Landlords 'confident in the market if tax rules stay the same'
News Category: Industry News
Published: 24-Sep-2007
More than half of all the UK's buy-to-let investors plan to increase the size of their portfolio in the coming months, a new report has suggested.
The survey, published by Arla, found that 90 per cent of landlords would not look to sell any of their properties if house prices in the UK should start to slide.
However, the report did find that if the government changed tax rules to landlords, many would abandon the sector.
In fact, 42 per cent of landlords said that they would be uncertain about their future in the private rental industry if mortgage interest ceased to be an allowable business expense. Another 28 per cent said that they would probably sell some of their portfolio and ten per cent would pull out of buy-to-let altogether.
"Private buy-to-let investors have refinanced the private rented sector and restored social acceptability to renting," explained Ian Potter, Arla operations manager.
"The loss of any private individual investors would seriously affect the rental market and severely curtail choice in housing."
Recently, a report from the AA suggested that many older people in the UK would like to continue to rent property so as to avoid the difficulties associated with purchasing a property.
