No one knows what the ‘new normal’ will look like in the property sector

Over the past 12 months, a range of words and phrases have come out of obscurity to inform our everyday vocabulary: lockdowns, social distancing, herd immunity, vaccine passport, “can you come off mute please”? One of the most prominent is ‘new normal’. The loose term that nods towards the fact that even after the threat […]

UK housing market ‘on the boil’ as prices rise

UK house prices rose by 7.1% compared with a year ago, the Nationwide has said, prompting one analyst to suggest the market is “on the boil”. The building society said the average property price had risen by £15,916 in the last year, to reach £238,831.   Click on this link to read the full article. […]

23% more landlords move to Ltd company status as tax increases bite

More and more landlords are turning to limited company status to avoid the increasingly punitive taxes levied as the government’s Section 24 tax changes kick in. So says property investment firm Thirlmere Deacon whose research among official statistics shows 41,700 buy-to-let incorporations in 2020, an increase of 23% on 2019, taking the total number of […]

A different way to invest in property: The rise of the Landlord-Developer

You have a spare £50k and you like the idea of using it to make a profit through property. Once upon a time, buy-to-let would be the obvious strategy to pursue. But these days, not so much. Back in 2016, George Osborne identified landlords as a soft target, and over the next four years, landlords’ […]

HMRC hands out £1.3m in late filing penalties for CGT

HMRC has issued late filing penalties totalling £1,311,300 since the introduction of the new 30-day tax window for capital gains payment (CGT) in April 2020 In the last six months of 2020, HMRC sent out 13,113 late filing penalties to landlords and second homeowners who missed the new 30-day tax window with 3,764 late filing […]

Landlord’s shock after flat is stripped of items by evicted tenant

It’s a story that’s seldom told – how some tenants steal items from landlords’ properties when a tenancy ends. Now the Oxford Mail newspaper has a story of a landlord who is in shock after a tenant he describes as “noisy” and “not nice” emptied his entire property after being evicted.   Click on this […]

Will it be the Roaring Twenties 2.0 for property investors?

As we start to go through the various phases to exit lockdown across many areas of the globe, there have been many theories about what effect twelve months of the pandemic will have on the decade to follow. Analysts have been making comparisons between the impact of COVID-19 and the Spanish flu epidemic that ended […]

Cladding Culprits Are Getting £450m From The Taxpayer. They Haven’t Repaid A Penny

The government has failed to recover a penny of the £450m it is giving landlords to fix unsafe cladding – despite promising to get tough with those responsible for installing the highly dangerous material. Last year, in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire that killed 72 people, ministers began “naming and shaming” those who […]

Is your home earning more than you are?

For some, this could well be true. Newly released data has revealed that that house prices in 92 areas of Britain have climbed by more than the average net annual salary in the last year – an unusual trend that is stretching far beyond the south. Research by estate agent comparison site, GetAgent.co.uk, analysed the […]

Agents must still help landlords and tenants during Covid – ARLA

The Association of Residential Letting Agents says agents should continue to help landlords and tenants during the Coronavirus crisis. Although the vaccine roll out continues apace, a statement from Mark Hayward, Propertymark’s chief policy advisor, cautions: “It’s great to see that the rental market is continuing to boom as demand for rental properties rises. Of […]