Budget Breakdown & What It Means For HMO Investors

In today’s episode, I break down the Autumn Budget and what it really means for HMO landlords and property investors, with expert insight from mortgage specialist Ellie Broadhurst.

After weeks of speculation and political noise, the budget has finally landed and while it wasn’t as bad as many feared, it was still far from good news. We explore the key changes that affect landlords, what didn’t happen (and why that matters), and the wider direction of travel for the property market. Most importantly, we discuss what you should be thinking about now to protect your portfolio and stay ahead in an increasingly challenging landscape.

🎯 What You’ll Learn

• The key announcements that directly affect landlords and property investors
• How tax changes may influence your portfolio decisions and long-term strategy
• Why incorporation and operating professionally matter more than ever
• How the budget interacts with the Renters’ Rights Act and wider market pressures
• What’s happening with mortgage rates, swap rates and lender behaviour
• Where the biggest opportunities will emerge for investors in the months ahead

If you’re serious about building, protecting and positioning your HMO business for long-term success, this episode is essential listening. Understanding the implications now will help you cut through the noise, stay confident and seize opportunities while others hesitate.

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Transcript

Andy Graham (00:02.67)

Hey, I'm Andy and you're listening to the HMO Podcast. Over 10 years ago, I set myself the challenge of building my own property portfolio. And what began as a short-term investment plan, soon became a long-term commitment to change the way young people live together. I've now built several successful businesses. I've raised millions of pounds of investment and I've managed thousands of tenants. Join me and some very special guests to discover the tips, tricks and hacks, the ups and the downs, the best practice and everything else you need to know to start, scale and systemise your very own HMO portfolio now.

Andy Graham (00:40.718)

Today I'm breaking down the budget. What does it mean for the property market? And I'm joined by Ellie. Ellie of course is our expert when it comes to mortgages and finance. And I want to get Ellie's advice and insights on this as well. There was a lot of noise around the budget, a lot of politics. Now, in my opinion, it wasn't good, but it wasn't as bad as many of us feared. It was still tax heavy as expected. It was quite benefits heavy in my opinion. And there was almost nothing pro-growth, pro-business or pro-housing, which I find really concerning, especially on the backdrop of the Renters' Rights Act. So if you want to know how this is going to impact you and more importantly what to do next, don't go anywhere.

Hey guys it's Andy here, and we're going to be getting back to the podcast in just a moment. But before we do, I want to tell you very quickly about the HMO roadmap. Now, if you're serious about replacing your income, or perhaps you've already got a HMO portfolio that you want to scale up, then the HMO roadmap really is your one-stop shop. Inside the roadmap, you'll find a full 60 lesson course delivered by me, teaching you how to find more deals, how to fund more deals and raise private finance, how to refurbish great properties, how to fill them with great tenants that stay for longer, and how to manage your properties and tenants for the future.

We've also got guest workshops added every single month. We've got new videos added every single week about all sorts of topics. We've got downloadable resources, cheat sheets and swipe files to help you. We've got case studies from guests and community members who are doing incredible projects that you can learn from. And we've also built an application just for you that allows you to appraise and evaluate your deals, stack them side by side and track the key metrics that are most important to you. To find out more, head to theHMOroadmap.co.uk now and come and join our incredible community of HMO property investors.

Andy Graham (02:30.334)

Hey Ellie, thanks for coming back on the show today.

Ellie Broadhurst: 

Thanks for having me back Andy, it’s good to be back.

Andy Graham: 

It's the big one. Well, it should be the big one, but is it the big one? I guess that's what we are going to discuss today. Yeah. Obviously last week was the autumn budget, the one we were all waiting for. I want to have a chat to you about that today and get your thoughts on what it means for the market and for property investors, for lending and how and if, whether we should start to think differently or do things differently as a consequence of all the announcements last week. I mean, look, just to kick things off, My opinions, and I'm keen to hear your thoughts, Ellie, but it wasn't a good budget and I'm not going to sugar coat anything, but it certainly wasn't as bad as I was expecting. And as I know a lot of people really were fearing. I mean, what do you think? Do you share that sentiment?

Ellie Broadhurst: 

Yeah, absolutely. I think there was a lot of fear mongering perhaps, with lots of ideas that came out beforehand of things. And I'm sure you're going to do a bit of a summary of things that haven't happened, but there was a lot of things that we thought could happen that have not happened. I think that, yes, I know it wasn't as bad as we thought. If we hadn't have had all that information and then we just got the budget, would we have felt differently? Was that the whole marketing technique? I don't know.

