Property as investment: Still a good idea?

[trendie]

How many have property as one arm of your diversified investments?
Buy to Lets?
With new laws reducing mortgage payments as deductibles, is it still worth keeping a portfolio?
I must be something of a misanthrope, as I hate dealing with people directly, , so wonder if I should off-load my properties.
Also, is Saddiq Khans push for rent-control a worry for those of you in London?
(I am out in the sticks, so don't give a hoot.)

 

[Trader333]

Whilst you have a situation where the number of people requiring a place to live exceeds the ability to supply that demand (ie a basic supply and demand market) then property investment makes sense. However, I would not consider buy to let personally and would only buy outright and then let. We have a bizarre situation with regards to the buy to let market as it is the only business I can think of where you can now be taxed on a loss since being unable to offset interest costs as a legitimate business expense.

 

[J_C_Anderson]

It all depends on the meaning you use for "property".
If we talk about real estate, it requires large initial capital and sometimes lacks liquidity. As an alternative, you can invest in REIT.
If we talk about movable property, the most interesting approach would be to invest in antiques (like painting or other things), but it requires deep knowledge and understanding of the market.

 

[trendie]

It all depends on the meaning you use for "property".
If we talk about real estate, it requires large initial capital and sometimes lacks liquidity. As an alternative, you can invest in REIT.
If we talk about movable property, the most interesting approach would be to invest in antiques (like painting or other things), but it requires deep knowledge and understanding of the market.

property as in real estate, specifically. otherwise thread could go off in all random tangents.

I was looking to explore how costs of running property is becoming less likely to be written off against income, and wondering how other owners are coping with this.
increasing and complex laws; all good, to protect good tenants from bad landlords, but sadly protects bad tenants from good landlords.

 

[Lightning McQueen]

Not really sure how/if the new treatment of loan interest is effecting anything.

Just filled out my tax form and to be honest theres no difference whatsoever in the final tax calculation. you can test this out for yourselves by putting the whole interest in the interest costs box and let the system do the calculation, then redo the calculation putting the currently correct 75/25% interest split in to their respective boxes, result is the same. to be fair if the "25%" box is left blank then some auto calculation could be going on, but if thats the case why make us manually calculate the split.

Also new this year is a £1000 property allowance, i think this is only useful if you have low costs, as you cant use this allowance as well as offsetting other costs, thats how i read it anyway, anyone know more on this?

 

[trendie]

There's a Guardian news story of Lloyds bank offering 100% mortgages to first timers.
Correct me, but didn't doing this last time trigger a housing bubble? I seem to recall that Ireland got particularly screwed.

 

[Emini-mouse]

Not really sure how/if the new treatment of loan interest is effecting anything.

Just filled out my tax form and to be honest theres no difference whatsoever in the final tax calculation. you can test this out for yourselves by putting the whole interest in the interest costs box and let the system do the calculation, then redo the calculation putting the currently correct 75/25% interest split in to their respective boxes, result is the same. to be fair if the "25%" box is left blank then some auto calculation could be going on, but if thats the case why make us manually calculate the split.

Also new this year is a £1000 property allowance, i think this is only useful if you have low costs, as you cant use this allowance as well as offsetting other costs, thats how i read it anyway, anyone know more on this?

If you jointly own a rental property you can both use the £1000 property allowance. Which makes it more usefull