With banks being extremely strict about who they deem to be worthy of a loan these days, landlords are being encouraged to do something for themselves by applying themselves to improving their credit rating.

Clearly this is one of the first things the banks look at when they are deciding who to loan money to. The better yours is the more chance you have of getting your hands on a buy to let mortgage and at a favorable rate.

Now is the ideal time to try to get your credit history to paint a more favorable picture of you as a good ‘risk’. With interest rates so low, landlords who have stable tenants are in an excellent position to pay a little more than the minimum on any outstanding mortgages in their portfolio. This will help to improve your credit rating.

It is true to say that one of the biggest reasons for a landlord falling behind in payments and, therefore, damaging their credit history is tenants who default on their rent. It is very hard for a landlord to meet their commitments if a tenant is failing to meet the rent. For this reason it is especially important at this time that landlords are cautious and vet their potential tenants carefully.

Your credit rating has never been as important as it is in the current climate.

More people have come out in support of the idea that if the government is serious about helping get things going again in the property market then they must make changes to stamp duty.

The British Property Federation believes this is especially important to the large scale investors, perhaps the most necessary investors of all.

Their reasoning for this thinking is fairly sound. A landlord who only purchases one property at a time usually ends up paying 1 percent in stamp duty. A large scale investor  who purchases say four properties in a block often ends up paying 4 percent which is a big difference when you are talking about sums of money that are likely to be high.

In what seems a fairly obvious solution the British Property Federation suggests the best idea may be to charge the investor separately for each property that is purchased at a lower rate rather than charging them 4 percent across the board.

Given that the government is on record as saying it wants to be proactive in helping us all recover from this recession this would seem a reasonable reform. It would be likely to help prevent a further decline in buy to let investments and let’s face it things are tough enough in some sections of this business as it is.