Home-Owner-Ists 1: Economic reality 4.

From City AM:

New stamp duty rules are causing landlords to sell up in droves

An unforced own-goal right from the kick-off there. The extra 3% SDLT for non-owner occupiers might deter new landlords, but existing landlords are more likely to hang on to what they already own.

Last year the government introduced new rules meaning landlords could no longer claim relief on interest payments on their mortgages…

Another own goal in the third minute. They *can* claim relief, it will just be restricted to 20% (to be phased in over the next few years).

… at the time landlords warned it would put people off putting their homes up for rent, pushing up rental prices.

One apiece there, everybody agreed it would force a few highly leveraged landlords to sell up; followed by a foul in the Homey’s box and a penalty opportunity for Economic Reality.

Economic Reality’s best striker is trotting up to the ball… the decider is, will rents go up or down? Homeys says yes, Economic Reality says no – when landlords sell up, it will be higher earning tenants who buy them, thus leaving a smaller pool of lower earning tenants, putting downward pressure on rents. This is quite the opposite of the Disappearing Homes Conundrum.

However, the figures also showed the supply of rental stock increased eight per cent in the year to March, from 169 properties per branch to 183. The figure was flat on February.

Back of the net! Landlords who aren’t selling up need to wring every penny out of all the vacants they own. An unexpected but welcome impact (the reduced tax break acts a tiny bit like Land Value Tax).

The number of tenants negotiating rent reductions also rose, with 3.6 per cent of agents saying they had witnessed tenants knocking down prices in March, compared with 2.2 per cent in February.

Some people are on the pitch. They think it’s all over…

A quarter of agents said landlords had raised rents in March, down seven percentage points from March 2016.

It is now!