Signs of the credit crunch and how borro.com could
help those in need

Jennifer Hill, 7 December 2008

Read the original article at The Sunday Times

Even hip-hoppers get caught in the crunch

A Miami mansion formerly owned by hip-hop star and producer Wyclef Jean is about to be auctioned on the courthouse steps

Times are clearly tough when the homes of the rich and famous are repossessed. A Miami mansion formerly owned by hip-hop star and producer Wyclef Jean — now in the hands of a bank — is about to be auctioned on the courthouse steps.

Jean borrowed $2m (£1.35m) from the Home Equity Mortgage Corporation in 2004 to rebuild a waterfront mansion on Miami Beach’s plush Pine Tree Drive.

The street boasts some of the most desirable homes in Miami, with properties selling for about $500,000 (on the west side) to $15m (on the waterfront-facing east side).

In all, Jean’s corporation now owes the bank $2.4m, according to court documents. The property, 5801 Pine Tree Drive, remains unfinished, and is due to be sold at the Miami-Dade county courthouse this week.

Jean is not alone. Facing foreclosure on his 2,800-acre Californian Neverland Ranch, Michael Jackson struck an eleventh-hour deal to hand the deeds to Sycamore Valley Ranch Company, a joint venture between himself and Colony Capital.

Fellow US celebrities Ed McMahon (who for decades appeared as Johnny Carson’s sidekick on The Tonight Show), and former NBA star Latrell Sprewell are other casualties of the repossession crisis.

A year or two ago the how-to bookshelves were full of titles promising to make property millionaires out of all of us. Now, publishers are pumping out lifeline titles for those facing foreclosure as the Americans would have it.

Perhaps Jean could have done with a copy of The Survival Guide to Foreclosure: All the information you need to know to survive a foreclosure, restore your credit, and get back into the ranks of home ownership. Whoa.

While high-profile credit-crunch victims have yet to emerge on this side of the Atlantic, they will.

For those hanging firmly on to property ownership, though — and doing so as part of a business enterprise — there are ways to benefit from credit-crunch moves.

The pre-budget report might have faded into the background — the cut in interest rates to a level not seen since the 1950s taking centre stage last week — but accountants are briefing their clients on ways to rearrange their finances to net more tax relief.

Profits from property letting are taxed in the same way as those from a trade. So, suppose you bought a buy-to-let for £150,000 a few years ago with a £50,000 mortgage. You could double your mortgage to £100,000 to net more in tax relief.

That, come 2011, will be as high as 45% should Labour retain power and introduce its new top-tier tax for those earning £150,000 or more.

The top-up mortgage doesn’t have to be spent on the property, it could be used to repay debt or for school fees, for example.

“When a business has bank borrowings it will usually obtain tax relief for interest paid on the loan, so if you own a buy-to-let there’s nothing to stop you taking out a top-up mortgage and obtaining tax relief on the interest paid against rents,” said Ronnie Ludwig at Saffery Champness, the accountant. Nothing — other than getting the loan approved.

For the desperate there are other options. In the past two months, online pawnbroker borro.com has seen a surge in business owners, developers, and City financiers plugging credit shortfalls by securing loans of £10,000-plus against jewellery, cars, art or yachts.

It lends up to 40% of an item’s value for up to six months, charging interest of 3% to 6% a month. That works out at an annual equivalent rate of 39% to 85%.

The demand is clearly there: borro.com has doubled its loan book every month since it launched in August. If only Jean had logged on.