Originally posted by d000hg
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It is going to be harder to get into with the stamp duty increases though. One of the main consequences is that BTL runs the risk of being only available to the very wealthy. Using an example of a £400,000 purchase price under the old rules you would have paid £10,000. Now you will have to stump up £22,000 which is not a small sum.
The flip side is that landlords have recently enjoyed historically low rates - Coventry Building Society currently for example have a 1.99% 2 year fixed rate.
The 15 property rule is interesting - maybe the government feel they can regulate the market better if it is run by corporates. I wouldn't hold my breath though. The difficulty that tenants will face is that if they rent through a company they will lose direct access to their landlord (I'm talking about the landlords that own a small portfolio of one or two properties and manage them themselves). Lets say for example your boiler blows up and you rent off a large company. It will be the same as when I phone say EE - your on hold for 30 minutes after getting passed from pillar to post with no one wanting to take any ownership. Of course there are rogue landlords within BTL. However companies will have to be even more profit driven and one way of doing this will be to link rents to annual inflation pushing prices up further.
My own opinion throughout the years is that BTL should always be a long term investment and not something you do simply for a couple of years.
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