A new wave of investors for Buy-to-let.
For a long time now Brits have been infatuated with the buy to let property as an investment for their future, the idea of buying a property and getting somebody else to cover the mortgage by paying you rent every month is simply irresistible. Buy to let has not only been instrumental in supporting the overall property market especially during the downturns, but also in fuelling the runaway UK house price growth of the last 20 years, this in turn has flattened young people’s hopes of getting on the property ladder and forced them into rented accomodation.
A group of people who have been able to benefit from this demand for rented accomodation are retirees with a decent sized savings pot that was earning very little on deposit in bank or building society, they have gone for buy to let which offered them a return of 7% to 8% annual return on their investment, most were very happy to be in bricks and mortar as an investement. Come April the same and new retirees will see changes to the pension rules, infact they will no longer have to buy an annuity, they will take control of their own pension pot,the radical reforms will allow the over-55s to draw cash from their pension from 6 April, and spend it on whatever they like.
This will probably see a tsunami of pension cash flowing into the UK housing market, one in three people heading for retirement are now considering purchasing a buy-to-let property according to a recent survey by Platinum Property Partners. this could amount to a further 80,000 new investors a year as per Property solicitors NeglectAssist, this would be on top of the already 1.63 million existing buy-to-let investors, whose numbers rose 8% last year.