Marina

I am not arguing about what might happen. I just look at the facts. 150,000 BTL mortgages in the first half of this year. If the party's over there are a hell of a lot of people who have not heard - and, funnily enough, if no-one thinks the party is over (present company on this site excepted) then the party will not be over. Okay, I'm bored with this now so I am going to shut up. Let's wait and see. I hope you don't find that in 10 years time property ownership has passed you by forever and you live at a landlord's whim. And, for the record, I am NOT suggesting you buy property at the moment.

Your evidence that contradicts my opinion .... was one person's post. And you accuse me of speaking in general terms! Okay, seeing as we are playing this game. If you ask an average BTL (if there is such a thing) - 'how much do you think property will go up in the next year?' Who thinks they will answer 63%? Who thinks they might answer 10%? Now rephrase the question - 'if you bought a BTL a year ago and the market has gone up 63% since would you sell?' I guess a lot would answer 'yes' - amazed at their good fortune and sure it can't carry on. Ask them the question 'what do you want from your BTL?' I'd bet on 'a good increase in capital value over 10 years' ... some might hope for five but really, they aren't all that stupid.

Well I think it is ridiculous if you think that BTLetters think they can buy a property and pay stamp duty, legal fees, survey fees and possibly a mortgage arrangement fee and sell a property a short time later incurring estate agents fees and legal fees - and in the gap in-between find reliable tenants and have to sort out maintenance ets - or incur letting agent fees etc etc - and simply nip in to the market and nip out a year or two or three (or whatever timescale you have in mind) and make a profit. I think because you don't like BTLetters you have to characterize them as stupid. The ones I have met are not. They may be greedy and unprincipled (although, to be fair, I have never spoken to one who has even given a second thought to the fact they might be pricing FTBs out of the market) - but they are not stupid. (Okay some are.) This is one of the issues I am always banging on about. I think very few people in this country are aware of the social consequences of widespread BTL. If you say to virtually anyone 'of course the growth in BTL is really bad news for the country, First Time Buyers have been squeezed out and either can't afford property or, if they can, can't afford to start a family. The birth rate is very low which will have huge implications on taxation in the future to fund pensions. Plus, of course, house prices have been forced up by investors which means everyone has to spend more of their take home pay on mortgage payments ...' As I say, if you say this to the vast majority of people they look at you like you've got two heads. All they have ever been told is that endlessly rising house prices is good news all round. Sigh ... deep breath .... exercise fingers for more typing of the same message .... which is why you lot need to start an Anti-BTL protest movement that gets press coverage .... you need to challenge the way people think about property. They need to start thinking of property as a place where people make a home and bring up their kids, thinking that a group of properties is not a 'portfolio' but is where a community forms and where extended families can live etc. We've fecked it up - no doubt about that - it will take your generation to stand up and say 'don't like what you've done, so we need to fix it' Repeating mantras about market cycles will achieve nothing - particularly as the market structure is changing before your eyes.

Yes I spend time on here trying to wind you lot up into doing something about BTL - protesting about it, encouraging people to maybe disrupt a few Inside Track seminars ... because I have an undeclared vested interest. You seem to have a brain the size of a pea. Errr, let's see if we can work that one out .... maybe because BTLs all have the same aim - to buy property and let it out and the same modus operandi - leverage the equity they already have to buy more property. Of course some want to own just one extra property and some want to own 50 - but the principle is the same.

And, as I have said now so often I am bored .... but here goes because it doesn't seem to sink in .... let's say a BTL investor with one flat loses his job, can't get another job, in the doo-dah, so is forced to sell his BTL. Property market is falling at the time. Who is he going to sell to? Your answer will be 'no-one' - you have this nutty notion that the property market will go into a slide and everyone will know its sliding and everyone will stand back until it hits the bottom. Which, if that were true, it never would. No one would buy until houses were £1 each. The reality is that during any correction (and we had plenty of evidence of this in 2004 when the market did start correcting) the whole might of the media and VIs calls the bottom of the market everyday. 'Property market recovers,' 'Prices up again in London' 'Property market rebounds'. Faced with this endless onslaught of information, faced with all the property programs on the box saying you have to look harder for bargains - seek out the 'hot spots' - faced with the interminable drivel .... the BTL investor in trouble will simply sell to another BTL investor who is not in trouble. If prices 'correct', yields will go up and this will be seized on to pull more of the b@stards in. So, BTL, have priced you out on the way up - and they'll price you out on the way down. It is very simple. You are priced out. End of story. Someone with access to greater borrowing power than you is using it to manipulate the property market so you can't get a look in. And they get favourable tax treatment. And yet you don't even seem to be annoyed about it.

