Latest / Merryn Talks Money / Is Buy-to-Let Still a Good Investment?
Transcript
- 0:02Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. Welcome to Merrin Talks
- 0:19Speaker 1: Your Money, the personal finance edition of Merrin Talks Money.
- 0:22Speaker 1: In these bonus podcasts, we talk about the best strategies
- 0:25Speaker 1: for making the most of your money. I'm Merrin Somerset Webb,
- 0:28Speaker 1: editor-at-large for UK Money. Now, this month is important. Well,
- 0:38Speaker 1: important for those of you invested in property anyway. It
- 0:40Speaker 1: marks the 30th anniversary of the creation of the buy-to-let mortgage,
- 0:45Speaker 1: a new type of home loan that triggered an explosion
- 0:48Speaker 1: of rental activity in the UK when it launched. But
- 0:52Speaker 1: thanks to regulation and tax changes, I mean a lot
- 0:55Speaker 1: of regulation and tax changes, being a landlord isn't quite
- 0:58Speaker 1: as appealing as it once was. Well, that's my view anyway.
- 1:02Speaker 1: Other people may have different views. So this week, we're
- 1:04Speaker 1: going to talk about how buy-to-let mortgages reshaped the face
- 1:07Speaker 1: of property investment in the UK and whether it has
- 1:09Speaker 1: a future of any kind. Joining me today is the
- 1:13Speaker 1: head of research at Hampstead International, Anisha Beveridge. Hampton's has
- 1:16Speaker 1: just put out a report on 30 years of buy-to-let. Anisha,
- 1:20Speaker 1: welcome to Merrin Talks Money.
- 1:22Speaker 2: Thanks for having me, Merrin. Right.
- 1:24Speaker 1: It's been quite a ride, buy-to-let, hasn't it? Can we
- 1:27Speaker 1: have a little potted history? What is it that happened
- 1:29Speaker 1: back in September 1996? Well, I think.
- 1:33Speaker 2: It was 1996 when the first kind of buy-to-let mortgage
- 1:36Speaker 2: launched that really kind of kick-started the growth in the
- 1:39Speaker 2: rental sector and has really built the foundations of what
- 1:42Speaker 2: we see in that market today. Before that time, landlords
- 1:47Speaker 2: or anyone that wanted to buy rental properties had to
- 1:50Speaker 2: either buy that property outright with cash or or they
- 1:53Speaker 2: had to kind of rely on commercial loans, which tended
- 1:56Speaker 2: to be pretty expensive in terms of interest rates, were
- 1:59Speaker 2: only available on kind of 10-year maximum terms. So it
- 2:03Speaker 2: wasn't the most kind of costly way of approaching an investment.
- 2:07Speaker 2: But the use of kind of a buy-to-let mortgage, using leverage,
- 2:11Speaker 2: and importantly, banks started using rental income as a way
- 2:15Speaker 2: of assessing affordability. And that really opened the doors to
- 2:19Speaker 2: a bigger kind of group of investors.
- 2:22Speaker 1: And you could also get interest-only mortgages, couldn't you, in
- 2:24Speaker 1: the buy-to-let business even then?
- 2:26Speaker 2: Yeah.
- 2:26Speaker 1: So you could put down a small deposit, huge leverage,
- 2:30Speaker 1: and then rely on paying an interest-only mortgage off from
- 2:34Speaker 1: the yield and then assuming that inflation would mean that
- 2:38Speaker 1: the remaining mortgage was worthless or negligible 30 years after that. Yeah.
- 2:43Speaker 2: And of course, I think it was interesting, actually, because
- 2:45Speaker 2: back then, when we look at some of the numbers,
- 2:48Speaker 2: the majority of the buy-to-let mortgages that were taken out
- 2:51Speaker 2: in the late 90s were actually repayment mortgages, not always only.
- 2:56Speaker 2: But of course, it was an era of very rapid
- 2:59Speaker 2: house price growth. And we were seeing sort of 20%, 30%
- 3:02Speaker 2: year-on-year growth in times in the late 90s. And all
- 3:06Speaker 2: of a sudden, house prices doubled within a kind of
- 3:08Speaker 2: six-year window. And it just built in the ability for
- 3:12Speaker 2: people to use that equity and kind of build portfolios
- 3:15Speaker 2: from then on.
