Speaking about market trends during a podcast in association with Mortgage Solutions, Neil Cadwallader, field business development manager (BDM) at Family Building Society, said: “Accountants have had a massive bearing on the buy-to-let market, whereas because of tax changes for buy to lets held in a personal nature, everybody’s basically jumping ship to the limited company side purely because of the tax advantages.”
He said if he had a penny for every time someone told him their accountant advised them to move to a limited company structure, “then I’d probably be quite rich”.
Cadwallader also said older portfolio landlords were putting properties in their children’s names and “getting them into the property game as such, and doing that with gifted equity and gifted deposits”.
Stuart Heavens, BDM at Family Building Society, mentioned that landlords were “diversifying their portfolio[s]”, looking at houses in multiple occupation (HMOs), multi-unit blocks (MUBs) and semi-commercial properties.
He said although there were still yields to be made in the residential sector, the tax changes, rising rates and “squeeze on cash flow” meant landlords were “branching out their portfolio and diversifying their streams of income instead of putting all their eggs in one residential-sized basket”.
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Heavens said brokers should take the opportunity to “upskill themselves”, either by attending industry events or conducting their own continuing professional development (CPD) to learn about new areas of the BTL market.
He also said they could use specialist packagers to boost their income and services.
“With the evolution of the buy-to-let market, there comes great opportunities for brokers,” Heavens added.
Watch the full episode [9:18] hosted by Shekina Tuahene, commercial editor and deputy editor of Mortgage Solutions, with guests Neil Cadwallader, field BDM at Family Building Society, and Stuart Heavens, BDM at Family Building Society.
This is the second in a three-part series; look out for the last episode this Friday.
Watch the first episode here: Family BS podcast: ‘Buy-to-let market is in a lot better health than generally perceived’
