Away from the excitement of the Festival of Speed, Glorious Goodwood, and the Cowdray Park Gold Cup, all of which have taken place in Sussex over the past few months, the letting industry appears to be continuing to gear up to the tenant fee ban coming into force – probably next year.
Many Sussex agents are looking at how they can mitigate the loss of tenant fees and whether the market will stand for some of these costs passing onto landlords. A good number of landlords I have spoken to are pragmatic and realise that businesses need to generate income to survive. But there is a good number who, looking at the attacks from the Treasury on their income over the past few years, look at increased management costs and are considering whether buy-to-let remains the attractive investment proposition it once was. They will be looking for even more value for the commission they pay and expecting higher levels of service to go alongside any increased commission charges.
There has been a trend for landlords – particularly some of those who are more highly geared and, therefore, most susceptible to suffer from the changes to tax relief – to look at offloading some of their properties. In many areas of Sussex, where house prices still dictate that rental yields are low, investment buyers are few and far between. There are, however, pockets where the figures stack up and there may well be a next generation of landlords; those who have not had the previous tax benefits and are still looking at buy-to-let against alternative investments and deciding that it works, even with the perceived increased costs factored into the equation.
Demand for property still remains strong. In Chichester, for example, there has been a slight increase over the past quarter in the total number of agreed lets compared with the same period in 2017, so it seems that people still want to rent. Sussex agents may need to adapt the way they operate to take account of the changing landscape, but by focusing on good professional standards and promoting the value of ARLA Propertymark, there’s no reason to believe the future is anything but positive.