Comments on BTL regulation
According to Stefatheno Silvestrin, senior economist at the the Nationwide Building Society who was speaking at the the Financial Services Expo (FSE) London on Wednesday, the curbing of tax relief on interest-only buy-to-let mortgages for landlords by George Osborne is unlikely to have a major impact on activity in the sector.
Silvestrin said the decision to cut the tax relief that higher-rate taxpayers could claim down to a basic rate level over the next four years may have a dampening effect, he was not so sure though it would have a major effect and that the buy-to-let market would continue along its current path with modest growth.
His view was that further regulation of the sector was looking likely, saying that the financial regulators could act further in the buy-to-let sector if they believed that lending levels were getting too high and the sector was securing too great a proportion of total lending.