Landlord and BTL Blog: Who are landlords?

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Who are landlords?

Who are we?

Well, its a good question, and the Council of Mortgage Lenders, with help from the London School of Economics have attempted to answer it from the responses of 2,500 landlords.

Here's what they found out on

Mortgages

Surprisingly, 49% of us own all our property outright.
47% of us have a BTL mortgage.
Of those with BTL mortgages, over half had portfolio LTV's below 60%.
Only 1% had overall portfolio LTVs over 90%, ( they also sweat profusely at night. )

Portfolio size

62% of us own just one rented property,
The average size of a BTL portfolio is 2.7 properties ( less than in 2004 )

Age

We are getting older ( 24% were over 55 in 2004, now 61% of us are over 55 )

Profile

Typically, we live close to our rental properties, over a third of us always self-manage, the a similar amount use an agent, the rest pick and mix.
We have typically invested for both capital growth and income, as a way of supporting our retirement and current income.
Two thirds of us earn less than 25% of our income from rent, with only1 in 20 of us making a full-time living from being a landlord.
Nearly a quarter of us were accidental landlords who fell into renting out property.

Income

The median average rental income was £7,500 per year.
The mean average figure jumped to £17,300, (pushed up by some very high rental incomes).

The future

Most of us see rental property as long term hold. There is a slight sentiment amongst us to sell up or reduce portfolio size as a response to tax changes.
Most of us expect net income to remain the same, or increase slightly over the next five years. 16% of BTL landlords expect incomes to fall.