Buy-to-Let Landlords

There is something of a debate at the moment about "buy-to-let" landlords and their effect on the UK property market.

The advent of property as a pure investment (rather than simply as a place to live) is undoubtedly having some sort of effect on the property market and on the economy as a whole. With buy-to-let (BTL) landlords happily snapping up properties around the country, they have helped to drive the rising house prices of the last decade.

Would-be first time buyers complain that BTL'ers are helping to keep them out of the market. This argument is argued particularly strongly on the house price crash website's bulletin boards.

Ruth Sunderland asks Who can blame the buy to let landlords? in her recent piece in The Guardian, taking a somewhat different approach to the issue.

One thing that will be interesting will be if there is a house price crash (or correction), as there seem to be even more individuals exposed to shifts in the UK property market now than was the case in the 1980s.