- 3:18Speaker 1: So the way you say that suggests that over time,
- 3:22Speaker 1: the majority of the return to investors in buy-to-let has
- 3:26Speaker 1: been from capital gains. But looking at the report, that's
- 3:28Speaker 1: not what you say at all. You say something completely different,
- 3:31Speaker 1: that the majority of the long-term return has been from
- 3:33Speaker 1: rental income.
- 3:35Speaker 2: Yeah. So when we look over the full 30-year period,
- 3:38Speaker 2: around two-thirds of investors' typical kind of total return has
- 3:43Speaker 2: come from rental income. We split that period in half
- 3:46Speaker 2: and you look at the first sort of 15 years
- 3:48Speaker 2: leading up to the financial crash and generally we saw
- 3:52Speaker 2: very strong capital growth. Whereas over the last 15 years,
- 3:56Speaker 2: we've generally seen rents outperform house price growth. So those
- 4:00Speaker 2: kind of balances, the scales have very much switched during
- 4:03Speaker 2: that 30-year period.
- 4:05Speaker 1: Yeah, because initially you were saying that the very fast
- 4:07Speaker 1: house price growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s,
- 4:08Speaker 1: at that point, for a lot of people, it didn't
- 4:12Speaker 1: really matter if you had positive cash flow. You only
- 4:16Speaker 1: had to break even. You only had to break even
- 4:19Speaker 1: and nothing else really mattered because the capital gains made
- 4:22Speaker 1: all the difference.
- 4:23Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's the way that people
- 4:25Speaker 2: looked at it. They were betting on house prices continually rising.
- 4:29Speaker 2: They weren't so worried about the rental income. And it's
- 4:32Speaker 2: why so many of them were actually on repayment rather
- 4:35Speaker 2: than interest-only loans as well. That was capital growth because
- 4:39Speaker 2: of what they had sort of seen the value.
- 4:40Speaker 1: Of their own properties.
- 4:41Speaker 2: That was where they were hedging their bets.
- 4:43Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, we'll come on to how and why that
- 4:44Speaker 1: switched in a minute. I just wanted to ask you about,
- 4:47Speaker 1: there's a wonderful chart in the report. We'll put it
- 4:49Speaker 1: in the show notes and link to the report, which
- 4:51Speaker 1: suggests that every £ 1 invested in 1996 is worth £ 22. 30 today.
- 4:57Speaker 1: Absolutely marvellous. It outperforms absolutely everything. But what are the
- 5:00Speaker 1: assumptions in there that assumes what level of deposit, what
- 5:04Speaker 1: level of loan, et cetera? How does that work?
- 5:07Speaker 2: So we've basically tracked what's happened to rents and house
- 5:11Speaker 2: price growth over that kind of 30-year period. And we're
- 5:14Speaker 2: assuming that everyone reinvests their money and any dividends are
- 5:19Speaker 2: reinvested when we're comparing it to other assets as well.
- 5:23Speaker 2: I don't think we've taken mortgage costs into account here,
- 5:27Speaker 2: but what we have taken into account is broader costs.
- 5:30Speaker 2: And we can see from HMRC that the typical landlord
- 5:33Speaker 2: essentially offsets around a third of their rental income every year.
- 5:37Speaker 2: in costs. And that's what we've accounted for throughout this period.
- 5:41Speaker 2: And of course, costs associated with buy-to-let tend to be
- 5:43Speaker 2: quite a lot higher than some of the other assets
- 5:47Speaker 2: that we're comparing to.
- 5:48Speaker 1: Yeah, I suppose my question was that this assumes that
- 5:51Speaker 1: the buy-to-let investor has a mortgage.
- 5:53Speaker 2: Yes.
- 5:54Speaker 1: So it's a difficult comparison because you're not allowed to
- 5:57Speaker 1: borrow £ 250, 000 to invest in. You could if you, but
- 6:01Speaker 1: you can't actually borrow against investing in the same way.
- 6:04Speaker 1: You can't borrow to invest in the FTSE 100 or
- 6:07Speaker 1: the 250, et cetera. So it's very different. I get
- 6:09Speaker 1: the comparison and it's very useful, but it's a bit
- 6:13Speaker 1: apples and oranges.
