![](\"http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/Blurtit\/~3\/xn2GH7QyMW8\/var\/question\/q\/q2\/q23\/q238\/q2389\/q2389087_793997_btolet.jpg\" "\\"click")
<\/a><\/div>\nYou don’t want to see too much of this sign. Source: Flickr.com.<\/p>\n
First things first: Are you sure that buying a property and letting it out is a good investment for you? Buy to lets are no longer the cash cows that they once were. Both house prices and rental rates may continue to fall. Some forecasters are predicting that until 2010 house prices will continue to drop by as much as 30%, especially as many Buy-To-Let landlords decide to pull out of property ownership before things get worse. One famous couple \u2013Judith and Fergus Wilson — who were labeled by newspapers as Britain’s first buy-to-let billionaires — are expecting to start selling off their portfolio this year, as they approach retirement and face plummeting property prices. <\/p>\n
Moreover, there’s a rumor that the UK government is going to make a variety of tax changes which will further eat into profits for private landlords. We all know that with the government’s massive budget deficits, all sorts of taxes will have to go up. This could include capital gains tax, which is an easy target as it tends to affect people who are already well-off and garner little public sympathy. Landlords are never a popular group in the best of times; moreover, buy-to-let investors are perceived as having benefited on the back of very high house prices that also seem to have prevent many people from getting on the property ladder at all. On top of all that, rental incomes are dropping; it is now normal for tenants to try to ask for price reductions in the listed amount of monthly rent. <\/p>\n
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