The levies paid by buy to letters who sell their homes has been halved, the Mortgage Works has revealed.
Britain's landlords have benefited from wide-ranging reforms to capital gains tax, new analysis from the Mortgage Works shows.
The firm said that, since the changes were introduced in April, buy to let investors who choose to sell their properties are paying around half the tax that they were before. This is particularly welcome, as landlords have been hit hard by the ongoing house price downturn.
This is largely because many buy to let entrepreneurs take out mortgages which are worth a larger-than-usual proportion of the property in question's cost. Along with the fact that many buy to letters own multiple homes, this makes the group especially vulnerable to falling in to serious negative equity.
The Mortgage Works analysis, however, suggests that with house prices falling, many landlords had decided to stick with the properties they own despite the tax reform.
Commenting, Andy McQueen at the Mortgage Works said: "Although the buy to let market has, like all sectors, been impacted by the credit crunch, landlords have continued to buy and sell properties on a regular basis. This has resulted in buy to let forming a higher proportion of net lending than previously seen in the mortgage market."
He added: "Good buy to let investors always treat their property portfolios as a long-term investment, and…contrary to having to offload properties, many landlords are choosing to hold onto their investments until house prices begin to either stabilise or increase."
According to most recent figures from lender Nationwide, house prices in the UK have fallen by over ten percent in the past 12 months.
