Putting your money into a residential property in the UK is seen as a good move by those with an eye on the long term gain. It may not be the rock and roll of investment that it once was but there are many who consider that a blessing.

Many are pointing to low interest rates couples with high rental demand as factors that should influence landlords to expand their portfolio or Britons with money to enter into the sector for the first time. The other options such as putting money into stocks or storing it in saving accounts have their own unique problems. Stocks are seen as unstable and saving accounts bear little return.

So property comes to the fore. Of course that is if you actually have money to invest. Despite the freeing up of the mortgage loan market over the last few months things are still a bit tight and those looking to borrow to invest may have a hard time getting something that suits them.

But those who are cashed up are in a strong position and many can see the sense in property. It may not be rock and roll but it is solid and over time your money will grow. 

Sometimes a change is as good as a holiday. In this case I am talking about a change of housing minister. Grant Shapps announced yesterday that the proposals for huge regulation of landlords and letting agencies are to be totally scrapped.  This will come as relief to a lot of industry experts who were expressing grave concerns about over regulation.

Other people will, of course, be concerned that the findings and recommendations of the Rugg review are to be so totally ignored. Mr Shapps take on the proposals that were tabled in response to the review, however, is that they were burdensome. This is a position that is largely in line with what the industry has been saying all along.

Mr Shapps said: “With the vast majority of England’s three million tenants happy with the service they receive, I am satisfied that the current system strikes the right balance between the rights and responsibilities of tenants and landlords.”

There is some sense it that. The decision though will leave the industry in the UK completely unregulated as it has always been. It will be interesting to see how long that situation will be allowed to continue.

Despite the specter of the dreaded capital gains tax rise hanging over us there is good news in that UK house prices seem to be holding stable for now. The banks are showing slightly conflicting statistics but mainly they agree that things are fairly steady.

The Halifax points out that dips in April and February raised some doubts about the strength of a recovery but things have even out since then. Nationwide figures, however, showed a one percent increase in prices in April and this put the annual rate of increase into double figures for the first time in three years.

Chief Executive Graham Bell said “Unless there is a significant spike in interest rates, which we are not expecting, a major dip in prices is unlikely to occur over the next year,”

That is at least good news though many would be looking for something a little stronger such as a predicted increase, even a slight one. I guess the silver lining is the capital gains tax will not bite if there is no gain to tax. People will just be more likely to be patient and sit and wait for prices to begin rising.

It does not come as a big shock to anyone to find that landlords are suffering through a terrible period of rental arrears at the moment. With unemployment on the rise and people having real financial difficulties rental arrears have more than doubled over the past 12 months.

As I think I have said before, landlords in the UK have a real image problem. I would like to use an example to illustrate. Say there was a huge car company that ceased paying its employers their wages. Where do you think all the sympathy would be directed? Towards the poor people being robbed of their income I would hazard a guess. And yet when a landlord’s income, on which they rely, is suddenly stopped the sympathy is usually directed at the person who has stopped paying.

I am not saying I have no understanding for the tenants who are good payers who have something go wrong in their lives I am just making the point that landlords do it tough when their living is stopped too. The reason I choose to make this point now is because I think a lot of the things that are happening to landlords can be traced back to this image problem.

Things such as a huge hike in CGT is seen by the public as mainly affecting professional property investors and why should they care about them. The politicians have a free pass to do as they please as public perception is that landlords are a group of rich fat cats.

If only it were true.

After having failed miserably in my attempt to remain neutral on the issue of CGT in yesterday’s blog covering a story that was pro the rise, I think I am on safer ground today. I want to talk about an article that has sentiments much closer to my own heart.

In the Scotsman late last week political commentator Alex Orr wrote a strong condemnation of plans to hike CGT up to frightening levels. He pulled no punches as he branded the move by the coalition incompetent. His reasoning was fairly straight forward. The hike will strangle the life out of the budding UK economic recovery. Rather than resulting in money pouring into the nation’s coffers to be paid off the deficit, the opposite is likely to be true. The move will slow the trickle of money to the government even further as everyone shuts up shop and battens down the hatches. Investment will all but grind to a halt.

He further goes on to say that the government should not feel compelled to make its own mistakes when it can study the result of this kind of move by looking at what happened in the USA and Australia when they tried this trick. A drastic drop in revenue for anyone who is curious. I am all for learning from the mistakes of others, it is far less painful.

