Why do you need to sell?

My BTL has about 40% equity so paying 40% tax on my gross income will make it unsustainable with the August tax changes.

ok. Thought we were talking about the stamp duty changes.

You fall into higher rate tax?

Yes, my 9-5 job + bonus puts me into the 40% tax bracket.

I'm going to try and work out how much my rent would need to increase each year so I'm no worse off.

This is just my 2c but from a financial pov it makes no sense and you should get out.

You can't compete with people and companies not burdened by this nonsense tax relief rule. That disadvatage can't be made good by higher rents.

This. You probably already know this but it's always worth repeating; these changes were brought in specifically to stop people like yourself owning BTL properties. The Chancellor has specifically stated that he blames the middle class owning a few BTL properties for making it harder for people to get onto the housing ladder. The government doesn't want you owning this type of investment, so it's probably in your best interests to drop them and move your money into another area.

True, but the equity in my BTL house could buy me a flat mortgage free so that is also an option I'm exploring.

You need to post some more info to get some solid advice, or start a new thread of your own.

Value of Residential Mortgage, DTV, CMI affordability shortfall.
Value of BTL, and the price you paid.
Average CGT paid for the last couple of years, especially this tax year.
If your married, and if your spouse is named on the BTL
Is your BTL mortgage currently in a fixed period? If so, whats the ERC%?
Notice you would need to give your tenant? ie 6M or 12M AST due to expire before April? Or rolling monthly tenancy?

Selling up to make a rash decision isn't always the best option.

Also, I hope you meant April when you typed August.

I was just about to post about this. Yikes that would seem bad for Goosey.

What's up Goosey we played in many of the same games as I bumhunted those sites pretty hardcore from 2006 onwards along with others such as PKR with your friend Stuart (what does he do now?)

What will you do about the new tax changes? Have you made much capital gains - presumably you'd have to pay tax on those gains if you sell, which would suck. Is this now sustainable to stay a BTL landlord? I'm guessing no.

I ploughed most of my money into my flat in London where I live - it's gone up in value tremendously but I can't sell as I won't get another mortgage (being a new biz owner it's impossible unless you have 3 yrs of trading accounts) - I have to stay put and be automatically renewed without having to show income, which is good, but annoying as there's a lot of cash stuck in my property that I wouldn't mind access to.

GL hope it all works out. I miss Betfair (poker champs) site so much it hurts. I often reminisce about how easy it all was and wish I'd put in treble the hours, hey ho

Edit: having read the article it's property values of £150K+ that are affected? So Goosey with his portfolio of £50K properties won't be affected much?

That's just the example used for the article...

It's gonna be 3% stamp duty for properties between £40k and £125k (because houses below £40k are exempt IIRC) and then above £125k it's gonna be whatever the "base level" of stamp duty for owner-occupiers is + 3%:


- Taken from: http://www.property118.com/spending-...-second-homes/

Juk

Money Box Podcast available to download:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006...odes/downloads

August was when Osbourne announced the changes in tax relief.

Very good advice. Clearly if you are fortunate enough to already own a portfolio of properties with the mortgages paid off you will be ok. If not then you would be foolish to start now. Presumably there will be an uptick in BTL sales before the new duty comes into force.

I am one of those who did put treble the hours in during the boom years which was great but I did not have the ability to invest in London property at the time which will probably have made you a fortune by now. Strongly wish I had. What do you think will happen in the short-medium term to London prices? Regardless, long term you are onto a substantial winner there.

When you mention Stuart btw do you mean the big bear? He quit poker a few years back and last I heard he was working in the city, but that was a while ago. What area is your new business in?

As for this

Collecting 10%

Can I see a pic of a place you buy for 90k and rent for 1400/month near a major Univ. in the USA?? just curious.

I did put in decent hours (in only very good games) over a long period of time but I for sure wish I'd put in more instead of wasting time but as I was in my mid 20s & I took it for granted. Oh how I wish I could turn back time

I bought my place in a nice part of NW London in 2011 and by comparable evidence the place has doubled in value. Theres still a decent mortgage here and I can't just sell it as I wouldn't be able to get on ladder and I'm now a Father of 2 so cant sell it and go live in Thailand or whatever .

I think short term it might be volatile. The BTL thing might cause it to somewhat drop as theres loads of BTL all over the place and if those are now being put on market and people are getting out it will affect the price of everything else. Long term owning property in Central London in nice areas close to transport links and 10 minutes from the West End you will always make money - but you cant really do anything with that money if youre living there as you can't realise the gain and use the money for something else unless you sell up. But not sure its now worth it to buy up stuff and let them out anymore.

A friend of mine recently bought a BTL in Hackney for £300K (before the new change) with a BTL mortgage I think his equity was £50-100k, he thinks in less than a year hes made £50K on it but is now going to be somewhat ****ed tax wise so might have to sell it or suck up the extra taxes and hope that capital gains wise it will still rise.

Yeah I was talking about that Stuart only because I know he was friends with Goosey and a few higher stakes players on the old golden goose that was Betfair (WillyWonka and people?) a couple tried to move over to PKR when 5knl ran quite a bit with Beyn and I believe he took them for a decent amount of money if I recall in that short period he won over 500k I think. I think I remember Stuart ran pretty terribly there too.

You still playing? I miss it somewhat. I occasionally try and find some decent games and try and spin it up but it doesnt usually end very well. The fact that most Euro sites limits are capped at 5/10 doesnt overly excite me either anymore. I wouldnt jump into a 25/50 game at all but its nice to know if I spin it up and theres a fish higher up I could shot take, those days are gone. Even up until 2012 on ipoker you could do that, now theres nowhere unless you want to play with the best on Stars which is suicide or possibly 888.

is this in response to my earlier post? if so, see below. pretty typical college house. seller put on a new roof before we closed, new furnace/AC in 2012, new windows in 2013, all before i bought it. short walk to a 20k student university.