- 6:14Speaker 2: Yes, exactly. It's the use of leverage really that kind
- 6:17Speaker 2: of makes buy or has made buy to let so
- 6:19Speaker 2: appealing over. And that's really what coming back onto that
- 6:23Speaker 2: 30 years ago when they launched the buy to let mortgage,
- 6:25Speaker 2: that was probably one of the number one appeals of it.
- 6:29Speaker 1: If you'd been able to have 80% leverage in the.
- 6:32Speaker 1: In the S & P 500, that would be quite
- 6:34Speaker 1: something on the chart.
- 6:36Speaker 2: Yeah. Right.
- 6:37Speaker 1: Let's look then at what changed. So there was a
- 6:41Speaker 1: lengthy period post-1996 when you were really, really, really accruing
- 6:45Speaker 1: capital gains and you weren't that fussed about your cash flow.
- 6:47Speaker 1: It wasn't really a big deal as long as you
- 6:49Speaker 1: weren't having to pay into the thing. Nothing really mattered
- 6:51Speaker 1: because you were making tens of thousands of pounds every month,
- 6:54Speaker 1: every year in capital gains. But then there came a point,
- 6:58Speaker 1: didn't there, where things began to change when house prices
- 7:00Speaker 1: stopped going up so fast and the tax regime changed
- 7:04Speaker 1: and suddenly cash flow began to matter.
- 7:06Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we obviously went through the kind
- 7:08Speaker 2: of 2008 financial crash where property prices fell and they
- 7:12Speaker 2: fell quite rapidly in the UK, particularly in London, which
- 7:16Speaker 2: was where a lot of the buy to let investment
- 7:19Speaker 2: had been focused, I think. But then sort of since then,
- 7:22Speaker 2: it was really kind of George Osborne back in 2015
- 7:26Speaker 2: time that started to kind of knuckle down on buy
- 7:28Speaker 2: to let, the regulation and taxation of buy to let.
- 7:31Speaker 2: And I think there was this kind of consensus, wasn't there,
- 7:34Speaker 2: that all of these buy-to-let landlords were pushing out first-time buyers.
- 7:38Speaker 2: And in some cases, I think that's probably true, but
- 7:41Speaker 2: not across the board from what we can see in
- 7:43Speaker 2: the numbers. And that's when he started introducing a 3%
- 7:47Speaker 2: stamp duty surcharge on second home purchases and announced the
- 7:51Speaker 2: tapering of this mortgage interest tax relief. And that was
- 7:54Speaker 2: one of the big, big factors that really started to
- 7:57Speaker 2: kind of dent profitability of buy-to-lets.
- 8:01Speaker 1: And how does that work? So previously, you could offset
- 8:04Speaker 1: your mortgage costs against your income, regardless of what your
- 8:08Speaker 1: marginal income tax rate was. But the change meant that
- 8:12Speaker 1: it was only a 20% tax credit. So you could
- 8:14Speaker 1: only do it at the lower rate.
- 8:16Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. And what that kind of meant in reality
- 8:19Speaker 2: was that if you were a lower income taxpayer, you
- 8:22Speaker 2: didn't really see too much kind of change because you
- 8:25Speaker 2: still had that 20% tax credit. But if you were
- 8:28Speaker 2: a higher rate taxpayer, it became quite painful. And it
- 8:32Speaker 2: also started to mean, in some cases, it pushed landlords
- 8:35Speaker 2: into that higher income tax bracket. And at other times,
- 8:39Speaker 2: it meant that you could actually be paying a tax bill,
- 8:42Speaker 2: even if you made a loss profitability wise on your
- 8:44Speaker 2: buy to let. So that was quite a big change
- 8:48Speaker 2: in the way that landlords were taxed. And it's also
- 8:51Speaker 2: one of the reasons why we've started to see so
- 8:53Speaker 2: many landlords move towards limited companies as their operating structure
- 8:58Speaker 2: of choice for buy to let.
- 9:00Speaker 1: Okay, so you get to a point where if you
- 9:02Speaker 1: don't move it into a limited company, it's possible that
- 9:05Speaker 1: your cash flow goes negative, but you still have a
- 9:08Speaker 1: tax bill. And at the same time, you're not making
- 9:10Speaker 1: capital gains in the way that you were previously. In fact,
- 9:12Speaker 1: across a lot of the UK, obviously, you're making capital
- 9:14Speaker 1: losses at the moment. And so everything begins to change.
