Decision: Sell flat & invest or keep flat as investment

steampowered

Have you considered higher rate stamp duty?

When you come to buy a home with your partner, that will be a second property.

There is an annual CGT allowance of £12,300, so you are unlikely to be paying capital gains tax on shares. If you did end up paying it, you could avoid it by selling shares across two different tax years.

bowlhead99

Se99paj said:

bowlhead99 said:

Se99paj said, I’m also not sure where I stand on CGT. As this is my only property, I don’t contribute to my partners mortgage in anyway and we’re not married, am I exempt from all CGT? 

No, you're not exempt. 

People don't need to pay CGT on their 'principal private residence' and if they live in multiple places they can say which one is their main one. A married couple is assumed to have only one PPR between them but as you're not married that would not apply to you.

However, as you have let your flat out on a tenancy where the tenants use it for themselves, to the exclusion of you, you can't pretend it was your principal residence while the tenancy was running. Clearly, you were living with your girlfriend or elsewhere for that portion of your overall period of ownership.

Thanks for the advice, is there anything that you can reference that would back this up? It would make complete sense to me that I should pay CGT whilst I was letting the flat - Just haven't been able to reference a clear example.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/private-residence-relief-hs283-self-assessment-helpsheet/hs283-private-residence-relief-2020
and more detailed version of the rules
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/cgmanual/index.htm

The first link is a helpsheet for people doing 2019/20 tax returns and the links have yet to be updated for the 2020/21 changes. The key differences from the Finance Act (which you could google separately) are that the ability to use private residence relief for the last 18 months of ownership regardless of status will drop to to 9 months; and lettings relief will not be available to you as it's only available to people who were still living in the property and letting part of it out, whereas you had tenants.

Albermarle

I think this is the biggest benefit with funds, I can invest in 100's of funds across the globe, that target a range of industries with varying risks that I can pick. 

To 'target' industries with 'various risks' is not so easy and needs a lot of research and work and probably the end result would be very similar/worse than just buying one simple low cost global multi asset fund that would do the work for you .

Or you could have this as the biggest holding and experiment around the sides with your own ideas/forecasts/predictions.

A so called 'core and satellite ' approach.