News

Only 2% of Landlords plan to sell

The latest Royal institute of Chartered Surveyors’ (RICS) Residential Lettings Q1 Survey revealed that only 4.6% of landlords want to sell their properties when their tenants’ leases expire.

RICS suspected at the time that the sharp drop in the percentage of landlords looking to sell property was related to the changes in the capital gains tax regime that were planned for the start of the new financial year. The new arrangements have now been implemented with a single rate of capital gains tax of 18% replacing the previous structure which resulted in property sales by landlords incurring tax rates of somewhere between 24-40%.

In addition, RICS recently carried out a survey of its members to assess whether landlords are now seeking to take advantage of the more favourable tax treatment. However the results showed that they are not looking to do so, with only 2% of landlords currently planning to sell properties at the expiry of tenant leases.