A call to the government to scrap tax relief for buy-to-let landlords came from the president of the Chartered Institute for Housing this week.
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He claimed that buy-to-let landlords are pricing young people and other first-time buyers out of the market.
But Richard Gard, public affairs officer for the NLA, explained how the private rental sector played an important role in helping young people “achieve their ambitions” and afford housing at university.
“Not just the student market the private rental sector provides a very useful role in [increasing] mobility and allowing people to move away from home,” he said.
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“That has been acknowledged by the government, that [the sector] does allow a huge amount of flexibility that otherwise wouldn’t be there at all.”
He also argued that the Tenancy Deposit Scheme hadn’t had a negative impact on the number of landlords willing to take on student tenants.
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“With the huge amount of other legislation that landlords have to deal with, it [would be] another block on top of the things they need to do,” he admitted. “But we haven’t seen any slowdown in the market because of this.”
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