Buy to Let investors are vital to the health of the whole housing market…

Without them there would be little or no choice in housing and they should not be misled by suggestions that they are the recipients of favourable tax treatment, ARLA, the professional body for the Private Rented Sector said today on publication of the quarterly ARLA Review & Index .

The latest quarterly results show that 42 % of all investment landlords have one or two properties to let while one in ten have more than ten.

Four out of ten Buy to Let investors have mortgage borrowings with a loan to value ratio of between 51 and 75 percent. A further quarter has borrowings that account for less than half of the value of their residential property investments.

Six out of ten of these investors expect to acquire further properties during the next twelve months and the average life expectancy of these investments is over 17 years.

Ill-informed criticism

Commented Adrian Turner, Chief Executive of ARLA, "Again, our quarterly figures show that investment landlords are in the business of residential letting for the long term. This is vitally important. Without these investors, who have helped to save the Private Rented Sector by re-financing it, there would be little or no choice in housing.

“If that had happened, the probability is that house prices would have risen further and the social rented sector would have buckled under the pressure. So, we must ensure that investors are neither misled nor panicked as a result of ill-informed criticism of the sector."

"Also, it should be made perfectly clear that these investments are taxed on profit and capital gains in precisely the same way as any other investment or business," Adrian Turner added.