Andy Graham (03:42.894)

I know, and she's obviously kind of now in the firing line for potentially doing that and maybe misleading the public. mean, who knows and kind of who cares really, I guess. Yeah, we just want to get on with business, don't we? We just want to build our portfolios and we just want to do right by ourselves largely. What I did was just kind of pull out what I think are the key things that were announced that directly impact us as property investors. 

So what I thought we would do today, Ellie, I'll just kind of high level summarise those for our listeners and then we can circle back and touch on some of them and discuss what that means, how to interpret that, the context of all of that. So you mentioned a few things that were being discussed pre-budget that actually didn't get announced in the budget. So a few of those, and I think that this was good news, no national insurance from rental income, heavily speculated that didn't happen. Good news, obviously there were other changes that we are going to discuss, but I feel like on the principle of that one was important. It was probably never going to cost a huge amount to landlords, but I think the idea of taxing that sort of income was quite different to how it has been done today and the principle behind taxing income and taxing income from investments. So good news that that didn't come in. There were no changes to inheritance tax. I was really surprised by this one.

Ellie Broadhurst:

Yeah, I was as well. But I think again, it would have been a very unpopular decision after the farming change that happened a couple of years ago and the fallout from that. I think, yeah, it would have been a very unpopular thing to do.

Andy Graham: 

There were some other changes to things like business disposal, but I think that the fact that they didn't meddle with inheritance tax was really, really, really important. Of course, no changes to stamp duty. I don't want to pay more in stamp duty, but actually it was one of the things that I did think that could have had quite a big impact in a few different ways. And I was surprised that there weren't any changes at all with stamp duty. I wouldn't be surprised if in the near future, let's say the next few years, there is a bit of a reform around stamp duty. But anyway.

Andy Graham (05:45.474)

That didn't happen and I suppose that that's good news. So the key measures that were brought in, a 2 % income rise on property income. So the new basic rate will be 22%, the new high rate 42 % and the new additional rate 47%. So essentially landlords operating through their personal name, not through a business, will pay an extra 2%. And the revenue have confirmed that the personal allowances will get used on other income first. So leaving fewer ways essentially to reduce rental profits down. So dividend tax has also gone up 2%. So the basic rate on dividend tax will be now 10.75 up from 8.75. Higher rate will be 35.75 and the additional rate 41.35%. So if you pay yourself in dividends, and I know that that is case for a lot of our listeners, for us, that will have an impact. And that's anybody running a company. 

So while there was a personal sort of attack for landlords of 2 % actually landlords even operating through their own businesses that they're not getting away with it completely. However, I think it is really important and I'm not an accountant. This isn't financial advice, but that is still by a long, long way, far more financially beneficial to pay yourself if you can because the dividend rate is just so much less.

Ellie Broadhurst: 

It is so much lower than a basic rate of tax, isn't it? An income tax. So yeah. And I think as I'm not self-employed, my husband is, but we have this discussion all the time and coming from an employed point of view, self-employed people do pay a lot less tax, but also, and I know there's less benefits, I get that. We have this discussion often at home, but you've got more flexibility in terms of how you can pay yourself. And I think what has come out of this is that you need to be really smart. You need to build a relationship with a good accountant. You need to invest in that relationship and you need to make sure that you are making the most out of everything that you can do because there are choices that you can make, particularly in property, probably more so than in other business sectors. You can loan yourself money. You can invest money that instead of taking it as income, you can reinvest it within the business and use it to make more money. And then there are plenty of opportunities to do that. You've just got to make sure that you're making the most of it really and just being aware, I suppose, of what you're doing, how you're making that income.

Andy Graham: 

I agree. And I recently recorded an episode on some of the options to structure a business and a business group. And there are some really tax efficient ways of doing things, not just necessarily owning properties through a limited company, but owning that limited company that owns your properties in a wider group structure. It's not right for everybody. There are different ways of doing it. There are partnership options, but that sort of advice is quite specialist and that's exactly what you're talking about.

Ellie Broadhurst: 

Absolutely. But then understanding how that impacts your other decisions. If you are somebody who does very straightforward vitalettes and generally uses lenders that are quite high street type lenders, they don't like those group structures. So you have got to be careful in terms of if you then create that, what's the impacts then on your lending options. So it may well be that it's worth it because the difference in interest is marginal, the difference in tax is bigger, for example. But you've just got to understand it and speak to every participant you're speaking to in your mortgage broker in conjunction with your accountant. And a good accountant will always say, go back to your broker, check through this, make sure that that works.

