Being a landlord is a serious undertaking and for the people just starting in the business it can be hard to keep track of all details letting and renting a property involves.
Thankfully there are a lot of helpful guides out there that can help you get started.
One such guide is the book ‘Property Tax for Landlords’ by journalist and property professional Steve Sims, who has over 20 years of experience as a buy to let landlord, developer and holiday let owner.
The book, which is is offered free by the Residential Landlords Association to new members for the whole month of July, is focused on helping landlords understand their tax responsibilities and how they can reduce their tax burden.
Every year the RLA receives a number of inquiries from landlords regarding self-assessment tax returns and the book answers most of those questions.
It also promises to help landlords maximise their profits by minimising taxes paid.
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Another helpful guide has been issued by letting agent Finders Keepers. The ‘Landlord Intelligence: The FK Guide to being a Successful Landlord’ is a detailed review of landlord responsibilities and goes into detail about tenant responsibilities, negotiating rent increases, insurance and taxes. It is intended as a guide for new landlords as well as seasoned ones who need to know the latest on issues affecting them.
Finders Keepers highlights the need for a proper guide as recent research found there are currently two million landlords in the buy-to-let market and their number would surely grow in the future. This is a reasonable assumption as the private-rented sector is set to grow with not enough supply and rising demand in the property market.
“While there are many landlord guides on the internet, many of them are dated or biased,” comments Dan Channer, managing director of Finders Keepers, “We wanted to offer a handbook for landlords that offered the latest information that is reliable and truthful. To our knowledge, there isn’t a comprehensive guide out there for landlords so we’ve used our 40 years of experience to provide advice that will be of use to landlords, no matter whether they are investing in buy-to-let for the first time or are seasoned pros.”