- 9:17Speaker 1: But how did it work? Or how does it work
- 9:20Speaker 1: to move it into a limited company structure?
- 9:23Speaker 2: Well, it's a fairly simple thing to do from an
- 9:24Speaker 2: accounting perspective, but there are other costs involved. So you
- 9:29Speaker 2: do have to kind of file annual accounts. Generally, that
- 9:32Speaker 2: needs a proper accountant to do that. But some of
- 9:34Speaker 2: the big costs with moving properties into a limited company,
- 9:38Speaker 2: if you already own them in your personal name, is
- 9:40Speaker 2: that you pay stamp duty on that transfer, which, of course,
- 9:44Speaker 2: can be quite painful. You pay that 3% surcharge as well.
- 9:48Speaker 2: And you are also potentially liable for capital gains tax
- 9:52Speaker 2: if you have made a gain on that property purchase
- 9:56Speaker 2: as well. So the costs associated with moving property across
- 10:00Speaker 2: can be quite painful. But equally, people are doing it.
- 10:04Speaker 2: And we can see that in the numbers. We've seen
- 10:07Speaker 2: sort of record numbers of new buy-to-let companies set up.
- 10:10Speaker 2: The numbers are starting to slow a little bit this year.
- 10:13Speaker 2: And that's because we think so many people have decided
- 10:16Speaker 2: to take a long-term view and move those properties into
- 10:20Speaker 2: those LTD structures.
- 10:34Speaker 1: Are you seeing many new buy-to-let landlords coming into the market?
- 10:38Speaker 1: I mean, in the old days, everyone wanted to be
- 10:40Speaker 1: a buy-to-let homeowner, and you had lots of young people
- 10:44Speaker 1: doing it, and you also had the accidental landlord, people
- 10:46Speaker 1: who were owned two properties, for example, and they'd get married,
- 10:49Speaker 1: they'd buy another one, and they'd leave their old flats
- 10:52Speaker 1: as buy-to-let investments effectively. We call them accidental landlords. So
- 10:56Speaker 1: pretty much everyone wanted to get into this. And that
- 10:59Speaker 1: was a perfectly normalized and common thing to do. But
- 11:02Speaker 1: is it still? Do you see new people coming into
- 11:04Speaker 1: this market?
- 11:05Speaker 2: I think it's completely changed, to be perfectly honest. And
- 11:08Speaker 2: that's one of the biggest shifts we've seen in the
- 11:10Speaker 2: rental sector over the last sort of decade or so,
- 11:14Speaker 2: Investment has to be far more targeted now. It generally
- 11:18Speaker 2: has to be yield-focused, particularly if you are using a
- 11:21Speaker 2: mortgage to purchase that property because you can't rely on
- 11:25Speaker 2: capital gains like some of the older landlords were able
- 11:28Speaker 2: to do so. People are still investing. Around just under 10%
- 11:32Speaker 2: of all homes sold so far this year were purchased
- 11:35Speaker 2: as buy-to-lets. That figure's come down from around 16% a
- 11:39Speaker 2: decade ago, so we've definitely seen a decline. But people
- 11:43Speaker 2: are starting to change what they buy, where they buy
- 11:47Speaker 2: to try to kind of make the sums work. And
- 11:49Speaker 2: people are achieving that. But it's generally those kind of
- 11:53Speaker 2: full time, more experienced landlords with bigger portfolios who are
- 11:57Speaker 2: still in the sector today.
- 11:59Speaker 1: Interesting. So what kind of thing are they buying that
- 12:02Speaker 1: will give them that higher yield you're talking about?