Andy Graham: 

Yeah, great advice. And along the same vein, Ellie, and I want to circle back on this today, is the idea of incorporation, which I know a lot of people with properties in their own names have been thinking about, will probably have to this budget be thinking about more. So, so I want to come back and talk to you about that. Just kind of continuing through the list of the key announcements, really the mansion tax as it's been, has have dubbed now an annual surcharge of homes over 2 million pounds. In the context of investment, I don't think that really impacts us, but

Andy Graham (09:43.992)

I do want to have that conversation in the context of what this budget really says, which we'll come back around to. This was an interesting one. Overnight visitor levy for short term and holiday let. So local authorities will be able to introduce a tourist tax. That can be on Airbnb and service accommodation, those sorts of things. So I think that anybody who's moved into that space, I moved into it. did some, I've actually moved out of it for various reasons. It's just too much hassle as far as I'm concerned, but anyone who's in it, and I know that it is still a very popular strategy. You can make a lot of money in it, but I think that that's definitely something to be aware of now. I think that those were the key things that impacts us as property investors, as property owners. Yeah. But I think that there's some context to the budget and I think we should discuss the wider direction of travel. I mean, just first of all, Ellie, your general thoughts on the budget. We've had it now. How important do you think the fact that we've just had it and we can perhaps move on?

Ellie Broadhurst: 

Totally. I think that's the biggest thing, isn't it? I think it's been so late and it's been spoken about by, I think we've had a very political last six months, haven't we? There's been a lot of talk about politics in general, different parties. We've got new people coming into the space. I think it's been a very political environment over the last six months. So as part of that, we have been talking about the budget and I don't think it's helped to mention it before that there was a lot of talk about what might happen.

I think it was on the verge of scaremongering. I don't know what the thought process was behind why you would do that. I don't know, but I don't like it. What I don't like is the fact that it's basically pushed. It stopped people making decisions. I think this late in the day, when people are generally slowing down in that decision making before Christmas, it's just moved that earlier and earlier. I would be interested to see what the transaction numbers are for the last quarter of this year, but I would expect them to be significantly lower than we've seen in the previous three months of this year, because when people are concerned about things, uncertain about what's going to happen, there has been talk about stamp duty change. There has been talk about a lot of things that could have had an impact on the property market. Why would you make that decision? You wouldn't. You just think, you know what, I'm just going to put this on hold and I'm going to come back to it next year when I know what's going on. And then it causes just an air of unpredictability, of uncertainty, of a lack of confidence. And I don't think that.

Ellie Broadhurst (12:09.204)

is good for the market, but it's done now. We know what's in it. It wasn't as bad as it could have been. Was it good? No, but it wasn't terrible. We know what we've got to do now. We know that stand duty hasn't changed. We know that we're going to be paying a bit more income tax, however we are paid and however that's structured, but everyone will be paying a bit more income tax. The only thing that we can do is keep going, isn't it, and buy more. And if we will be in a situation as we all are at home with our energy bills that we're paying more for the same. And that's been a bit of a theme over the last five years, hasn't it? With food and energy.

Andy Graham: 

I shared a message and a thought with my clients who were obviously very anxious about the budget. A lot of people actually just wanted to sit on their hands as have many people in the market and business owners. And stepping away from this budget, everybody's paying a bit more tax. The fiscal drag here is substantial. Actually, the amount that the government will be able to claw back through these measures, which only look like 2% here and there, but the freezing of the threshold, the impact on businesses, it's a substantial amount of money that actually over a period of time that they will be able to collect. But I think that this does highlight, and there was lots of conversations about pensions and there are changes there. For me, I think it really does again, highlight the importance of having assets that generate you an income, which is so ironic because landlords have been so heavily under fire recently. But this budget again, just says to me like, probably still rather pay an extra couple of percent on the properties they own and income I generate and maybe the capital gains that I'll make over the long term than be employed and the government be able to just still take what they want, maybe come for my pension. so I think everybody has been affected by this at the end of the day and it hasn't really changed my opinion on owning assets at all.

Ellie Broadhurst (14:06.414)

No, and I think the more variety of incomes that you have and investments of lots of different areas, the better because if you diversify your income streams, then you have got those choices of sort of picking and choosing where you're taking the income from, growing. The more that you can grow your business, the more money that you will have. Does this mean that maybe you need to, I don't know, move into HMOs rather than single lets, move into SA although, you you're not giving it a great rep today.

