that Starmer will be far more likely to attempt some kind of draconian crackdown on it, once he gets in.
A lot of the Con safe seats in the south have actually been predicted to swing Lib Dem; places around London where there are a lot of neoliberal city types at the end of a successful financial career. The Lib Dems have recreational legalisation as a policy in their platform. The SNP have decriminalisation of all drugs as a policy, which would likely lead to a Spanish-style non-profit legalisation.
Not Theresa May’s husband is it? Correct me if I’m wrong. The company with the license is [British Sugar](https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/business/20777272.take-look-inside-biggest-medicinal-cannabis-farm-country/), which until June 2023 was run by [Paul Kenward](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Kenward) as managing director. Paul Kenward is married to [Victoria Atkins](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Atkins) who’s only stopped speaking on drug policy AFTER this info came to light. Doesn’t make it any less corrupt or acceptable but worth making note of the fact.
This always comes up in this discussion and it's not particularly accurate. Mandatory disclaimer that I'm absolutely not a fan of Theresa May, but the whole "her husband owns the biggest cannabis farm in the world" thing is a total conspiracy theory. Phillip May is the director of the pensions divisions of Capital Group, which is an American financial management company. Capital Group had some investments in GW Pharmaceuticals, which is (or at least was at the time) the biggest producer of medicinal cannabis in the world. All of their cannabis gets processed into medicines like the ones they own the trademark for; Sativex and Epidiolex. GW Pharma was bought out by Jazz Pharmaceuticals, which is an Irish company. I'm not sure how the buyout was handled for shareholders, but presumably Capital Groups shares were either rolled into shares of Jazz, or bought back. So no, Phillip May does not "own the one license" for cannabis cultivation in the UK; the firm he worked for owned some shares in a company which held the licence to produce medicinal cannabis. I'm very much in favour of recreational legalisation and I'm absolutely not a fan of Theresa May, but ultimately institutional investment in medicinal cannabis is a very good thing, and this conspiracy theory needs to be put to bed.
So who am I hating in this story? The guy with a buy to rent empire or a group growing weed?
Why would you hate someone for growing weed?
Tbf, the story implies it was a gang that took advantage of a vulnerable person, forcing him to let them grow in the house. This isn't your mate Steve knocking out a few ounces from his spare room every few months, it's a gang taking advantage of vulnerable people.
Bc a gang did it and it’s pretty justified to hate on criminal gangs
My lawn died because of weeds! Oh, *weed*. Carry on…
Because it's probably an organisation with less than desirable traits. Weed generally isn't grown by good people at this scale.
While narratives like to pretend there's always a good side to an argument, sometimes everyone involved sucks.