The landscape has been rocky for property investors for the last three years: no sooner did rental income tax relief taper away than the property market tripped over the Brexit vote, only to pick itself up to the unprecedented instability of a global pandemic.
However, these tenacious landlords, and portfolio landlords particularly, have persevered to maintain a strong private rental market that now shows signs of becoming the saving grace of a nation increasingly dependent on the resource.
Research data from BVA BDRC shows that even prior to the stamp duty announcement in July for England, Scotland and a version for Northern Ireland – landlords reported a growing confidence in their own lettings business, potential portfolio profitability and resulting growth plans.
The latest quarterly BVA BDRC landlord survey from Q3 of 2020 shows the trend to continue.
- 30% of landlords have good/very good confidence in their own letting business – up from just 19% in Q1.
- 86% of landlords are making a profit, and the more properties a landlord has the more likely it is this will be the case.
- 28% plan to remortgage, particularly portfolio landlords of whom 34% expect to be active.
- 7% of landlords intend to purchase as a result of the stamp duty holiday available to them, this increases to 13% for those landlords who own between 11 and 19 properties.
Naturally, another factor going in their favour is the evolution of lenders’ processes over the last three years, giving a wider range of landlords access to mortgage funding in formats which are increasingly accessible from specialist lenders like Foundation, who specifically support portfolio landlords in their underwriting methods, such as (in our case at Foundation) not asking for business plans, or asset or liability statements, not limiting portfolio sizes and offering their full range of buy-to-let products to portfolio and individual landlords alike.
Why not call us today to find out how we can help your portfolio landlords?