But move into different types of investing in order to maximise your income. We've got to be thinking, and in the same way as everybody for the last five years has probably been making slightly different decisions on what food they're buying each week. This year or last year, perhaps we're all thinking a bit more about, do I need to put the heating on today? Because it is costing a lot more than it was five years ago, but everything is more expensive. And whilst growth is low, we've got to individually take account for ourselves and say, how can I beat that growth? How can my growth be better than the GDP effectively? Because if you can outperform that, then you will be doing better than other people.

Andy Graham: 

Do you know what the most frustrating thing about this budget was for me? I think it was the overall sort of the consensus, the narrative behind it. I think that this was a very labor budget. Look, we're not here to discuss politics, but I do think it was very labor budget. There wasn't a huge amount for businesses, for pro-growth strategies, for pro-housing. I think there are very few people that really had an issue with paying a little bit more tax. I think everybody kind of gets the importance and why we need to do that at the minute.

But in the absence of that, that really concerns me. It still concerns me. And I do wonder how, when this budget was so tax heavy, how we plan to build prosperity from that. That's tough. And like, I don't want to attack individual policies. And I think there are different ways of looking at different things here, but the two child benefit caps, I think is a good example. Certainly in my opinion, that is where a lot of the focus and attention was. Now there are different reasons for it. And you've got some thoughts around, actually why you think that that is quite important. And I don't disagree with that, Ellie, but I think sending more of the sort of the taxed income in that direction and maybe taking the emphasis on growth and that concerns me.

Ellie Broadhurst: 

Yeah, I can see your point. I agree with the fact that we shouldn't have a tax benefit. And even if you take out all of the other reasons, like the moral reasons why we should or shouldn't have it, economically, it makes sense. Children that grow up in poverty are more likely to rely on benefits as adults. So if you just take that statistic, you are creating a world hopefully where in the future, people will be relying less on benefits. So I do agree with it, but I see your point that if it's there instead of something else rather than as well as something else, then I think overall the picture is we're prioritizing that over growth. And that's the tricky bit, isn't it, to see the new sideline.

Andy Graham: 

I don't believe that that was accidental. I think the mansion tax is a great example. It's actually not going to generate a huge amount. I think that it looked great. You've shot a labor budget to say we're taxing the wealthiest people in the country. I think it appeased the Green Party. I think that there was definitely a lot of politics in this budget. Who knows? That's my opinion. It doesn't change the outcome. It doesn't really change what we need to do about it. But just sharing my own thoughts.

Ellie Broadhurst: 

Yeah, I see your point. I think perhaps, I know that there are lots of things that have happened in this budget. There is definitely some pro-growth stuff that I have seen. I think somebody commented on a post that you put on Facebook the other day and I can't remember the detail, which is going to annoy me. But there are some things that are pro-growth, which I think perhaps haven't made the news. And I think that's where it becomes more political, doesn't it? Rich news.

Ellie Broadhurst (18:04.974)

various different media outlets will share things that they want to share from their perspective and how they want things to be seen. But we don't always get the full picture. But we need, with the planning, the planning issue is a change in policy, isn't it? Rather than money being thrown at it, I suppose you could employ more people and make the process quicker, put some money into that. But it's a policy change that needs to happen. And I think it's a change of attitude from the general public as well, because how many times do you see people pro-developments? You don't. People aren't pro-developments. It is in a world where we need more housing, or a country that needs more housing. Is anyone ever going to say, yeah, brilliant, I can't wait for you to build 200 houses in my town? People don't, they don't want it. All they are is scared of the impact that's going to have on school places and doctors and waiting list and all this. It's all these things rather than, yeah, we need more housing, we need affordable housing, we need places to live. So I think it's a shift in.

Andy Graham: 

I mean, the reality is, and the budget is a great example, some things just get decided for us. And I think that planning is one of those things that to some extent just needs to be taken out of the hands of the decision-making capacity of the lay public. Not everything, of course, but there certainly are certain things.

Ellie Broadhurst: 

Absolutely. We haven't got the knowledge or experience to know the things that sit behind that. We don't know where those S106 payments are going to necessarily. We don't understand that. We don't sit there and understand the impact of highways on or decision. We don't know that. So for the general public to have such a big impact on whether things get built or not is, you’re right. I don't think it's sensible.

