Buy to let rents are surging to record highs as a shortage of properties and mortgage restrictions puts a brake on home sales. Average rents are now £698 per month, after straight months of rises that have pushed them up 3.1% in a year, according to the LSL Property Services Rent Index.

Wealthy families with complicated inheritance tax (IHT) avoidance schemes are the likely targets of tax ‘hit squads’. Property investors with portfolios with values exceeding the IHT single/married thresholds of £325,000 and £625,000 are expected to face higher levels of investigation from HM Revenue and Customs.

Experienced landlords are still expanding their buy to let portfolios and accounted for nearly 10% of all mortgage broker business in the three months ending September 30. Soaring numbers of enquiries from tenants and a lack of properties to rent are driving demand that is giving investors’ confidence to buy more homes.

Buy to let property investors pay too much tax because they do not know how to claim property business expenses. The sad fact is many accountants and tax advisers are little or no help because they do not have a clue what the taxman will allow as they are not property-orientated practitioners.

Many of Britain’s leading university cities are running out of accommodation for students, according to a report by a leading property consultant. Demand far outstrips supply in many cities, says CB Richard Ellis. The report cites students are clamouring to study at popular universities and colleges – like the Russell Group Universities, in London, Edinburgh […]

As the deadlines for filing rental accounts fast approach, here’s a quick guide to how the taxman expects property investors to keep financial records. Keeping records for a rental business means:

By Mike Woodfine, Co-founder of The Money Centre. Interest margins are extortionate – you need an unsecured loan to pay lenders arrangement fees – loan to values are just down right depressing. It really does look like lenders are cashing in on everybody’s misfortune and I bet you are thinking now is not the best […]

By Mark Alexander. I closed my first Sale and Rent Back, “SARB”, deal in 1990. It wasn’t for me personally though and it wasn’t a property deal either. I had just set up a commercial finance brokerage. At that time we worked from my dining room. One of my first clients was a Norfolk based […]

House sellers need to do their sums before accepting an offer on a property investment to make sure the figures add up to pay any tax and settle the mortgage. Property investors must know the break-even figure to set the asking price and to negotiate with a prospective buyer who makes an offer.

House price surveys are nonsense – and do not offer anything other than an indication of the value of a non-existent ‘average’ home. Deciding which survey to trust is easy – none of them. Depending on your loyalty, according to the Halifax and economists Academetrics, the average house price for September floats somewhere between £162,096 […]

Click on the link below to view examples of sales now being completed in the Orlando area for the long term rental market. These are not holiday homes but could be! Values have crashed to 50% below what you would have paid 4 years ago. Florida property examples.

The best laid Tory plans to boost inheritance tax (IHT) thresholds to £1 million after the election were shelved as a result of pressure from the Lib Dems when forming the coalition government. That means IHT limits are stuck at £325,000 for the life of this Parliament – probably until 2014.

The latest house price surveys confirm what everyone already knows – house prices are stuck in a rut and mortgage finance is drying up. The latest house price figures released by the Communities and Local Government Department show prices were still 8.3% up for August 2010 compared with August the year before.

Landlords can smooth out disagreements with tenants by offering them a free guide that explains the rights of both sides on issues that provoke upsets. The guide gives step-by-step answers to some of the most common problems – like what happens to a deposit, deciding who is responsible for paying for damage and repairs and […]

It was 1992, we were at the tail of the property crash of the late 80’s and early 90’s. I was still cutting my teeth in the market of providing commercial finance broking facilities to property investors. The phrase buy to let would not be invented for another four years and the internet was in its infancy. […]

Buy to let mortgage rates are steadily falling while the number of lenders is increasing. BM Solutions is the latest lender to cut buy to let mortgage rates – by between 0.31% and 0.45% on a range of loans. The intermediary-only lender has trimmed rates to bring products in line with those offered by other […]

Property investors are witnessing a shift in the housing market that will affect people’s attitudes to buying and renting homes for generations to come. The truth is already out there – it just takes some thinking to join the dots. Housing minister Grant Shapps has told the nation that Britain cannot afford another boom-and-bust house […]

Perhaps one of the Worlds most spectacular property market crashes of recent years has been in the areas surrounding Disneyworld in Orlando, Florida. However, has the hype that drove properties to ridiculously high values reversed to the point where this market is now trading at values massively below where they should be? What opportunities does […]

Britain’s largest private residential landlord is celebrating that the firm’s portfolio of 13,000 properties is outperforming the market. The £1.6 billion portfolio is owned by Northeast based Grainger Properties. Grainger made a decision to invest in low value homes that needed refurbishment, mostly in London and the South East, discounting the view that new build […]

Ministers may consider including residential investment property in self-invested pension schemes (SIPPS) that would lead to a major pension industry shake-up for buy to let landlords. Representatives of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) have met with HM Treasury to discuss the change.

Many property owners are confused over whether they should declare the money they earn from letting. Here’s a list of some of the most common misconceptions about making a tax return: The tax rules only apply to buy to lets, so I don’t have to declare any rent I earn from other property