Haha yeah I was mid 20s when it all kicked off in 02/03 as well. Perfect timing and situation to make the choice to go full time. Of course if we had a time machine and went back with what we know now we could make more but realistically I am happy with what I did back then. Only a couple of books, no training sites and weak software back then. Had to do it all by yourself. That said it really was ridiculously easy. Didn't even table select till 2010 tbh.

I don't think the UK residential property market is the best use of cash, if you have shedloads of it lying about. I said that in this thread before the recent changes and now it is even more so. That said it is not a bad use of it either as you would hope long term it will beat inflation as well as providing some rental yield. I have a not small amount of money in the UK property market like yourself mostly for diversification but unless you already have a portfolio in place with no mortgages I would be avoiding BTL.

I played on PKR a little back in the day (not too much but enough). Not in the games you talk about but MSNL. I only played on betfair when they were part of the cryptologic network. Most of my play was on there and boss media, as well as ipoker. PKR is still open isn't it? Jesus it must be a ghost town now.

I hope you made some coin when they ran promotions (in my opinion) to cook the books on betfair around November 2010. 105% rb at poker was I think one of them or something like that. They had just floated on the stock market.

Only play occasionally now, not been full time for a couple of years. Occasionally play a big live MTT or cash games and occasionally something online but nothing like back in the day. I cant believe some young grinders are making the decision to go full time in the current climate. Poker has had its day and there will not be another boom like 03-06. You can of course still make money at it long term but nothing like the glory years.

I think I started in 2004 on PP and it was unreal but I was a fish and had a job, I remember paying for a US trip from money won on there using no brm and that was it after that. I did play previously on PokerRoom and Paradise but it was just gambling to me (and Ladbrokes back n the day). PKR was where I made a proper bankroll for 5/10+ along with some other well timed binks that without those I wouldnt have gone pro I don't think. Who were you at msnl - my SN is the same as here? I played pretty much every msnl/hs game thar ran with fish. Yup its dead now, capped at 5/10, no HU (a good thing - but I think I made 70% of my money here) and its just sad. I think 5/10 runs now and again.

I think Betfair (on the PokerChamps software) with those find a player notifications was quite possibly the best site on the net ever, along with PKR back in the day.

I miss it.

What do you do now?

I think with a decent deposit you can get decent mortgage rates now, there are a lot of parts of London which will only go up and you can't lose. But its tying up that 30%-50% equity with London's eyewatering property prices that hurts. Not sure where else you'd get the returns though long term, if you don't need to live in it (as I said above) and BTL is ruined now.

Haha awesome, I never had a job at the time so fell into it naturally. Only very occasionally played party. Did play pokerroom and the original paradise a bit. Original paradise was awesome. Remember how your avatar exploded in a ball of flames when you got knocked out a tournament? Or how you could order food/drink/cigarettes at the table lol. They ended up being bought out and put on the boss media network. Paradise ran a million dollar winner takes all live STT back in the day. You had to qualify online and the final was played out live, no deals allowed. A player called "Durrrr" from the USA qualified. An older dude turned up as "durrrr" to play the final. It was his dad who the account was registered to. Guess he was underage then.

I really didn't play that much PKR, but I played enough I guess so we will have crossed paths. My nick on there was "SUITEDPOWER"

I never played Betfair when they bought the PokerChamps software as it was just too horrid for me. The value was on every site though as you no doubt remember.

One site I forgot to mention, which you might have played on and which had similar player notifications was Tribeca Tables. VC, Doyles Room etc were the skins. Hilarious chat lobby and some really good action in the MSNL games. You got notifications of players coming online etc. I was BBDefendah on there.

Playtech bought them out, merged it into the IPoker network and destroyed the software.

Back on topic yes I don't think you can lose investing for the long run in UK residential property but BTL is useless for most now and there are things with better returns and less hassle. For me specifically equities. I don't mean stupid trading/following stock tips. Appropriate diversified long term investments can achieve 10% returns per year with no hassle apart from the variance (which to be fair is substantial). You also have access to tax wrappers and so on. It is a no brainer, especially if you already have a chunk in property.

Alright Dappadan, aye Stuart doing well quit poker a few years ago lives in city. geo aka willy wonky , doing well, we are pals from before poker, he came 13th in main event this year haha so away travelling with the bird for 6 months.

You still play mate? Would we of crossed pays at sometime?

Just read this, what were you nMes on throne crypto? Good to hear your still playing, I don't miss it all.

Business wise all is good, taking on more properties every month. Moving into a wee office at start of January. Stamp duty changes not actually applicable in Scotland, as the Scottish Government have that devolved power. Probably 50/50 they follow suit. Don't think it will affect the market up here too much, most buy to let's are £50-£100k so looking an extra £1500-£3000, probably just lead to higher rents.

Not really playing at all and def no longer pro but dabble and try to spin up (not very succesfully lol).

yeh heard Stu was in london, tell him dappa says hi

Damn bubbled the ft! Came 12th! ****! Does he still play hsnl?

Yup we played together on bf 5/10+ i was strictly a bumhunter tho and likeley an abusive **** in chat!

Haha hit me up with a SN, you've got me interested. I used to be v chatty as well.

Aye he still plays online. Was a sick but out hand 12 to go qq vs 10 8s all in pre, would of been 2/12 if held!

More writing on the wall for BTL

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-35108952