The consultation by the HM Treasury on the 3% surcharge on Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) proposals for second properties has now closed. It ran for a short period from 28 December 2015 to 1 February 2016, and the Treasury is now 'analysing your feedback.'

The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has urged reform of the SDLT plans, to mitigate potentially negative impacts on the housing market as a whole. The view from CML is that even without the new surcharge, the forthcoming adverse tax changes for private landlords and other interventions in the buy-to-let market will result in a slowdown in BTL activity.

CML states: 'There is a risk of overkill in dampening investor sentiment to the extent that the flow of available private rented property could be disrupted, without any necessarily corresponding increase in the ability of households to become home-owners.

'In addition, with around a fifth of households currently renting in the private sector, there is the perverse risk that the SDLT increase could cause landlords to charge higher rents, and so actually make it harder for tenants who want to buy to save the deposit needed to do so.'