3 ms·

If buy-to-let is profitable, people will do it as a business... If people do it as a business, it'll drive the price of housing up even more, and since busines

If buy-to-let is profitable, people will do it as a business... If people do it as a business, it'll drive the price of housing up even more, and since businesses have more capital than workers, the latter will be priced out (if lucky, they'll be able to afford a 90% LTV which will take decades to repay, but most workers cannot afford it on their own) If you care how much you pay, you care about who is extracting money out of you

Nasrudith 6y ago
That does not follow - they are still fulfilling housing demand by renting it and more capital means more ability to build houses. The whole premise appears telological - landlords are intrinsically bad ergo everything they do will make the housing situation worse.
- berdario 6y ago
  You're mixing up home builders with landlords. The latter aren't fulfilling housing demand: they are capturing it by outcompeting people who cannot afford property prices (prices driven up by buy-to-let demand). You say that landlords are intrinsically bad: lots of people agree with you on that... I stop short of it, since there's a minority of people for which renting is a preferable solution (at least temporarily) and nationalising the whole housing market is infeasible.