An appeal has been made by the National Landlords’ Association to allow buy-to-let investors to also benefit from the two year moratorium on mortgage payments.
It does seem a little unfair that this two year mortgage break is only being allowed for homeowners who are struggling with their main residence mortgage repayments.
The NLA are putting forward the argument that the purpose of the temporary relief is to allow more people to stay in properties. Landlords are providing houses for tenants who can’t afford, or don’t want, to buy in the current economic crisis, and therefore they should not be excluded from this scheme.
The NLA argued that by allowing buy-to-let landlords time to improve their property cashflow the benefit would automatically be extended to their tenants. There is an increasing number of defaulting tenants so maybe the landlords would be able to pass on some kind of help to the tenants to help them stay in the property.
If those landlords can be helped to stay afloat then, of course, it will mean less repossessions. In a recent survey an increasing number of landlords stressed that they would experience cashflow difficulties in 2009.
Last week, the mortgage arrears from buy-to-let landlords were higher than those who lived in their own houses. This was the first time that such a situation had been noted since the Council of Mortgage Lenders started keeping a track of this figure. During the last quarter the arrears from buy-to-let landlords increased by 50% to a record number of 18,000 defaulting.
There are currently 1.1 million landlords who have buy-to-let mortgages and the NLA is pressing for the mortgage benefit to be passed on to them as well.
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