The much anticipated white paper has landed and it seems clear that the government are keen to bring institutional investment to the rental market. Is this anything to worry about? Not necessarily and it should clamp down on rogue landlords, but it's definitely something to have you your radar.

A key point in the paper states that ‘Encouraging more institutional investors into housing, including for building more homes for private rent, and encouraging family- friendly tenancies.’ Rob and Rob discuss what this really means and what impact this may have on private landlords...

The report goes on to state that more needs to be done to prevent homelessness, but predictably the detail of how this will be done, appears to be lacking. It goes without saying that in a country as wealthy as ours, we should do a lot more to help this issue.

All in all the white paper seems to have been watered down and we can't pretend we're anything other than underwhelmed with it. There's nothing for us to be concerned about in there, but there's nothing radical here at all.

 

Stamp duty receipts soar as buy-to-let investors are undeterred by tax hike.

So, the Treasury collected 18% more stamp duty from the sale of residential properties in 2016 compared with 2015

“One in five of all homes bought in the last six months of the year were additional properties, and this raised £962m for the Treasury's coffers, representing 21% of the tax take during this period.  This amount was higher than forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility, which had pencilled in £660m for the 2016/17 financial year.”

So if the policy was intended to raise more tax overall, it worked.

If it was meant to deter investors to benefit FTBs, it didn’t! Read more here.

Resource of the week

Rob B came up with our resource of the week this week. It's used within the RMP team to educate on The Northern Powerhouse. There's tons of news here and if you have this area in your investment sights, this is a brilliant place to research. Check it out here. 

Continue the conversation over in the forum

What do you think to the white paper? Discuss your options here.

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