I, not surprisingly agree wholeheartedly with Mr Orr. I hazard that most professional landlords do. 

Most experienced landlords are well aware of the statement made in the headline of my blog. Sometimes, however, it is easy to forget that especially in more difficult times. It is worth restating it so that we can all strengthen our resolve.

This week it was Mike Goddard, CEO of Belvoir, one of the UK’s biggest specialist lettings agencies, who chimed in with a timely reminder.

His statement was closely linked to yesterday’s topic the hot rumours of huge rises in capital gains tax. Mr Goddard preaches caution and patience as the sensible reaction the talk of the CGT hikes. In part this is what he had to say

“At present I don’t think we need to view the situation with the rental market as all doom and gloom, particularly for those investors who are in this business for the long haul. I strongly advise potential investors to always seek the advice of a specialist lettings agent who is able to provide realistic and unbiased advice about rental yields.”

This seems like sage advice and I believe that most landlords will have been thinking in these terms anyway. At the risk of stating the obvious capital gains tax only applies if you sell.

A report this week has indicated that house prices will be on the up an up for the whole of this year.

The indices published by nationwide show that property prices rose by a full one percent last month. The reasons are simple ones of supply and demand. Properties are in scarce supply and high demand in most parts of the country. Sending the price steadily higher. Nationwide predicted a stabilizing of prices through the coming months but also that movement even minor should all be upward.  Meanwhile, the Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) has also claimed that prices are set to grow a further five per cent over the course of the year.

For sure this means that those expanding their property portfolio will have to have deeper pockets to make a purchase but there is also a very bright side.

All of us landlords like to see the overall value of our investment increasing. We understand that we are in this for the long haul but in the end we love to see our money growing. Most landlords will be thrilled with Nationwide’s prediction.

In contradiction to what many experts have been saying there was an article on a popular property site this week that suggested that those who had predicted a tenant boom were being proven wrong.

This article took the attitude that the predictions pf plentiful supply of people wanting to rent had already proven false. It said that what was happening instead was that people were staying at home with parents much longer than we had ever seen before. This is in an effort to avoid having to make purchase in difficult times. The article goes even further and states that also very common is the situation where people who were already renting return home as the cost becomes prohibitive.

I am certainly not going to argue that none of this is happening. Clearly there is an element in today’s society. Many of us have long ago accepted that we will have our children on our hands much longer than we had anticipated. However, I think these young or youngish people who are unattached without families, in the main, are the tip of the housing iceberg.

I think this call is far too premature. I am still thinking that a tenant boom is on the cards if not a housing crisis.

Void periods are dreaded by all landlords. It is part of the nature of the business that occasionally you are going to suffer them but if they drag on and get out of hand they have the potential to seriously damage your financial position. It is with a great sense of relief that landlords greeted the news this week that figures show that average void periods are slowly improving in the UK.

There is no call yet to get too excited as void periods are still higher than we would like but are improving. The numbers for the national landlord’s association are encouraging. In March 2010 around 52% of landlords had experienced voids in the previous 12 month period, down from 55% in the last three months of 2009. There was also a fall in the average duration of voids from 19 days to 17 days.This is all good stuff and we can only hope that the trends continue. All signs seem to indicate that it will with many still claiming strongly that housing is going to become a scarce commodity in the near future. Of course none of us want to see a crisis but enough people to fill our properties would be great. 

 According to a recent survey, 70% of UK landlords report seeing an increase in property prices in their area recently. This sounds like good news and in one way it certainly is. The property price increases will go a long way towards reversing the capital loses a lot of landlords experienced in the recent crash. There is also a less favorable side to this bit of news, however.

A lot of landlords who were in a strong financial position had been slowly and steadily increasing the amount of properties in their portfolio, something that is bound to be a financial boon for them in the future. The rise in the market is going to put the brakes on this activity.

One thing is for sure landlords have proven to not be behind the door in predicting the changing face of the property market with the same survey group reporting last month that only 28% of landlords expected to add another property to their portfolio in the next 12 months.

The fact that housing stocks remain low, however, is potentially more good news for the average landlord. Another property bubble could see many forced out of buying into renting ensuring the flow of tenants.