- 12:04Speaker 2: Well, a lot of people are focusing further in the
- 12:06Speaker 2: north of England, which tends to have better yields on offer. So,
- 12:11Speaker 2: for example, the northeast is the highest yielding region in
- 12:14Speaker 2: the country and gross yields there on new buy-to-let purchases
- 12:18Speaker 2: are averaging around 9.8%, so just under the 10% mark,
- 12:22Speaker 2: which can look quite appealing even when you strip some
- 12:25Speaker 2: of the kind of costs back. London has typically been
- 12:28Speaker 2: the lowest performing region from a yield perspective for since
- 12:33Speaker 2: our records began. But because we're starting to see or
- 12:37Speaker 2: we've been seeing house prices fall there and quite considerably
- 12:40Speaker 2: in some of the prime markets, we are starting to
- 12:43Speaker 2: see sort of tentative signs of a few investors trying
- 12:45Speaker 2: to come back in. And they're, again, doing a sort
- 12:49Speaker 2: of cash play, relying on the fact that capital growth
- 12:51Speaker 2: might pick up in the next couple of years and
- 12:53Speaker 2: we'll see a recovery in that market. So, yeah, that's
- 12:57Speaker 2: a sort of fairly preliminary thing that we started to
- 12:59Speaker 2: see over the last kind of nine or so months
- 13:02Speaker 2: in London.
- 13:03Speaker 1: Very optimistic of them. Is there more regulation or more
- 13:07Speaker 1: taxation coming, do you think, in that we know that
- 13:11Speaker 1: the government seems to be relatively anti-existing homeowners and there's
- 13:17Speaker 1: talk of mansion taxes and changing council tax bands, et cetera. Obviously,
- 13:21Speaker 1: that is focused at the top. But nonetheless, I wouldn't
- 13:24Speaker 1: be surprised to find them trying to come up with
- 13:27Speaker 1: another way to go after landlords. Can you see anything
- 13:29Speaker 1: else that might be of concern?
- 13:32Speaker 2: Well, it feels like nearly everything's been thrown at landlords
- 13:35Speaker 2: over the last decade, doesn't it? But I don't think
- 13:37Speaker 2: if you are thinking about investing, you've got to kind
- 13:40Speaker 2: of weigh up the fact that there might still be more. Generally,
- 13:43Speaker 2: our kind of view is that the way that limited
- 13:45Speaker 2: companies are structured gives you a bit more sort of
- 13:49Speaker 2: scope to kind of get around some of the more
- 13:52Speaker 2: targeted tax measures that might still come down the line.
- 13:54Speaker 2: There are still rumours about landlords having to pay additional
- 13:59Speaker 2: sort of paying national insurance, for example, on their rental income,
- 14:02Speaker 2: which I think was rumored by Rachel Reeves around a
- 14:05Speaker 2: year ago and got ruled out. So whether we'll see
- 14:08Speaker 2: that come in, it feels unlikely, but it is a possibility.
- 14:11Speaker 2: So there is still more to come, particularly still around
- 14:14Speaker 2: the Renters' Rights Act, energy performance regulations, all of those
- 14:19Speaker 2: sorts of things too.
- 14:20Speaker 1: Indeed, there was things that didn't exist back in 1996.
- 14:22Speaker 1: So I mean, regulation is expensive as well. So when
- 14:27Speaker 1: you talked earlier about new buy-to-let landlords or the buy-to-let
- 14:31Speaker 1: landlords who are still buying, being older, more experienced means
- 14:35Speaker 1: they've taken on this regulation bit by bit as they've
- 14:38Speaker 1: gained experience in the industry. It would be hard to
- 14:41Speaker 1: come in new to it and pick it all up
- 14:43Speaker 1: in one go.
- 14:43Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that is definitely one of the
- 14:46Speaker 2: bigger barriers to entry nowadays is you really have to
- 14:49Speaker 2: know your stuff because some of the fines now associated
- 14:53Speaker 2: with not doing your job properly as a landlord are
- 14:56Speaker 2: pretty hefty. So what we are kind of seeing very
- 14:59Speaker 2: much is this professionalization of the private rented sector. And
- 15:04Speaker 2: most landlords now will either lean on a managing agent
- 15:07Speaker 2: so that they hopefully tick more of those boxes and
- 15:10Speaker 2: get a bit more advice. Or sometimes if they've got
- 15:13Speaker 2: big portfolios, we'll even have teams beneath them to to
- 15:16Speaker 2: make sure that they are complying and getting things right.
- 15:19Speaker 2: But yeah, you really do have to know your stuff nowadays.
