Owning two houses

webwonder

Would like some thoughts if possible from anyone regarding the future of the housing market.
I own my house outright and i am toying with the idea of purchasing a second property for investment.
I have a gut feeling that in the very near future, local authorities(Government) will target all those with second homes by either heavy taxation, crippling council tax or some other form of penalty.
Why because there is not enough housing at the moment and all those with more than one home are making it impossible for youngsters etc to get on the housing market, by doing this the government can either get a whopping great income from it or release houses back into the market causing possibly a market crash.
What do you think??

dougk_2

If you purcahse it to rent and let out then I don't think you will find the government are likely to introduce new taxes for that.... if it just sits empty maybe (and it seems silly to do that when you could be getting an income from it) ....
So if you are to BTL then as an investment it may be the right thing - down to personal opnion though!

Natelle_2

Purchasing property for investment over the long term is a sound decision in my opinion. If you go the BTL route any increase or changes in council tax will be the responsibilty of the tenants assuming AST letting as opposed to holiday lets.

The main thing to take into consideration is your return on investment, as at the moment, generally the rental received to property purchase cost on current purchases is not good.

We will not be purchasing any more properties at this time, unless a real bargain is found, until we are comfortable that we can see the beginnings of the change in the ratio of rental to property value. Check out the property section on https://www.timesonline.co.uk as there are some interesting articles on BTL.

webwonder

Some great advice so far, thankyou.