Buy to let property investment is falling and there is no indication that this situation is going to improve. Property investment has dropped at an alarming rate, with one London property agent claiming landlords are being driven out of the property market because of changes to tax relief and tougher new mortgage affordability tests.
Philip Hammond’s first and last Spring budget contained very little that directly affected landlords, but millions of self-employed people will be counting the cost of a 1% increase of Class 4 National Insurance contributions. The increase will come into effect in April next year, and will be followed by a further 1% increase from 2019.
A young couple living in Hull have written to their local MP asking for help after their landlord has told them he may have to put the rent up by 78% to cover his tax losses by 2020. Not surprisingly, the couple, who have a six-week old baby, say they would not be able to […]
A new BBC program is investigating the problem of missing tenancy deposits. Around £2.4 billion is held in tenancy deposit schemes. The money is handed over to landlords and letting agents by tenants at the beginning of a tenancy and then deposited in an insurance backed, government approved scheme.
A Welsh landlord was sickened to discover his property had been trashed by tenants before they moved out. Every single room in the property was piled high with discarded rubbish, dirty dishes, and empty bottles.
It’s not always easy for self-employed people to get a mortgage. Many lenders are reluctant to lend to people without the benefit of a PAYE income, but with the number of self-employed people rising year on year, lenders are now being encouraged to take mortgage applications from self-employed people more seriously.
A new landlord register has gone live in Scotland. The online digital register can be accessed by landlords, tenants, and local authorities. It’s designed to make it easier for landlords to apply for or renew a landlord registration, tenants to search for landlords, and local authorities to maintain their sections of the register. The new […]
From April 2017, landlords will see their mortgage interest tax relief gradually whittled down to nothing. Landlords will also have to pay a higher rate of stamp duty when they sell a rental property, and any gains they do make will be subject to a higher rate of Capital Gains Tax.
A landlord in Salford, Greater Manchester, has been caught out by a vigilant off-duty housing officer. The landlord had illegally constructed two wooden huts adjacent to a semi-detached property. Each was no more than 10 square meters, yet two families with young children were being charged £80 a week to live there. The properties were […]
The Radio 1 Newsbeat program has gathered figures through Freedom of Information requests and discovered that half of all councils have not used new powers given to them to make revenge evictions illegal.
Theresa May is widely expected to shift the focus away from affordable home ownership to affordable renting in the latest Housing White Paper, which is due to be published this week.
The Association of Independent Inventory Clerks (AIIC) is reminding landlords to be vigilant when dealing with contractors. It says there are many contractors who take advantage of inexperienced landlords, either by overcharging them for work, or not completing the work to a good standard.
Tenants groups are in an uproar after a shady clause in Santander buy to let mortgages has come to light. The lender, who first entered the rental market in 2011, has a clause buried deep in its mortgage contracts that states landlords must raise their rents as high “as can be reasonably achieved”.
Rental returns in London have shot up in recent years. In central London, it’s now £700 per week to rent a one-bed flat, which is well beyond what most young people can afford. Further out, it is cheaper, but even £320 per week in Golders Green is unaffordable for young couple in minimum wage jobs. […]
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