While the housing market has taken a continued dip, with housing prices dropping, there are still some home owners who are doing just fine for themselves. A new trend in Cornwall, Devon and other South West areas has started, with people renting out spare rooms in other people’s homes.
Data from Spareroom.co.uk, looking at 2.2 million users, has found that the homeowners in the South West are raking it in. They are earning thousands of extra pounds of income a year renting out pieces of their homes.
Spareroom believes that they’ve seen a marked increase in this practice, both because homeowners are in need of the extra income and are able to get tax benefits by renting rooms, and because so many people are feeling financial strains.
In Truro, for instance, there has been an 89% rise in live-in landlords during the last two years, while housing prices in that area have risen 121% in the last two years.
As Matt Hutchinson, the director of Spareroom, explained,
“The rise of the lodger has been a feature of the financial mire that the UK finds itself in, with cash-strapped homeowners trying to find ways to boost their incomes to pay escalating bills.”
He continued, “What’s clear from these figures is that renting out a spare room continues to be one of the most popular and simple ways to make some extra cash, and with the economic climate still in a state of ill health, live-in landlord numbers are likely to continue rising.
After all, is there an easier way to make a tax free income of £4,250 a year?”