It pays to stay abreast of the news if you are a landlord. You never quite know if or when something maybe afoot that is going to impinge on your buy to let business.
So, here are a few of the latest snippets to help keep you in the picture.
Landlords reminded about Making Tax Digital
Are you prepared for the possibility of having to file an income tax return every quarter, together with a final declaration of your earnings each year?
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has issued a reminder that the requirements are on the cards sometime in the future, reported Accountancy Daily on the 11th of February. If you want to prepare for the inevitable introduction of the new arrangements, you can sign up for the current trial – which has been running for two years now – if you own let property in the UK and your sole earnings are from that buy to let business.
The proposals are all part of the government’s Making Tax Digital (MTD) initiative which envisages landlords and others switching to digital record-keeping and the automatic, electronic completion of the necessary tax information. It means that you will not be making manual tax returns four times a year and the annual declaration – which replaces yearly self-assessments – will also be fed by the electronic data.
Landlords warned to be on the look-out for cannabis farms
A drug bust in an up-market six-bedroom house in North London has left the landlord with a huge bill for clearing up the mess and damage caused after the erstwhile tenants were arrested.
The website Junk Hunters described how the clean-up operation took four men 10 hours to complete as they carted away five skip-loads of rubbish – and that was before the landlord had even started on the extensive repairs required to the property.
Receiving regular payments of rent for the first six months of the tenancy, the landlord believed all was going well. The nightmare started when the Metropolitan Police telephoned to say that the cannabis farm in his let property had been raided and two men arrested.
The dire consequences for landlords who unwittingly let their properties to tenants who subsequently turn the property into an illegal cannabis farm are described in our Guide to landlords and cannabis farms, published last October.
Renewed interest in the residential property market
You have probably been waiting a long time to hear it, but there is finally some good news for landlords about rising confidence in the buy to let market, according to a report by Landlord Today on the 13th of February.
Surveyed at the recent National Landlord Investment Show, some 60% of attendees said they were hoping to add to their portfolios of buy to let properties over the next 12 months. 71% of them said that their preference was for investment in residential property.
Despite a recent swing in favour of buy to let investment through specially created limited liability companies, some three-quarters of those questioned at the show, said they were individual, private individuals and currently owned no property through a company.
The principal reasons for investing in buy to let property were either to save for a pension (54% of respondents) or for financial assistance to their children in the future (27%).
UK homes losing too much heat
It’s cold outside – and according to an article in Property Wire on the 21st of February, it could be almost as cold inside your home too.
Recent research has shown that the average home in the UK loses its heat much quicker than those in the rest of Europe. A home in the UK that has been heated to 20 degrees C loses an estimated 3 degrees over five hours, according to the study, while a European home heated to the same temperature loses only 1 degree over the same period.
Part of the explanation may lie in the age of the UK’s housing stock and the fact that only 2% of homes achieve the top energy rating. Improved insulation, through simple measures that can be made even in older houses, is the key to keeping the warmth where it belongs – inside your home.