Andy Graham (19:52.142)

I recently signed a quite complicated section 106 to finalize a planning application. And as part of it, there was a quite a large affordable homes contribution. The original bill started at hundred thousand. We managed to get that down to about 30,000 through various consultant specialist reports. So quite an expensive process, but ultimately that was the affordable homes bill. Now we weren't building any homes on our site, but we were contributing to affordable homes. And in the agreement, there was a line drawn up by the council and the council solicitors that basically asked us to confirm that we were in agreement that that money didn't need to be spent on affordable housing, which is exactly. 

So when you say, don't know where the money goes, you couldn't be more right, Ellie. Obviously I said, no, I'm not agreeing to that. Either you use it for that and you use it within this period of time. I think we said to 10 years, which they ultimately agreed to, or you can't use it and we're not going to pay it. This is ultimately what it all boils down to. It's an agreement.

Big developers, big home builders, they do have a bit more clout than the small developers, but you're right. And a lot of it just goes on the big bonfire. Yeah, And some of that's got to change. And there's got to be a bit of reform. But look, you and I are not going to change this from our soapbox. But I think the kind of the general context of the budget, I think was important. I think it's quite telling. And I do wonder whether, for example, the mansion tax doesn't even kick in till 2028, which is unusual when something's kicked in overnight. I do wonder whether that'll even happen whilst Labour are in government to be quite frank.

Ellie Broadhurst: 

It's a difficult one because the only information that they have currently is based on council tax bandings that the majority of council tax bandings were set up in the 90s. So how does anybody know how much a property is worth? Who's going to decide whether a property is worth over 2 million or not? Because conveniently, I'm sure there'll be loads of properties that are now worth 1,900,000. How do you decide that? Who decides that? That is a really incredibly complicated process. And are you then going to have to value?

Ellie Broadhurst (21:52.128)

every property in the country just to confirm because how do you know that my house is not worth two million unless somebody actually comes around and has a look at it. So where does that start? And then is that, I've seen a few things people have put online about, and is that the beginning of new council tax bandings and a whole review of the whole thing? Because yeah, nothing has actually happened since the nineties have been really in terms of value in property.

Andy Graham: 

I think it probably does need renewing. That doesn't mean I'm saying that the prices need to go up, but I think it does need looking at VOA are a bit of a law into themselves as well. I think the budget on the backdrop of the renters reform act is also interesting. A lot of downward pressure at the minute. I mean, we've seen so much downward pressure for years now. And let's talk about incorporation. We've touched on this already today. Very clearly the direction of travel is away from the private landlord, isn't it? And it's to the corporations. It’s landlords operating professionally through their business entities. So you mentioned incorporation.

Ellie Broadhurst: 

Yeah, I mean, this has been something that has been going on for quite some time. I mean, the tax changes came out, I think, 10 years ago, I think, wasn't it? No, it was a five-year implementation, which I think finished in 2020. Could be wrong with that, but around that time. So yes, this has been going on for quite some time. I think that in the context of landlords on a very general scale, and this is nothing personal, the majority of the landlords that we work with particularly are very professional. Everything's done perfectly. The property is a really high standard.

So this is not anything personal, but I think historically the quality of properties has been much poorer. So I do understand that direction and I agree with it. I think that on the whole, and again, this is nothing personal, but it's on a very general level, people that have one or two properties as a bit of a pension fund or something that they're of dabbling into will not have the same care and attention to those properties as somebody who does it like you do as your full time business because you don't have the knowledge and the understanding around it either, or the tools put in place to make sure that things are looked after properly. I get it. Incorporation is a really big part of that. I think anybody who still owns property in a personal name, thinks you really need to have a think about what to do with that. 

The difference in interest rate between personally owned properties and limited companies is diminishing. As soon as you own more than four properties, there are a lot of high street lenders that might work with you anyway, and if you own 10, 15, 20, various different lenders have got different rules around that. But a lot of the high street lenders won't deal with larger landlords, whether they're personally owned or a limited company anyway. So as you own more property, you are pushed down the more specialist route, in which case you have the difference in interest to the lenders that we work with, the likes of Fleet, Lambay, Lend Invest, those kind of lenders. There is no difference. It's the same rate. So that's something that can be put to one side, which was a big consideration five years ago.