Oh God, it's like talking to the deaf ... it doesn't matter if the rent isn't covering the mortgage. Haven't you picked that up yet? Over a long period the capital growth will cover any subsidising of the rent to pay the mortgage - and give plenty of profit as well. It's why BTL is still happening, still popular. People are making a leveraged investment that, provided they can subsidise the rent for long enough, will still be an excellent investment. I don't like it. You don't like it. The difference is I can see it. You seem to have trouble with dealing with the fact that is happening. Now. Today. Someone is buying another BTL investment. NOW. And if it only goes up at 3% a year for 25 years it will still double in value. Not bad for an investment where you only have to put 15% down. Stop repeating mantras. Look around at what is actually happening. Stop looking at the market through YOUR eyes. Then maybe you'll understand what is happening and realise that if BTL is allowed to continue unchecked, with tax advantages built-in, it will continue to grow (just the straight 150,000 BTL mortgages first half of this year) and price your generation out forever. Okay, you'll be pleased to know I am bored trying to spell out the facts of life to you lot now. You carry on in your own nutty little way, predicting doom and gloom and market cycles and boom and bust and inevitability etc. You carry on ignoring what is happening all around you and sleep happily at night knowing 'your turn will come'. I wonder how many years will go by before you realise - actually I have missed my turn.

Someone posted a link to the Singing Pig site. I am quoting someone called James Smith on that site - so don't have a go at me - I just want to remind you what you are dealing with. Remind you who has priced you out of the market and what they think of you. HE said ... "If like me you have a couple of properties on repayment then essentially some other mug is paying off the mortgage." Nice to know what your landlord thinks of you.

That is what is so frustrating about this site - no-one moves on. No-one accepts what are self-evident truths. Instead of endlessly parroting the same old questions like 'why is an expensive and low yield investment attractive to the BTL brigade' why can't you accept (it is, after all, an undeniable truth) that ... The BTL brigade do NOT regard BTL as an expensive and low yield investment. They regard it as a long-term investment. They rely on the fact that over any 25 year period you care to name property has been an excellent investment. They rely on the fact it is a leverage investment that almost anyone can get into. There are enough new entrants to BTL and existing BTLetters expanding their portfolios to make a significant change to the structure of the housing market. Why, oh why, can't you accept this and move on to what you are going to do about it - instead of endlessly calling BTLetters mindless morons etc. It doesn't matter why BTLetters have a different view of the market from you - the consequences of their actions matter. Have you noticed? You're priced out and are going to live in rented properties all your life. I am as un-xenophobic as the next man. Maybe more with my mixed race heritage. Evidence of progress please. I see very little. I do see lots of evidence that different races/religions etc do not seem to get on with each other. The body count must be in the billions by now that proves this.

He won't regret it. I know loads of people who have done exactly that. Over the years they have earnt more and slowly lost the lodgers. It's actually a much better move than trying to buy a studio flat, and then a 1 bed flat, then 2 bed, then a terrace etc. Doing that you pay a fortune in estate agent's fees, stamp duty, legal fees etc.

It doesn't alter the fact that at any moment any landlord can decide to realise his asset and sell. Unless BTL becomes completely dominant the house will be easier to sell without tenants. Even if there are tenants you would need a new tenancy agreement - which would make the house sale even more complicated than they are at the moment. One landlords capital gain is the next landlords reduced yield - very true - yet still the market stutters on. Because, I guess, the new landlord figures the house will go up again in the next 25 years. Historically, he would be right.

They are indeed. Once the property market was dominated by the fact that the majority of people aspired to own one house. Now it is moved by the fact that a significant number of people aspire to own a lot more than one house. It's the big difference and unless you realise this and stop spouting clap-trap you will never know what is the best course of action to take. I think Moosetea has made a good choice. If there is a bit of a correction it won't be significant. You are relying more and more on some sort of armageddon scenario.

I don't understand your thinking. People cannot live at home forever. Sooner or later they will need to start families. My observation is that people pay whatever rent they have to ... to some extent ... and if the rent is a big percentage of their take home pay, they have less to spend on other things ... they make do. Before we ever end up like France Shorthold Tenancy Agreements will have to be replaced with Long term ones. How can rents ever be a third of what they are now. It makes no sense.

