Property

Buying, letting, refurbishing and developing British property. Stamp duty, yields, licensing, EPCs and the chain that collapses two weeks before exchange.

Stamp duty, and the three different taxes it actually is. Three countries, three different taxes, three different sets of bands. And the surcharge on a second property is the part that changes the arithmetic most.
Gross yield is a sales figure. Net yield is the truth. Gross yield is the number in the advert. Net yield is what arrives in your account after the agent, the insurer, the boiler and the six weeks with nobody in it.
HMO licensing, room sizes and the fines. Five tenants, two households, one unlicensed house. The civil penalty runs to five figures and the tenants can reclaim up to a year of rent on top.
EPC ratings, and the wall your portfolio is heading for. An E-rated terrace is lettable today and probably will not be for long. The work takes months to plan and weeks to do, and everyone will try to do it in the same year.
Why every refurbishment overruns. You budgeted £40,000. Twelve weeks in you have spent £52,000 and the kitchen is still in boxes. Here is where the money actually goes, and why the contingency never survives.
Possession, notice and what replaced Section 21. No-fault eviction is going. What replaces it is a set of named grounds, a notice period and a county court list, and the court list is the part that will decide your business plan.
An agreement in principle is not a mortgage. An agreement in principle takes ten minutes and commits nobody. The offer comes after a valuation, and the valuation is where the deal you agreed becomes the deal you can afford.
How a chain breaks. Four transactions, one completion date, and any one of them can end it. Where the exposure sits in a property chain, and why chain-free is worth real money at the negotiating table.
Planning permission, permitted development and the appeal. Permitted development covers more than people think and less than they hope. What needs permission, how the eight weeks really works, and why an appeal is a year of your life.
The student let calendar, and why it is unforgiving. You get one chance a year to fill a student house. Miss the letting season and the loss is not a few weeks of rent, it is twelve months of it.
Serviced accommodation versus a standard tenancy. Three times the gross rent, and a cost base that can eat all of it. What serviced accommodation actually costs to run, and what changed when the holiday letting tax regime ended.
Section 24, and why landlords went limited. Section 24 taxes you on rent you never keep, because the interest you pay is no longer a cost for tax purposes. Here is the arithmetic, and what incorporation really costs.
Britain is not one property market. The same £200,000 buys a one-bedroom flat in one town and a tenanted three-bedroom house in another. Yield and capital growth pull in opposite directions, and you have to pick.
The residual valuation, and the land price it implies. You do not decide what land is worth. The finished value does, minus everything it takes to get there, minus the profit you need. Work backwards and the land price tells you itself.
Selective licensing, and the council that changes the rules. A council designates one ward, and every rental property in it needs a licence with conditions attached. The fee is not the problem. The conditions and the penalties are.
Twenty properties is a job, not an investment. Three properties is a hobby. Twenty is a job with a compliance calendar, a maintenance backlog and a phone that rings on Christmas Eve. Here is where the transition actually happens.
Leasehold, freehold and the ground under both. A lease is a long tenancy with a mortgage on it. What you actually own, what the ground under it costs you, and the year count that decides whether it sells.
Service charges, and taking the management back. A service charge demand is not a bill you simply pay. Reasonableness is a legal test, consultation is a legal duty, and the tribunal costs less than people assume.

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