Ellie Broadhurst (24:46.67)

And it's not really a consideration anymore. But there are loads of other advantages of owning property in a limited company. And again, this is not tax advice, going to watch your accounts. But you can use the money that's sitting in your business account as a separate entity to you. You can use that money to reinvest into property rather than having to take all the money that you earn from your properties as income. So that's a huge tax advantage. There's just different ways of structuring your business so that you're not drawing all the income and you can keep it in there and you can do other things with it.

Andy Graham: 

Yeah, I agree. Anyone just getting into the market now, looking ahead, wants to build a portfolio. I'd be very surprised if anything else made sense now. And I'd also just be anxious that more of these changes, these attacks on the private landlord are going to come.

Ellie Broadhurst: 

Absolutely. But there are still accountants that are saying, if you only intend to buy one or two properties, buy it your personal name. But I think that the problem with that is that it's not very easy to change it. I think that's the difficulty. What if you become a high rate taxpayer in the future, even if you're not now? I mean, that is a big impact in itself, isn't it? What if the income that you're earning from that one property pushes you into being a higher rate taxpayer? You can't easily change that. I think, again, I'm not an accountant. But I think when accountants look at it, they are sometimes just looking at your scenario now with what you've got now rather than future-proofing. Like you say, how do you know that the more things aren't going to change? The income on rental and a personal name could change in the future, it's been spoken about now, perhaps that will be added on at some point in the future. So you've just got to future-proof your business model and deal with it as a business.

Andy Graham (26:26.016)

I know somebody who's just inherited a lot of property and all of it has been inherited in their personal name, it was owned in their parents' personal name and it's going to cost them an absolute fortune in tax every single month and they go to think about what they do with it, but it really doesn't make sense just to hold it and operate it the way that they do now. It's just not profitable enough. Let's talk about mortgage rates then Ellie, as I think a consequence of perhaps the budget where we are currently in from an economic perspective. What are you seeing? Where are we with swap rates, with consumer rates at the minute?

Ellie Broadhurst: 

The rates are actually dropping and I think that's a combination of a few things. So the two-year swaps are reducing, five-year swaps are reducing. Apparently everything's been priced in with another rate reduction for the meeting this month. That's what I've heard. So hopefully that will happen. But particularly on residential mortgage rates, they have come down. They're at their lowest level that they have been for a few years now. So that's really positive news.

I think that there's a combination of two things here. One is yes, rates are on a downward trajectory. Inflation, and we'll come on to that, but it's kind of sitting around the 3.6 figure. It's not the high figures that it was. No, it's not coming down any further, but it seems to be fairly steady, which I think seems to be enough to appease everyone for the moment. The actually other things are more important and trying to bring mortgage rates down probably isn't going to have an impact on inflation itself because it's mainly food prices and energy. It's things that aren't going to be impacted by disposable income. That seems to be okay. That seems to be fairly steady. So yeah, base rate hopefully will come down again. Mortgage rates are coming down. But the other thing to consider is that lenders have targets to hit. They have got an amount of funds that they need to get out of the door. Since April, you're talking about a fiscal year, since April,

Ellie Broadhurst (28:24.686)

transaction numbers have been down. I've had a couple of calls from lenders actually in the last few weeks asking around what my thoughts are in terms of why transaction numbers have been down, what's caused it, is a particular thing, Is there a reason we're not going to a particular lender or is it an overall transaction numbers? And I think that this year has definitely felt quieter than last year. We had a really busy three months at the beginning of the year before the stamp duty changed in beginning of April.

And then since then, it seems to be one excuse after another. We had a hot summer, there was lots of bank holidays, Easter was late. I think that generally we are taking holiday more seriously, I think, the last couple of years. This year, I think I've seen it more so. People take a few weeks off and they actually have a few weeks off. I think that with the work-life balance, I feel is tipping more into life rather than work, which...thing ever seeking. What's the point? Just keep taking more away?

Yeah, maybe it's that. I don't know. It's definitely felt quieter. And then this budget has been a huge buildup, hasn't it? It's been kind of, what is it, month or so we've been talking about it now. And now it's the 1st of December. Yes, the budget's finished, but we've literally got three weeks until Christmas, kids are breaking up. Life is really busy at this time of the year. Are we going to go and find properties to buy? I don't know. If you're looking at auction properties, you've then got Christmas to consider and solicitors.

