20th
Nov 2016
A recent survey claiming that one in four landlords are ready to walk away from the buy-to-let sector has been dismissed by a lettings agent and blasts it as, “less accurate than the polls that missed Brexit and Trump.”
A landlord association has just issued details of its survey of one thousand buy-to-let investors. It states that a quarter of them are seriously considering selling up their because of the government's anti-landlord measures.
The head of the north east lettings firm Ajay Jagota, is dismissive of the claims and says it just shows the amount of conflicting, sometimes blatantly untrue and insubstantial data that affects regional housing market decisions.
Jagota said “I’m not disputing that these tax changes will affect landlords and that the ultimate losers will in all likelihood be the tenants whose rents go up to cover those costs – but this poll is less accurate than the polls which missed Brexit and the election of Trump."
“We work with a similar amount of landlords to the total number who took part in the survey, and not one of them has even hinted to me at any point this entire year that they are thinking of selling up. Other major agents I’ve spoken to have said the same thing."
He asks the question : "So where are these one in four landlords who are packing in?”
He believes that the responders who took part in the survey could be “1,000 probably self-selecting landlords” and he does not believe that they are a true representation of the UK investors who own more than nine million private rental properties.
Jagota is resolute that:“There’s a wider issue here that some eye-catching headline figures are once again failing to accurately reflect reality on the ground. It happened in the 2015 election, it happened in the EU referendum, it happened in the US presidential election – but it also happens in housing."
He added: “As a local agent you know the micro details about community you serve which will be missed by - even the Office of National Statistics would miss. You can even see when an individual street is on the up. But you are then told that statistics show how things are entirely different from what you’ve seen with your own eyes."
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