Post-budget survival tactics for property investors

The Budget came as a bit of shock for property investors, but there’s no need to admit defeat! After explaining the changes last week, in this episode we’re sharing ideas for what to do about them.

(If you haven’t listened to last week’s episode yet, you should definitely check that out first to get the background for what we’re talking about today.)

We discuss:

• How to best cope with the removal of the wear and tear allowance
• Mitigating the impact of the higher tax on dividends
• Whether forming a limited company is a good solution for the mortgage interest relief bombshell
• Reducing your taxable profit by paying yourself a management fee
• The benefits of buying properties that need a refurb
• Strategically splitting ownership between couples to reduce tax

It’s a packed episode, and there’s more to come! Next week, we’ll be giving the whole episode over to a detailed discussion of the circumstances in which you might want to shift to a limited company structure.

Using laptops, phones and tablets in the evenings can really mess with your sleep — because they’re so bright they trick your brain into thinking that it’s still light!

Enter f.lux — a free tool for Mac, Windows and iPhone/iPad. It’s a tiny program that runs in the background and automatically adjusts the colour balance of your screen depending on the time of day. It means that as the sun goes down, it strips out the colours that are known to inhibit sleep.

It’s probably still not a good idea to be checking emails just before you go to sleep, but this is at least an easy fix to make sure your brain isn’t getting misleading biological cues.

The Guardian reports on “Britain’s worst landlord”, who has been prosecuted seven times for a whole variety of different environmental health violations.

This story comes from the results of a Freedom of Information request that’s released the names of all prosecutions since 2006, and you can see various visualisations of the data here.

The striking thing is how low the fines are in relation to both profits and the severity of the breaches. Despite all the legislation we face, it seems that bad landlords are still prospering…