Solicitors seem to still be incredibly busy, which is bizarre, but I've had a few solicitors refuse to take on work recently because they're so busy. I know that there was a lot of clients who were concerned about the budget and wanted to get completions through before the budget, just in case there was a stamp duty change. I don't think that's particularly helped. Yeah, it's just, it's a really funny time, but lenders have got targets to hit. So I think that we will see some special editions. We'll see rate reductions in January to try and push that last three months of the financial year.

Andy Graham: 

Well, I really do hope that that's the case. I hope we do see a base rate reduction later this month. I hope we do see some softening of consumer rates in the new year. And I hope that you're right, that we're right, that getting this budget out of the way now and just knowing, I just hope that that starts to settle things and we can just get back to doing good business. I mean, summary for me here is that it wasn't as bad as it could have been, but it was still bad.

I think on the backdrop of the renters rights act and all of that downward pressure, I think a lot of tenants are getting dragged along with these tax changes as well. There's downward pressure on tenants as well. I think that if you step away from this, it hasn't materially impacted the opportunity for property investors. Short term, yep, it's going to cost a little bit more, but I think longterm ultimately tenants are going to pay for a lot of these changes and landlords, some of them, tired landlords, the landlords who don't want to do it anymore.

Ellie Broadhurst:

Yeah, I think there will be lots of opportunities. I mean, there was when the tax changes came in years ago. It is, if you're thinking of retiring in the next five years, then we will do it sooner rather than later when things like this happen. And we'll probably see that. Like we did with COVID, I the early retirement rate in COVID was crazy. People think, well, do you know what? All of this is happening. I'm just going to check out. I'm not making that much money. I'll just check out. I'll sell out.

I think there's loads, I've had so many inquiries for existing HMOs this last three months, more so than I've ever seen. And that is tired property. A lot of it needs a complete refurb. But there's a huge market in there, Article 4 areas, existing HMOs. I think there's a big market for that. There will be plenty of opportunities for newer investors coming into the market to make the most of this situation. I have no doubt about that.

Andy Graham (32:09.698)

Yep. And I think that properties look better value now than they have done for years. They've adjusted relative to inflation and rents have gone up. The pace of that has slowed down. Yes, there are some changes in tax changes of thoughts, but I think if you're buying now with that long-term view, I couldn't agree more. And I think that this is a great opportunity if you can find the stock at the minute. And that's the biggest challenge. That's the availability of stock. If you can find it, I think that this is a really good time to be buying.

Ellie Broadhurst: 

I think we'll see more after Christmas. I think people will be putting off putting their property on the market for now because they want to get in their mind the best price. I don't think now is the time to do it. I don't think it has been for the last month or so. I am feeling really optimistic about January. I think we're going to have a busy first quarter at least and see what happens after that. Hopefully the dust will have settled with all of this. The tax changes don't come into April 27th so make hay while the sun shines. Let's have a good year this year before the tax changes go up.

Andy Graham: 

Yep. You heard it guys. Make hay while the sun shines. I couldn't agree more, Ellie. Thanks for coming on today and sharing your thoughts and giving us that insight to what's happening on the lender side of things. 

Don't forget guys, if you do need some help with your lending at the minute, if you need a new mortgage, refinance, development facility, whatever it is, head on over to thehmoroadmap.co.uk. Find our page for financial services. Ellie's there. You can drop an inquiry with Ellie and Ellie will be happy to get in call with you and help you with any of your mortgage requirements. And fingers crossed, hate, the base rate comes down in December. Inflation continues to drop and we can all go out and we can start focusing on our businesses again in January.

Ellie Broadhurst (33:50.798)

Absolutely. Let's hope so.

Andy Graham: 

Brilliant. Thank you so much, Ellie, and we'll see you next time on the show.

Ellie Broadhurst: 

Thanks, Andy. See you later.

Andy Graham (34:04.398)

That is it for today's episode guys. Thank you for tuning in. Hope you found that conversation with Ellie about the budget useful. Hopefully it's given you a bit more insight as to what to do and how to interpret the budget and what this means for you and I as property investors and the property market. 

Now, if you are investing in HMOs, head over to theHMOroadmap.co.uk right now. Never has it been more important to be optimizing your business and doing things the right way. The private landlord is being squeezed out. You have to be a professional landlord. Well the good news is everything you need to know and all the tools that you need to do it are waiting for you inside theHMOroadmap.co.uk. So head on over there and get your hands on all of that good stuff right now. 

That's it for today's episode guys. Thank you again for tuning in and don't forget that I'll be right back here in the very same place next week. So please join me then for another installment of the HMO podcast.