A three per cent stamp duty surcharge and a change in tax regulation are factors future landlords will have to consider.
Talk to a seasoned landlord and the chances are that they will moan about the good old days before George Osborne added higher stamp duty on second homes and withdrew higher rate tax relief on mortgage and finance interest.
Few experts are predicting a buy-to-let bonanza in 2018. “The changes in taxation and other rising costs of home ownership are not making it easy to be a landlord,” admits Kate Eales, Head of Lettings at Strutt & Parker. But where Eales does expect to see growth is in so-called build to rent (BTR) properties. This is an emerging sub-market within private residential rented stock, designed specifically for renting rather than for sale and typically owned by investors. In fact, Strutt & Parker’s analysts believe that the UK is ‘on the brink of a large-scale commercially developed, owned and operated BTR sector’.