Whoever gets in build some flaming houses!

[hugebrain]

Having never done a BTL, that doesn't work in my head. If the rent doesn't cover the mortgage then who pays it? In my mind, servicing the mortgage is a running cost, on top of maintenance and letting agent fees (if you use one).

Imagine if you do it contractor-style and just buy the house outright. Then it’s obvious that if the rent is higher than the running costs you are making money.

The mortgage payments are mostly to make up for the value of money going down because of the governments insane money-printing. But since they are not printing loads of houses (they should be) the house goes up in price while the real value of what you owe on the mortgage plummets - that’s why BTL works so well.

i think they are fairly tax-neutral because the massive sums they hand out to landlords via housing benefit more or less equals the amount of income tax they get back from them.