- 15:22Speaker 1: Yeah. And I would also say that perhaps with the
- 15:24Speaker 1: renter's right, et cetera, and the difficulty you might have
- 15:28Speaker 1: with evicting anybody or troubles with people not paying their rent,
- 15:30Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, you may feel that you need
- 15:33Speaker 1: a portfolio rather than just one property. You need to
- 15:36Speaker 1: be much more diversified than maybe you did 30 years ago.
- 15:40Speaker 2: Yeah, I completely agree. I think economies of scale pay
- 15:42Speaker 2: off in these scenarios, don't they? So But diversification is
- 15:47Speaker 2: really important as well. And there are certainly ways to
- 15:50Speaker 2: do that within buy to let by buying different property types,
- 15:54Speaker 2: buying in different regions, that sort of thing. And I think, again,
- 15:58Speaker 2: that's a sort of behavioral change that we have seen
- 16:01Speaker 2: kind of investors take on over the last 10 years
- 16:04Speaker 2: or so. They are thinking more actively about that sort
- 16:07Speaker 2: of thing.
- 16:07Speaker 1: Okay. So top tips for anyone wanting to get in now,
- 16:11Speaker 1: head north for Yield. be optimistic about capital gains going future,
- 16:15Speaker 1: be diversified, understand the regulation. Anything else? What about mortgage rates?
- 16:20Speaker 1: Presumably they have been heading up. How do you get
- 16:23Speaker 1: the best possible rate?
- 16:24Speaker 2: Yeah. Mortgage rates are very unpredictable at the moment, aren't they?
- 16:27Speaker 2: Which isn't helping, but you do have the ability to
- 16:31Speaker 2: lock in early with some of these kind of buy
- 16:33Speaker 2: to let offers and sort of spread your risk in
- 16:36Speaker 2: that manner. So I think that's certainly something to think about.
- 16:39Speaker 2: But For me, the number one crucial tip is really
- 16:43Speaker 2: understand the market that you're buying into. More often than not,
- 16:48Speaker 2: it's the purchase price of a property that really then
- 16:51Speaker 2: dictates the performance of that asset longer term. So don't
- 16:54Speaker 2: overpay for something. Do your research. Make sure that you're
- 16:58Speaker 2: buying something at what you deem is a good price.
- 17:01Speaker 2: And it has rental kind of prospects or you've already
- 17:05Speaker 2: thought about where the demand your tenants are likely to
- 17:07Speaker 2: come from. And that's kind of how you future.
- 17:09Speaker 1: Proof it really. And choose your tenants carefully.
- 17:13Speaker 2: Choose your tenants very carefully nowadays. Referencing is an absolute must.
- 17:18Speaker 2: There's a whole raft of new insurance products that have
- 17:21Speaker 2: come out over the last year from the Renters' Rights Act.
- 17:25Speaker 2: And it sounds like they'll do their job. But a
- 17:27Speaker 2: lot of that we're still kind of waiting to play
- 17:29Speaker 2: out and to be seen. It's all fairly new still,
- 17:31Speaker 2: isn't it?
- 17:32Speaker 1: Insurance products for what? Insuring you against people not paying
- 17:36Speaker 1: rent insurance? Yes.
- 17:38Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So not paying rent, any sort of, if
- 17:41Speaker 2: you have to kind of go down the court route,
- 17:43Speaker 2: kind of cover legal costs, things like that. We think
- 17:47Speaker 2: we're going to see a lot more landlords turn to
- 17:49Speaker 2: products like that just to sort of mitigate risk and
- 17:51Speaker 2: have a bit of a backup. Okay.
- 17:53Speaker 1: Interesting. I didn't know about that. Fantastic. Brilliant. Thank you
- 17:56Speaker 1: very much. Any more top tips? Are we at the
- 17:58Speaker 1: end of top tip world here? That was a lot.
- 18:01Speaker 1: Those are tips. Brilliant. Personally, I'm not going to become
- 18:06Speaker 1: a buy Gillette landlord in a hurry. You?
- 18:08Speaker 2: Probably not at the moment, but I think there could
- 18:11Speaker 2: be some scope in a couple of years' time, potentially.
- 18:13Speaker 1: Okay. Watch this space. We'll get you on again when
- 18:16Speaker 1: you think it might be time. Thank you very much
- 18:18Speaker 1: for joining us today.
- 18:19Speaker 2: Thank you.
- 18:27Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to this week's Merrin Talks Money. If
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