But thank goodness this chancellor has been more understanding and we now have a tapered end to the popular cut in stamp duty. Last time, five years ago, the race was on to beat that government’s decision to slap a 3 per cent additional tax on second homes and buy-to-let properties.

If a week is said to be a long time in politics, then five years in the BTL market must be an eternity. So much legislative and regulatory water has flowed under the bridge.

Many commentators said the 3 per cent tax would deal a hammer blow to the sector; and, as we approach its fifth anniversary, we can see that this change was the beginning of the end of what some called the ‘dinner party’ landlord.

The new tax on BTL property was introduced in April 2016. In a bid to beat it, the number of BTL mortgages granted between February and March that year leapt by 182 per cent.

But the erstwhile chancellor, George Osborne, did not stop there. He also announced the phasing-out of mortgage interest tax relief for landlords, which reached its climax with this year’s self-assessment deadline. From April this year, landlords can no longer deduct any mortgage interest payments from their income.

‘Professionalisation’

Perhaps unsurprisingly, around this time many landlords chose to leave the BTL sector. The number of landlords in 2020 compared to 2017 had fallen by more than 220,000, an 8 per cent drop. However, the number of private rented homes stayed about the same. This is known as ‘professionalisation’. There may be fewer landlords, but they have larger property portfolios.

We have seen this professionalisation continue with the formation of limited companies by landlords. There were 41,700 new BTL companies formed in 2020 — a record, and an increase of 23 per cent on 2019. The attraction is obvious. Corporation tax starting at 19 per cent and the ability to deduct legitimate company expenses from profits look attractive to landlords paying much higher rates of personal taxation. However, setting up a limited company with all the costs involved means this option is a realistic one only for the larger, professional players.

So far we have looked only at the tax changes of the past five years (and, even then, just the bigger ones). There have also been many changes in regulation, which have made the job of a landlord ever more onerous and once again have hastened the move towards professionalisation.

In 2017 the Prudential Regulation Authority instituted new affordability rules for all landlords with more than three properties. Lenders were told they had to make sure those landlords had not borrowed more than they could repay; this was to be done by stress-testing any new borrowing across the landlord’s entire portfolio at a mortgage rate much higher than they were likely to be paying at the time.

Landlords hoping to increase yields by taking on houses of multiple occupation were subject to new rules from October 2018. These meant any HMO with five or more people from more than one household sharing facilities would require a mandatory licence. An estimated additional 177,000 landlords were drawn into a licencing regime and forced to comply with a slew of requirements about room size plus gas, fire and electrical standards.

Landlords have also found themselves on the front line for meeting the government’s carbon-reduction targets. From April 2020 it became illegal for landlords in England and Wales to rent a property with an EPC rating of E or less. From 2025 that requirement will be upped to a C for all new tenancies, and by 2028 it will apply to all existing tenancies too.

‘Resilient’ is a word often used for the private rental sector. ‘Adaptable’ and ‘creative’ are two more. The PRS has experienced significant growth in the past 10 years, overtaking the social rented sector as the second-largest housing division. The demand for good-quality rental accommodation is unlikely to diminish soon. Types of landlord may have changed over the past five years but as a sector they are still very much with us.

Angus Stewart is chief executive of Property Master