r/Glasgow Tools

Well, as an example, if you think that the rental market gives a good return and is a safe place for your money, then instead of buying a property and renting it out yourself, you could buy shares in a publically-listed private rental landlord, saving yourself the hassle of actual property management and benefiting from their economy of scale. Buying [shares in Grainger in 2015](https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=grainger+shares), for example, would have netted you a 50-100% return over 4 years, which is probably way in excess of what you would have made from your own property.

But that would again have meant putting all your money into a single company and asset class, and investing/withdrawing at the right time, so more sensible would be investing in a stocks and shares portfolio or a managed fund appropriate to your risk level, which is what a financial advisor would determine.

The issue is that people think that because buy-to-let has been a great money spinner for so many people over the last decade, that it will continue to be so for another decade. This is a really bad assumption to make, as anyone who invested in property in the late 80s will attest, and again the tax changes in 2017 have made buy-to-let far less attractive for 'hobbyist' landlords - one of the main reasons for doing it was to offset tax on other gains, and this is no longer possible.

The right instrument to use depends entirely on what you want the money for, when you want the return, and how much risk you are comfortable with.

See https://www.reddit.com/r/UKPersonalFinance/ and their flowchart here: https://i.imgur.com/BfHzwr9.png