Landlords we are quite normal people really

I was reading this article in the Guardian over the weekend and it struck a chord.

What is it about people and the media in the UK that they have to knock everything including buy-to-let and landlords.

For several years all areas of the media have been taking pot shots at landlords and the buy-to-let sector in general for:

driving up the price of residential property
stopping first time buyers getting on the housing ladder
and probably even the bad weather

Landlords - how do you escape from the credit crunch?


The banks were the real villans
The reality was that inflated investment property values were nothing to do with landlords and residential investors. The real villans in the piece were the banks. They were the institutions that were gate keepers to landlords aspirations to invest in residential property. The fact was they were greedy and wanted to lend to more and more to investors because they were making money out of it and more money than to lending to home owners.

A landlord only has to look at the costs to them of mortgage fees, survey costs, admin fees, early redemption fees as well as the obvious interest costs.

Now house prices are dropping and landlords are left with a depreciating asset. The bleating crowd of first time buyers and general wingers who were complaining that buy-to-let was squeezing them out of the residential market have disappeared. Presumably ensconced now in a nice rental property, where they as tenants don't have to worry about:

leaking taps
failing boilers
decorating exteriors
and falling capital values