Britain’s biggest buy-to-let landlord, Fergus Wilson, says future investors will never be able to match the financial success he has enjoyed – and that landlords’ days in this country are numbered.
Fergus and his wife Judith bought nearly 1,000 homes in Ashford and Maidstone in Kent, but are now in the process of selling up. He reckons the much tougher lending criteria, with larger deposits and higher rental income requirements, will kill off the market for future buyers.
“It will be impossible to achieve in the future what Judith and I achieved. The constraints put on [buy to let] by the government will ensure that. It is keen to ensure there is never a repeat of 2008… it is being cautious, some will argue over-cautious. The days of the small buy-to-let landlord are numbered. Very many landlords are exiting because of restrictive tax conditions due to hit them.”
The number of houses bought with buy-to-let mortgages is already slumping, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders. Its economist, Bob Pannell, predicts a “fairly substantial” fall in buy-to-let lending in 2017, suggesting that 2015 may turn out to have been “peak buy to let” year.
“We are already at or past the peak for buy-to-let lending,” he says. “We are currently running at around 6,000 new purchases a month using buy-to-let mortgages, compared with 10,000-11,000 in the corresponding period last year. The combination of a tightening in lending criteria and changes to tax relief are the key drivers.”
