Landlord Bashing - seems to be all around us right now.

The “Guardian� newspaper over the last two Saturdays has let its readers loose with a string of mostly anti buy-to-let letters - and London’s “Metro� free paper was at it too yesterday.

But landlords should take note because some of the Guardian letter writers’ comments were fair and needed making. In particular, their attack on absentee landlords who fail to maintain their properties and let tenants dump rubbish outside, thus destroying the look of a community was very valid.

However, the fact is that this type of landlord will not survive because tenants will rightly shun properties that are substandard and which frankly, look a mess.

But these kinds of concerns are the legitimate concerns of communities and the landlord community should take note.

That said a lot of the anti-landlord culture is of course fuelled by some jealousy of the big capital gains some forward thinking landlords made in the last 10 years – or more specifically of those smart landlord / investors who bought in the right places and the right kind of property.

Not all did and some will have made losses!

Of course, the big rises in house prices has been driven by the huge drop in borrowing costs between 1997 and 2004 and by large scale immigration (which has also massively fuelled the available tenant market).

And its worth noting - as the Abbey and the A&L showed in previous surveys last year - that despite high house prices there are millions of people who could afford to buy but actually choose to rent.

Their choice to rent simply reflects the hire and fire work culture that exists today – they may need to move fast to find work. Renting gives them that option.

Both the immigration and low interest rates factors are “one offs� and landlords are having it harder now - with net yields of 4% (about 2% below the best mortgage rate) being the norm – and yields are much less in many parts of the north where there is a huge oversupply of flats.

In conclusion, it is a shame that much of the stuff in the press on the buy to let issue has been misleading and landlords and their representative organisations need to respond positively and put the other side of the argument and explain the good that many landlords do.

I hope this is done forcefully – and fast.

Also, more landlords need to become members of landlords associations – the percentage of landlords who are members is woeful and continually surprises me.

David Lawrenson

Topic Expert

www.lettingfocus.com

I’m David Lawrenson from property investment consultancy Letting Focus. I’m the author of “Successful Property Letting – How to Make Money in Buy to Let� the UK’s top selling buy to let book and Amazon.co.uk’s top selling property title.

I contribute to newspapers and a host of property websites, write a property investment blog and am a media commentator on the residential property market. You can read more of my property investment insights and details of my networking, advice, telephone consultancy and property investment seminar programme on my website www.lettingfocus.com.