The joy of being a landlord

Not sure why you would do that. It’s tax inefficient and you have less slack.

FWIW I’m selling my flat now. Not worth it anymore with rates and tax changes
Once payed off you don't have to worry about rate changes, get a larger pay-out if you sell and if you overpay you can can get 25 year down to 10 year or less or which means 15+ years of full rent in your bank account with no rent going towards interest. If you can afford to overpay you massively cut down on the interest paid. Less slack in the short term, more slack in the long term.
 
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Indeed but you lose the relief on the interest (although only 20% of the interest now). so often better to have a parallel saving for the surplus if you have a savings rate higher than the mortgage

Obviously depends on circumstances but mine is currently 2.6%
 
Interest only when rates were low was basically a license to print money. House prices were flying up due to low interest rates and low interest rates meant the proportion of the rent eaten up by interest was low. I imagine that anyone who has bought more than 5 years ago has done very nicely out of it.
 
Yup, in my area it would be between £10 and £20 a month for most of the housing association type rents.

Meanwhile my sister had to move out of her rented house because IIRC the owner wanted to raise the rent by about £200 a month "to bring it in line with other properties at the moment".
There was a conversation on LBC about this I watched earlier today.

Landlord was claiming its all down to costs, then stuttered to find an answer when told a majority of landlords state as reason for large increases are to "match the market".
 
Our tenant is moving out - they've had a 2nd kid and want somewhere with an extra bedroom.

We are now considering whether to sell.

Flat is worth about £130,000, income return we've had over the last 8 years has averaged out at about 6% (including property increases). We've also been lucky with decent tenants and short periods of vacancy. We've also not increased the rent for the current tenant for the last 3 years as they are decent people and it just felt unfair.

I've got a sneaking suspicion that Labour will make being a landlord less worthwhile over the next 4 years - not something that I have a problem with but it needs to be taken into account.

So the question is what else could we do with our money that might achieve a similar return? ISAs/SIPP all come to mind as alternatives.
 
Still makes no sense on an excel sheet but understand the physiological effect of paying off.
It's also a relatively small mortgage so putting the payments into a bank account instead of paying the mortgage capital would garner peanuts in interest.
 
It's also a relatively small mortgage so putting the payments into a bank account instead of paying the mortgage capital would garner peanuts in interest.
Indeed. But other things come in. If you are paye and in the 60% tax then the interest not reducing due to repayments is also a factor. Look after the pennies and the pounds look after themselves. There is no excel sheet saying paying off mortgage at 2-3% is better than repayment. Anything else is just ‘feeling’
 
So the question is what else could we do with our money that might achieve a similar return? ISAs/SIPP all come to mind as alternatives.

Yes, the main alternative is investing in UK shares with a decent dividend, or a fund that does it for you. It takes homework to get it right though, and you won't get 6% yield.
 
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