The economy is fragile right now, and no aspect of it more so than the UK housing market. Productivity is back at pre crisis levels, sterling has been hammered by Brexit, the use of consumer credit has risen by 10 percent year on year, and for the first time in more than forty years disposable income has fallen for three…

Growing demand In addition, the success of portals such as LateRooms and bookings.com have highlighted the intense and growing demand for hotel rooms and, by turns, the exciting prospects that await investors looking for a solid, reliable, and less fraught type of bricks and mortar investment than buy-to-let. Compounding this is of course Brexit, which, in driving down the value…

Market distortion The FT reported the surge back in January 2016, and highlighted the risk of housing market distortion created by the aforementioned short window of opportunity. And guess what? That’s exactly what happened. The deadline created a tight bottleneck through which buy-to-let landlords fought, skewing the otherwise steady figures of economics. By fault or design, Osborne forced higher the…

Being a landlord was always pretty tough, but it’s getting tougher, and tougher. Running the gauntlet of swingeing cuts and rising taxes means profits are being stealthily eaten from both ends until they are…well…not profits any more. Sitting on assets with no effective yield because of what mortgaged landlords believe to be the cruel whims of a populist government hurts,…

Why Shifting Your Buy-To-Lets Into A Limited Company Could Be The Road To Disaster Landlords thinking of shifting personally owned property into companies to avoid imminent new tax burdens are growing in number. But many are forgetting to examine whether, in reality, this option stacks up. While taking such measures can work in the right circumstances, reshuffling the portfolio pack…

Taking time out from shopping for shoes and feathering her business empire’s bricks and mortar nest, Cherie Booth QC, aka Cherie Blair (Booth is her maiden name), took herself at the beginning of October last year down to the High Court to fight the good fight of stricken landlords across the country—and lost.It was a triple whammy for Cherie…having her…

Up to £10.3bn could be ploughed into the UK’s hospitality sector if a reduction in VAT is announced in the government’s Autumn statement next week (23 November). Research from commercial insurer NFU Mutual found two thirds of consumers would increase spending if VAT is reduced, with over half (53%) of those likely to spend more on weekend breaks in the…

Chancellor Philip Hammond must announce specific measures in the Autumn Statement on 23 November to boost the UK’s hospitality sector, a recruiter has urged. Specialist hospitality recruiter The Change Group said the measures are specifically important for businesses in London and the South East, which are at the front of the line for receiving foreign revenue from the many businesses…

Confidence levels among the UK’s hospitality and tourism businesses are at a 12 month high according to figures gathered by tourism trade association UKinbound. https://www.bighospitality.co.uk/Business/Confidence-at-12-month-high-for-UK-s-hospitality-and-tourism-businesses

The woes of buy-to-let investors continue to pile up, as Philip Hammond, the new chancellor, shows no signs of reversing the policies of George Osborne. More than this, the post Brexit government’s narrative has arguably worsened. Help to Buy looks set to get the axe by the end of the year, and now Hammond is poised to introduce yet another…