Selling a BTL

[Remmy123]

I have a BTL a small flat I rented out when my husband and I moved. Anyway I want to sell up it's hasn't gone up in price in years. We pay a fair bit of tax and unless you have a property portfolio you cannot offset anything so we are out of pocket.

everyone says we should hang on to it but i don't think property is a good investment any more.

is anyone else selling up?

The point is most people borrowed for their BTL, that adds another risk dimension, leverage is great on the way up but can be brutal on the way down. Not really clear though why an article about BTL landlords being repo"d shouldn"t be on a thread about getting out of BTL!

Praying my landlord thinks like all of you 🙏, we have just asked if he would sell us the property we are currently renting.

We sold to our current tenants after 33 years and took the capital gains tax hit of £30k
I does strike me that the government is making things so ridiculously hard for landlords that actually holding on is probably the way forward but we just didn’t have the stomach for all the negative changes.

Thank you for clarifying! I’m in no way an expert 🤪

It might be a silly question but have you checked if you have an exemption due to it being a conservation area? Many Victorian terraces are.

As a balance we will keep ours - our tenants and agents are good, and we get reasonable turnover (most of our tenants move into the area for work and then go on to buy after 2-3 years as they decide to stay down here so give notice) so we'd likely be able to sell as they become vacant by natural churn. It's a predictable source of income and a bit of diversification.

We have just sold ours, it was our former family home many years ago and converted to a BTL due to a range of circumstances.

We had a few fantastic long-term tenants over the years but most recent ones were problematic and made us realise how vulnerable a position we were if they didn’t pay rent and refused to leave.

Our local market was saturated with LLs selling up so sale was 15% lower than valuation. CGT paid, trying not to think about it too much, but overall feels like a weight has lifted.

To those thinking of selling to another landlord, it could be worth contacting your local council to see if they would be interested in buying and what the implications of that would be for your tenant.

I'm a registered landlord and my local council wrote to me last year and have since emailed me to say that they do buy from private landlords in certain areas.

We sold one property to a local housing association but they wouldn’t buy it tenanted. Fortunately our tenant had recently given notice so it worked out in the end

I will definitely offer for my tenant to buy at a good price

I need to pay £££ for the lease extension first 😭

https://thenegotiator.co.uk/news/rental-market/rental-stock-rises-25-despite-renters-rights-fears/

Yes, mines going on the market on Thursday. I feel very bad for our tenant as she's been there 6 years but she has been looking for something bigger.

It was my husbands before we got married. We've done so much work to it over the years and the valuable has hardly increased in the last 6 years. To be honest I think it was a mistake keeping it.

I hope you use an accountant to do your tax return as you haven't got a clue how tax on a residential rental v a holiday home works

Don"t feel bad for the tenant, she will be out of there as soon as something she likes pops up, and unless you manage to sell quickly (is that likely?) she could be there for a while, that would also benefit you financially if she stays and allows viewings?

Do you have a link to the best guide on this please, it"s probably the HMRC website?

the basic guide for residential letting
Work out your rental income when you let property - GOV.UK

the detailed guide that you really need to know inside out if not paying an accountant
Property Income Manual - HMRC internal manual - GOV.UK

for FHL (furnished holiday letting) the rules changed wef 6 April 2025 since when they are now treated the same as residential letting. This is a basic summary
2025 Furnished Holiday Let Tax Guide | Sykes Cottages

these were the pre April 25 FHL rules
PIM4105 - Furnished holiday lettings: overview - HMRC internal manual - GOV.UK

I did. Bought with a friend in a shit area post-uni in 2009. Let it out for over a decade when we both moved on. Sold last year. Was a huge relief for us both.

Very detailed, thanks for that.

Did you make any money?

Not likely to sell quickly as it's 'quirky'! She has said she'll do viewings, she's been really lovely about it.

We'll be selling ours starting in 2028 across 3 tax years. We have very low mortgage so making a decent return.

But we're retiring soon and can't be bothered with the hassle. I've no idea what the tenants will do, they'll find it hard to afford anything similar. And I doubt they can afford to buy.

To people that have sold, are you keeping the money in a savings account or investing it? We'll probably keep some in savings and invest the rest. We'll have to gradually feed it into ISAs.

I wish we'd sold years ago but were too busy with working and fast to give it much thought.

Yep, I've sold up.

Sold one to a tenant at a massive discount, which made me happy as her arse-ex refused to buy it at a good price a few years earlier.

I don't think anyone thinks it's a good idea anymore. As my accountant BiL said "the government hates landlords".

I was a fab landlord as I wanted to do a good job, having had some interesting experiences as a renter but not worth the hassle and the risk profile is really bad now, given they won't have resourced the new system properly.

£30k between us over the 15 years. Paid about £1k in CGT so roughly £14k profit.

Sounds like a good start then.