Video Transcription:
Hey guys, I saw a Guardian report and the Guardian report said that buy-to-let people are pulling out in their droves and the tax changes have really bitten now and people are moving away from, they’re not buying or not letting their properties anymore. And I sort of thought about it, and I thought actually that’s wrong, totally wrong. I disagree with it 100% and I think a lot of landlords are selling up. That’s true. Yeah. But certainly, not everyone is going out in droves. What a lot of investors are doing and by far the majority of our investors are still committed to buy-to-let, but what they are doing is rather than holding it in their own personal name, they’re holding in a company name. And actually, if you look at the amount, I think it was 150,000, 157,000 companies we created to hold property.
I saw a stat somewhere, and I don’t know over what time and all that but you know, just don’t hold me to that. But the bottom line is what a lot of investors are doing, they aren’t pulling out, they’re just simply changing the structure so that they adhere to the structure that allows them to deduct the tax as we used to. So in some ways, what has it really achieved? Probably not a lot, you know? And it’d be interesting to get the real stats, not the BS that some journalists are letting you believe because people aren’t exiting in droves. We haven’t seen that. We haven’t seen prices dropping dramatically on investment properties. Now, there are some good proposals I think to get the first time buyers back because they did drop 10%.
But, I think still what it comes down to is the government, the majority of the government are after the fact that they want big corporations to run the bigger housing programs. And what the landlords are going to be doing is this stuff that’s more outside the centre because the big corporations aren’t going and what the stuff that’s outside in the suburbs. But that’s also where people want to live in family homes, which is fine. You know, there are investors for those, I mean HMOs, look at what HMS has done for the rent-a-room market, Airbnb, same effects for the serviced apartments.
There are lots of … What was a buy-to-let being one solution now is actually a number of solutions that is the way things are going? It’s a lot more creative a market than it was back 15, 20 years ago. That’s not a problem. But I think to sit there and say and make it sound like, oh, people are exiting in droves, that’s just not the case. And I think you’ve got to call a spade a spade and you’ve got to actually see what’s really going on in the marketplace.
So, if you’re selling up if you’re leaving because you think everybody’s doing it, and so you don’t want to be the last man standing, well, actually you’re probably going to be the first fool out. You’ve got to really look at what it is and actually, yes, it’s been a terrible time for property investors because of Brexit and that sort of stuff. But actually now Brexit is sort of done and there’s some certainty and actually it’s not so much Brexit that was the issue. I mean, it made no mistake, but it was more the political uncertainty that Theresa May created by trying to have an election where she destroyed the labour party, which backfired dramatically.
Yeah. Anyway, let’s not go into a history lesson. Bottom line is all is good. Yeah. You may just be buying in a company name rather than a personal name. And if you currently exist, you may be converting that over to a company name rather than leaving it in a personal name. And there are various ways that people are achieving that right now.
Live with passion. See you later. Bye.
March 5