New House Price Index

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A new combined House Price Index (HPI) has been launched by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) – The monthly report shows average house prices, a House Price Index (HPI) for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. This replaces the previous House Price Indices produced separately by ONS and Land Registry. The index is a […]

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What to Do when the Tax Hikes Bite

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Times are tough for landlords right now. The demand for rental property is high, but the government seems determined to drive smaller investors out of the market by introducing tax hikes. As of 2017, landlords can no longer claim mortgage interest tax relief and anyone buying a second property has to pay 3% Stamp Duty […]

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RLA launches tax and finance survey

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The RLA has launched its quarterly survey on the state of the PRS – focusing on the areas of tax and finance. The short survey will take around 10 minutes to complete and includes questions on issues including the Government’s recent tax changes. The findings will help us provide an up-to-date understanding of the key […]
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Tenants face rent bombshell

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Rent hikes are inevitable unless MPs move to halt the Government’s unfair tax-grab targeting private landlords.
Government plans to tax landlords on their income rather than after allowances – part of the loss of mortgage interest relief – has brought a warning from the Residential Landlord’s Association that inevitable rent increases could make tenants the victims of the government’s tax changes.
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Landlords' finances are at their healthiest in nearly 10 years

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A recent study by LSL Property Services found that landlords’ finances are at their healthiest in nearly 10 years. Surprisingly, given recent changes, the figures have shown that buy-to-let mortgage arrears have dropped dramatically since the last quarter of 2015 and are at their lowest level since the back end of 2007. In the survey […]

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Brexit vote stalls UK’s biggest buy-to-let property sale

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The economic turmoil following the shock Brexit vote is hampering one of the UK’s biggest buy-to-let landlords in his attempt to sell 900 rented homes. Fergus Wilson, a private buy-to-let landlord who has been mired in controversy for years, has had his attempts to sell his entire portfolio of around 900 residential properties to foreign […]

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RLA tax demands submitted to Government

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RLA evidence on Stamp Duty, Mortgage Interest Relief and Capital Gains Tax has been officially submitted to Government.
The association’s submission to the Finance Bill committee has called for new build properties to be exempted from the new Stamp Duty levy. It is also calling for Mortgage Interest Relief to apply only to new borrowing and for Capital Gains Tax to be reduced to 20% where a landlord is selling a property to a sitting tenant.
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Call of the week – deposit protection and evictions

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The Landlord Advice Team assists with all sorts of advice for landlords but the bulk of our queries fall into two categories; deposit protection and evictions.
For evictions, most of the time these are relatively simple to resolve as the fixed term is ending or coming to end so we advise a section 21 notice. However sometimes the tenant has only recently moved in but has already become a nightmare for the landlord.
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An end to “7 day evictions”

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There has been an increasing trend to transfer county court evictions – once a possession order has been obtained at county court level – to the high court for a much faster eviction process, using High Court Enforcement Officers (HCEOs). However, according to eviction specialists Landlord Action, recent changes to the process of accelerated possession […]

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Smokescreen?

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With 3 institutions (so far) suspending dealings in their commercial property funds, the downside of investing in such funds has emerged. The past few years have been very good for such investors (and fund managers), but now that share prices of quoted property companies are on the slide it might make more sense to invest […]

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View Full Article: Smokescreen?