New Landlords

It is ten years since mortgage companies started to lend to would-be landlords again with any sort of enthusiasm.
What could be easier Borrow money cheaply, buy a flat or house, let it to tenants and relax while you enjoy the income and the rise in the value of the property.
That is the apparent appeal of the buy-to-let market which has produced a boom for private landlords.
In the first half of the year, new mortgage borrowing by buy-to-let landlords hit record levels.
They took out 152,500 such mortgages, 17% more than in the previous six months, according to the Council for Mortgage Lenders (CML).
There are now 767,000 buy-to-let mortgages, accounting for 8% of all current home lending, up from 1% in 1999.
For the lenders it has been a juicy slice of new business.
And, so far, it has produced good returns for the investors who have seen the value of their properties move in just one direction - up.
Housing laws
According to the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA), things took off ten years ago when the housing laws were tweaked so that it became impossible for tenancy agreements to accidentally create a sitting tenancy.
Legislation in the 1960s, 70s and 80s had given sitting tenants such good protection that landlords could almost never get them out.
Good for the tenants, not good for the landlords.
But once the 1988 Housing Act - which created assured shorthold tenancies - was tidied up in 1996, the stage was set for the revival of the private landlord.
"Until then lenders had been scared to lend on residential property because of the sitting tenant problem," says ARLA spokesman Malcolm Harrison.
Who are they
There are approaching 800,000 buy-to-let mortgages in existence.
ARLA reckons the people who have them now account for one third of all private landlords.