A group of wealthy landlord property investors are refusing to take George Osborne’s tax changes lying down. Instead they have taken legal advice and are plotting to launch a legal challenge against proposed tax changes.

According to the Financial Times, the governor of the Bank of England is very concerned about the buy to let housing sector and is watching it closely. He is hinting that the bank may soon introduce further restrictions on buy to let borrowing:

The Bank of England has expressed concern about the buy to let lending sector as landlords take on more debt to buy increasingly expensive properties. The bank is worried that the inflated buy to let mortgage sector could cause far-reaching instability if another financial crisis hits.

Leading buy to let lender, Kent Reliance, has seen mortgage applications from landlord limited companies triple in September, compared to the same period last year. This is as a result of landlords scrambling to beat biting tax cuts unveiled by the Chancellor in his Summer Budget.

The Residential Landlords Association is warning that the Chancellor’s stamp duty hike is almost certainly going to have a negative impact on the private rental sector.

Local authorities have been implementing landlord licensing schemes for several years now. One of the reasons given by many local authorities for starting a licensing scheme is to collect information about landlords and their properties, with the intention of creating a landlord register.

The Chancellor may well have backed down on his plan to remove tax credits for working families, but what many people didn’t see coming was an increase in stamp duty for landlords and owners of second properties.

The full report from the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has finally been published following consultation with all parts of the private rental sector, various professional associations and government bodies.

Subletting occurs when a tenant A allows tenant B to let their property, but doesn’t bother telling the landlord, so he or she thinks tenant A is still living there whereas in reality they are living somewhere else. It is a common problem in areas of high demand.

Despite the fact that the government and various tenant pressure groups have been claiming for quite some time that renters crave the security of long-term tenancy agreements, tenants themselves apparently think quite the opposite.

According to new research conducted by property firm, Savills, UK landlords have make more than £180 billion in capital gains since 2009. This is a huge figure, but with buy to let property ownership rising from just 4% in 2000 to 16% in the second quarter of this year, landlords are certainly benefitting from an […]

Three students who were chased by a landlord demanding payment of rent after their housemate tragically died in the property have won their court case. The three were sharing a student house owned by Student Lettings Agency run by Werner Toogood when their close friend, Rob Chavda, was found dead in his bed following a […]

A recent survey carried out by spareroom.co.uk claims that tenants living in shared rental accommodation are more at risk due to a lack of working smoke alarms. Despite the fact that all landlords are now required to have working smoke alarms and CO detectors installed in rental properties, many are unaware of the recent regulatory […]

A demolition team was called in by Ealing Council after a landlady refused to comply with an enforcement notice served last summer. The demolition was carried out at the end of September. The landlady will be billed for the full cost, and if she continues to ignore the matter and not settle the bill, the […]