LONDON, July 3 /PRNewswire/ --     Buy to Let investors are vital to the health of the whole housing market.
Without them there would be little or no choice in housing and they should
not be misled by suggestions that they are the recipients of favourable tax
treatment, ARLA, the professional body for the Private Rented Sector said
today on publication of the quarterly ARLA Review & Index .

The latest quarterly results show that 42 % of all investment landlords
have one or two properties to let while one in ten have more than ten. Four
out of ten Buy to Let investors have mortgage borrowings with a loan to value
ratio of between 51 and 75 percent. A further quarter has borrowings that
account for less than half of the value of their residential property
investments.

Six out of ten of these investors expect to acquire further properties
during the next twelve months and the average life expectancy of these
investments is over 17 years.

Commented Adrian Turner, Chief Executive of ARLA, "Again, our quarterly
figures show that investment landlords are in the business of residential
letting for the long term. This is vitally important. Without these
investors, who have helped to save the Private Rented Sector by re-financing
it, there would be little or no choice in housing. If that had happened, the
probability is that house prices would have risen further and the social
rented sector would have buckled under the pressure. So, we must ensure that
investors are neither misled nor panicked as a result of ill-informed
criticism of the sector."

"Also, it should be made perfectly clear that these investments are taxed
on profit and capital gains in precisely the same way as any other investment
or business," Adrian Turner added.

The ARLA Review shows that the current rate of return on a cash
investment in rental property is 11.32%, up 0.14%. On a geared - mortgaged -
investment, the returns are 23.25%, up 1.57%. These returns include rental
yields and capital appreciation.

To bring the figures into line with the market, the assumptions in this
quarter's Review are for a mortgage interest rate based on an average of the
two year fixed rates currently available from the ARLA Group of Buy to let
Mortgage Lenders. This is instead of an arbitrary 1.75% above base rate that
was applied before and reflects the Buy to Let mortgage market trend. The
annual rate of rent inflation is assumed to be the same as the Retail Price
Index, currently 4.8%.

The ARLA Review & Index takes its information each quarter from an
average of nearly 500 letting offices and over 250 investment landlords. It
is by far the largest survey of the Private Rented Sector and is supported by
the ARLA Group of Mortgage Lenders: Bank of Ireland, Cheltenham & Gloucester,
GMAC-RFC, Mortgage Express, NatWest, and Paragon Mortgages.

Again this quarter, the Review shows that the average time tenants remain
in a property is longer at 18.2 months, against 18 months in the previous
quarter. This continues the upward trend of the past two years.

Asked what properties investment landlords favour, less than 20% report
buying new build. The majority, 45%, have bought property that is already in
good condition, 18% bought property needing refurbishment. However, property
that is actually in a poor condition is the least likely to be purchased.

Said Adrian Turner, "Private individuals who invest in the Private Rented
Sector are cautious and make good landlords. This is precisely the type of
individual that ARLA hoped to attract when it launched Buy to Let, the post
housing crash rescue operation for the whole sector over a decade ago. We
must continue to encourage private investment in the rental market or risk
seeing increasingly serious problems in the general availability of housing."

Editors Note: The Review and Index and the Landlord and ARLA member
surveys can be downloaded from www.arla.co.uk.