First-time buyers not impeded by buy-to-let investors

News Category: Industry News

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Buy-to-let investors do not serve to make the housing market less accessible for first-time buyers, it has been claimed.

According to Arla, the growth in buy-to-let properties has not made it more difficult for home buyers to get themselves onto the property ladder.

Malcolm Harrison, a spokesman for the organisation, maintained that the private rental sector had only recently grown as a result of buy-to-let investors.

He commented: "The buy-to-let investor tends to go into the middle market; and buy-to-let, until very recently, has done no more than refinance big chunks of the private rental sector, and only in the last year or so has actually helped to grow the private rental sector.

"In fact what we want buy-to-let to do is to increase [within] the private rental sector, because it's still very small."

Buy-to-let has made only a small contribution to house price inflation in recent years, according to the National Housing and Planning Advice Unit.

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