Share of homes bought for buy to let plummets to record low

Both the Conservative and Labour parties are hell bent on hurting private landlords. They see it as a vote catcher which, of course, it is since it favours far more tenants than there are landlords. They will do a lot of damage and the trouble is, when these ill informed politicians have moved on, the damage they've created will still be there and will be permanent

All politicians hope that when the proverbial poo hits the fan following their decision making, they will have moved on to other things.
Just look at our transport minister now and think back on the rhetoric BS he gave out over the EPC's and he knew not what he was talking about then and still doesn't.

Don’t forget Shelters involvement in this. Forever lobbying, forever making matters worse for the PRS. I’d love to see an interview with Shelter, ideally Polly Neate, with a outspoken letting agent to see how she justifies their position and what they have ultimately created in terms of damage to the industry and increased rents etc for tenants!

The irony is the Tories have done this to win over young voters over who are more likely to vote Labour, and it is a traditional Labour policy area. However, as their ill conceived policies start to bear fruit, ie smaller PRS, less choice and higher rents they could well face a backlash from these tenants who then turn to Labour at the next election. They may well need to reverse these policies to save their own skin.

I agree with and have "liked" all of the above comments/posts to this. My long detailed post here mainly just an elaboration on what they already said PLUS some suggestions on a PRACTICAL way forwards to save ourselves and the businesses we've all worked hard to build, and in some cases given so much of ourselves to sustain.

Not remotely surprising at what's happening, given the way the Government has been treating us, and for years tightening the screws to screw us!!!

Its partly due to their sheer incompetence, lack of understanding the private rental market, insistence of listening to now very bogus charities (just self-interested political lobbying groups that - amazingly and outrageously the government even supports financially now), ignoring our professional bodies who are useless anyhow and only make feeble token efforts to pretend that are our "voice" (nervous whisper really from these useless people)... yes all that and more

BUT a bigger, more important, darker and entirely less obvious reason (less obviously to most, anyhow) is the way the Tories have - since the time of shifty "call me Dave" Cameron decided to switch directions and focus on "social justice" (a ridiculous political slogan) - been steadily adopting more and more socialist policies and turning themselves into a Tony Blair-like "New Labour". Basically we now have two main parties Labour in Tory Clothing or Hard Labour in Labour clothing.

(The Tories quietly transformed themselves to the left in the hope of retaining power by attracting Labour voters. The seem to believe they can gain al the brainwashed Millennials (brainwashed by years of attending highly politisesed now heavily left-wing schools and universities - all highly dishonest long term Blairite policies that payed off big time for labour).

One of the results of this stealthy transformation is that, of course, they must make a show of loving Tenants and "defending & extending their rights", for socialist credibility and a show of caring about "social justice" (whatever that really means, which is nothing on proper close scrutiny). Meanwhile also making a show of crushing and penalising the "greedy, rich bastard" landlords, i.e. hard working us mostly doing an honest job providing an important public service for increasingly smaller margins for us to live off and more and more overly complicated and very deeply flawed red tape and pointless ill conceived and not even thought through laws.

"Proper" socialist are usually militant - and I was say the more to the left the nastier and more ignorant - people. We should respond by being well organised and militant too, but a very different sort - HIGHLY reasonable, intelligent in our approach and able to debate. NOT always shunning open debate with "safe spaces", "no platforms" and trying - when caught out and actually having to deal with a different point of view - to discredit well informed people with strong factual arguments they can't refute, and instead dismiss them as "not qualified to speak" even they aren't "qualified" either. We have to be very different and far more plausible than these nasty, bullying people for years now perfecting and succeeding with their refinements of the bullying and intimidating Alinsky "rule book" tactics.

We can and SHOULD and MUST start doing this if we'd like to still be in business in 5 years time - because the way things are going the Labour in Tory Clothing would love to see us gone and replaced with LARGE companies providing all the "private rentals" via huge portfolios of "Build to rents" and mopping up cherry picking larger private portfolios etc and squeezing and driving out the "little people" with only 1 - 10 properties, and of course all lettings agents entirely if they can - and if we let them they WILL!!!!

I've previously suggested MASS tax strikes, MASS protest/revenge evictions (revenge at government policy is still legal even if getting out troublesome "tenants from hell" now has to be handled circumspectly), and so on. Read some of my long-winded, boring (but I hope informative, if you can filter signal from noise) previous posts! But I have many more ideas I keep to myself for now but will share with any decent group that gets organised.

I'm dying of cancer - have been since 2014 when thought to have only months to live, but with mayor and minor surgery and continuous debilitating chemotherapy all the time in between (I'm typing this in bed on my laptop and was in hospital wearing an FP3 face mask all day yesterday getting more treatment).... DESPITE all that I still work a bit now and then when able AND share my passion, advice and predictions with you (most of my predictions for many years have come out correctly, especially my more pessimistic ones like these), but sadly most people can't even be bothered to read what I so painfully and laboriously type, let alone think about it or consider acting on it.

If that's you then sorry but you have only yourselves to blame.

Good luck!