Buy to let or pension?

[Twoshoesnewshoes]

Could anyone who has chosen to buy to let as a long term investment advise?
I don’t have a very good pension pot, and I’m wondering about investing in a student property instead of further pension payments.
I would need to remortgage on my property to get a deposit, then a buy to let mortgage. Hopefully I could pay my deposit back (to me) at a later date, but for now it would all just about break even.
but once the mortgage is paid off, it would give a net monthly income of £1500 (today’s money), which seems a good return.
ive worked in tax and maintenance- have I missed something?

It’s what I am doing. I am already a LL to 2 x rental properties and have owned these for over 10 years. With early retirement looming in the next five years, I have made the decision to buy a block of flats and rent these out - in a student populated area too so will get a good income. I’ve had to use a substantial amount of my savings to fund the deposit for my mortgage for this- but once my 2 x tenanted properties have been vacated then these will be sold - the mortgage on my new investment purchase paid off and should leave me a fair amount in the pot which will continue to build again. All the flats in my new investment are tenanted so income coming in straight away.
I do think it’s more common to be investing in property for sure if you’re in a position to do so…. And this is enabling me to retire 10 years early…

@good96 you are being a little ingenious - what is enabling you to retire early is having enough capital to acquire and entire block of flats. You'd almost certainly be able to retire early if you invested that in bonds and did drawdown, too. It's your past investments in property that have made you rich, not your future investments. And the OP has a much, much smaller amount to invest, and is using it for leverage to borrow enough just to purchase one property for a student let.

For the OP - when you say "once the mortgage is paid off ..." does that mean you are still 25+ years out from retirement? Will you remain self-employed all this time? Forfeiting 25 years' worth of tax relief on all future pension contributions means your property plan has an awful lot of work to do just to break even. And when you said your pension pot would give you an income of £2k per year - is that based on an annuity? Is it index-linked? Is it based on interest rates at 0.5% or 5%? These things matter - hugely. Final point to consider - a property is an asset, so if you ever fall on hard times, you'd be expected to sell it to cover your expenses. A pension, however, is not, so you may be eligible for benefits that would not otherwise be available to you.

Go for it, capital growth plus income. Property only goes up in the long term.