Helen Crane

But then, you know, there is always a finite pool of first time buyers who have actually managed to get over this sort of deposit hurdle and afford to actually buy a flat.

So I think if we're saying, you know, if 40% of landlords do really sell up, I think it's a bit much to believe that all of those flats will be moved into by first time buyers.

So

Yeah, I mean, a lot of people talk about this rental market becoming more professional.

So I think a lot of these landlords who will drop out will be landlords who've just got a handful of properties, accidental landlords, you know, people who've maybe bought a property on their own, then moved in with a partner and decided to keep the property.

that they had before and rent it out.

And I think for those kind of people who don't, they don't have the scale to take these hits of, you know, a tenant asked to move out after they've only lived there a few months.

Or, you know, if you're a landlord that's got 15, 20 properties, you've got enough kind of cash flow coming in that you can absorb those little hits.

But if you've just got one or two, then one hit like that could wipe out your profit for, I don't know, months, a year.

And I think that's a shame because some of the best landlords that I've had have been those

individuals who just have one or two properties and you actually have a relationship with them maybe they don't have that letting agent who comes in and probably annoys you and also annoys the landlord a bit it might be that these professional landlords I've rented from a few of them in London you know they buy up tons and tons of usually ex-council flats rent them all out through a letting agent it's quite impersonal maybe we'll see more of that I mean in a way that's

good for tenants because I know when I've lived in those kind of properties they tend to have a handyman who works all the time so something breaks they just send him around stuff gets fixed quite easily but also it's quite impersonal and it's difficult to you know if you have a circumstance you're asking for a bit of flexibility on I don't know moving out or something you're not really speaking to your actual landlord you're going in between some letting agent and it's a bit computer says no so there's kind of pros and cons to both types of landlord

I guess.

You just hope that it's the good landlords that stay and the bad ones that decide to leave.

But obviously, it's not going to be that simple.

All right.

Survey says good thing, bad thing.

I think on balance, a good thing.

One thing we haven't quite mentioned yet is that if a lot of landlords leave the market, it's likely that rents will go up for tenants because fewer properties, more competition.

As you were saying, when you rented in a really hot market, if there's more people looking at a flat...