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Housing Market

‘Don’t blame buy-to-let landlords for first time buyer problems’

NLA fights back against politicians who blame property investors for lack of supply and high prices for FTBs.

Nigel Lewis

buy-to-let

Landlords play a much less significant role in competing with first time buyers than politicians and consumers think, it has been claimed.

The National Landlords Association says access to affordable finance and the huge deposits many first time buyers must now scrape together are far more important than competition for properties from landlords.

Richard Lambert image

“Everyone seems to have a gut instinct about the extent to which they feel landlords and first time buyers compete for homes in the UK, but homeownership is a highly emotive issue so the facts are often overlooked,” says the NLA’s CEO Richard Lambert (pictured).

The comments were made yesterday as the NLA revealed that letting agents could soon see 380,000 properties removed from the private rental market as the government’s buy-to-let tax crackdown continues.

It reckons a tsunami of landlords offloading buy-to-let properties is about to hit the sector as 19% of all the landlords it canvassed said they were intending to sell up this year.

First time buyers

But the research has a silver lining. The NLA reckons nearly half of the properties being sold by landlords will be ideal for first-time buyers because 45% of landlords planning to sell up own apartments.

This will be welcome news within government circles – several housing ministers have said the recent tax relief reductions were designed to help increase property supply for first time buyers and help reduce prices.

“These findings sound like positive news for potential new home-owners, but the reality is not everyone wants, or is in a position financially, to buy,” says Lambert.

“In fact, if all these homes are sold as planned then it will lead to a significant fall in the supply of property available to those who choose to rent, or have no other option but to rent”.

Read more about buy to let.

 

May 17, 2018

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