Landlords fear being “taxed to the hilt” by Labour, rush to sell before November

A new Labour government, Section 24 tax, and the proposed Renters Rights Bill have landlords understandably worried. Coupled with the threat of 45% Capital Gains Tax, it looks like before too long, landlords are going to be “taxed to the hilt.” It makes sense, therefore, that so many are looking to sell again, fast.

About two years ago, Landlords were in a frenzy wanting to sell before interest rates spiked further. Just when they thought they could relax, they’ve been hit with this. “Landlords are thinking: I’m going to sell even more properties now as quickly as possible to hedge my bets, myself included. Labour is also talking about rent caps – which means being a landlord just isn’t as profitable, and even if rent caps don’t come in, they’re considering giving power for tenants to challenge rents. Whilst a fairer environment for tenants is completely justified, the knock-on effect is that property investment is no longer the profitable machine it was 10 to 15 years ago. It seems the golden era is over. It’s time to cash in and get out. But when’s the best time to sell?

The race is on to sell buy-to-let properties before the Labour governments’ tax and tenant policies take full effect and before the market becomes saturated and prices suffer.

But if now is the best time to sell, landlords have another issue on their hands, and that’s how.

Tenants make selling landlord properties extremely challenging, not least because landlords already face a 20% hit on price trying to sell a property with tenants in situ.

The good news is there are two alternatives to evicting tenants that makes the process much faster and help landlords achieve higher sale prices. One option is to help tenants leave of their own accord (thereby allowing owners to sell for higher prices) by helping them solve the problems they face finding new accommodation. Another option is to agree rent increases with those tenants who can afford it (carrot and stick approach is needed here) thereby enabling owners to sell some properties with tenants in situ to other investors for higher prices.

Landlord Sales Agency has been practicing these alternative methods for a long time because not only are they effective, but they are also efficient. The practice is also recommended by successive governments and tenant groups.

Of course, there is a cost involved to the seller to financially compensate a tenant to leave voluntarily but most landlords will sell their properties for a far higher price because they can provide vacant possession and this higher price more than offsets this cost many folds.

In our experience, more than 50% of tenants will agree to a rent increase in order to stay in their property and that can be sufficient to sell with tenants in situ.

Worst case scenario we have to evict the tenant to sell but mostly all tenants cooperate with the process to get rehoused with our help. We still get a buyer in place who will pay a deposit and wait up to 12 months to complete with vacant possession when the tenant is eventually evicted or leaves. The deposit paid by the buyer is a minimum £5000 and buyers also pay a higher price (for the benefit of vacant possession) so the seller has the security of that deposit and higher selling price to proceed with the eviction. Our sales progression and legal team have a 100% track record with this eviction-sale process so landlords can have total confidence in it.

In addition to using tenant-friendly options to sell property, Landlord Sales Agency also use non-refundable deposits to secure agreed sales so that 95% of our agreed sales complete.

In addition, we have a huge database of over 30,000 buyers who are willing to pay deposits and pay good prices up to 90-95% for properties. What’s more, we also have more than a 1,000 cash-buyers in our database who will exchange immediately buy your property in just 28 days if you have any properties, you are willing to sell at 75% market value.

So contact us today, and let us get your properties on the market, fast, before the end of the year.

There’s a window to make money and get out before things potentially become extremely tough, so now’s the time to grasp the opportunity.

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