Who would buy it from them ... yes, another BTLetter. You have got it in one. Because owning property has now become a business and/or a long term 'pension' investment. And it is simply a question of one investor selling an asset to another. As I have pointed out elsewhere ... if you hold a property and it grows at 3% a year for 25 years you will double your money. When you add in that it is a leveraged investment requiring only 15% investment - it stacks up as a great return - even allowing for subsidising the rent for say 10 or 15 years. No holes at all. The fact that the market has carried on fine since about 2001/2002 (which is when FTBs got priced out in my area) is all the evidence I need that the market no longer needs FTBs to function. I think you need to 'think the new world order' through yourself - and wake up to what is actually happening. The structure of the UK property market is changing before your eyes - helped by favourable tax treatment - and you just sit here whistling while you are turned into a renting underclass. Your choice.

I have answered it.

This is like arguing with a child. And you have the front to patronise me! I didn't say 'everyone' wants to be a landord. I said 'now many people aspire to owning 50 properties'. It's not the same thing is it? Why don't you read what people are saying and respond to it, instead of responding to something you think they said. I didn't say 'everyone' wants to be a BTL landlord - but your riposte to something I didn't say is 'that's like saying everyone wants to be a doctor'. You try to discredit my argument by extrapolating it so it is meaningless. I think it is a fairly simple thing to grasp. FTBs in the marketplace have been displaced by a considerable number of new entrants to BTL over the last 5 to 7 years. This has had the effect of pricing out FTBs. The trend looks set to continue with 150,000 new BTL mortgages in the first half of this year. I say there has been a structural shift in the structure of the housing market. You say 'lol'. I guess you are just a fool.

Where is it on the web site - not splashed all over the home page!

I guess if you repeat that often enough you hope to convince people. It is not a cycle. It is not a cycle. It is not a cycle. It is not coffee or aluminium. It is not an economy. It is housing. What has happened to housing over the last 5 to 7 years is not part of the upswing of a cycle. It is a structural shift in the way the market works. People used to aspire to own one 3 bed semi by the time they were 50. Now many people aspire to own 50 properties by the time they are 50. Big difference and it is not a cycle.

Well Sterling is so low at the moment it is very vulnerable. Is it not?

Keep taking the pills. 'Once falls set in' - you're so certain you make me laugh. What if they don't eh? We carry on just as we are. Nominal house price growth - more and more property bought by BTL - BTL happy that, long term, their investment is sound. What falling market? We had one here - during 2004 and 2005 but, as soon as prices had hardened a bit - bam, big new buying spree and prices back up again. Looks like this is what will characterize the market for a while now. People bought BTLs around here in 2004 and I thought they were nuts. Rent definitely would not cover the mortgage and the asset seemed to be falling. Well how bloody wrong I was. They are probably 20k up now and the money they pay to subsidise the rent looks like a good investment.

You have received loads of plausible reasons - house sales falling through (wow that's never happened before) and even estate agents putting boards up outside their own homes. Simple, unpalatable fact is - houses have been selling like hot cakes for the first half of this year, prices have gone up a bit and lots of houses have sold. 2006 looks to be a record year for the number of residential property transactions. Have a look at this table - it shows clearly the 'crash' happened last quarter of 2004 and first two quarters of 2005. Last two quarters of 2005 showed some recovery. Watch and wait for that to get updated with 2006 figures. They will be amongst the highest judging by the number of mortgage approvals.

Funny, I used to think that. Then I thought a bit more. I have lived through three 'falling' housing markets. In each of them the bottom of the market was called every day. We say in 2004 and 2005 just how hard and dirty the VIs fight when the market is in the process of falling. One of the reasons it recovered early this year is the fact that the VIs just wouldn't allow anyone to believe that it was falling. I used to talk to people round here and they would say 'Do you think you made the right decision to sell and rent?' ... and I would say 'too right, the market is falling around here now, nothing much is selling and those that do are sellling way under asking price'. I got looked at as if I had two heads. I began to understand just how entrenched this 'property is an investment, property only ever goes up, property is my pension etc etc' mentality is. So BTLetters will buy in a falling market. Because they will never admit they are in a falling market. On the contrary they will think any recent falls were a heaven sent buying opportunity as, in the long run, property always goes up.

?????????? BTL investors are not going to suddenly disappear from the property market IF prices start falling. The belief in property as a long-term 'pension' investment is now too well entrenched. As (if) the market falls successful BTLetters will be pouncing on bargains. So the policy won't send them tumbling even further than they would have. On the contrary, they will tumble much less than they would have. In fact, they may well not 'tumble' at all. And if I don't have a choice (well not me because I am not a BTLetter), there will be plenty of more successful (at it longer with much more equity) who will buy off me and still price you out.