The doom mongers who said escalating costs for landlords created by the recent tax squeeze and the looming letting fees ban would encourage more to self-manage appear to be wrong.
Research by the National Landlords Association (NLA) among property investors has revealed that more landlords are now using agents than last year, particularly in outer London, the South East and Wales.
Just over 60% of the 800 property investors it quizzed said they currently use a letting agent, an increase of seven percent when compared to the final quarter of 2016.
Annual increase
The NLA said this is an unusual increase because the proportion of landlords who use agents has remained steady in recent years, rising by only one percent between 2014 and 2016 to 54%.
This has created a corresponding drop in the number of those who self-manage their properties, which has slumped by 10% since the end of last year.
“As landlords plan ahead to compensate for the tax changes over the next few years we would expect to see the number who use an agent to slowly fall away, and for more to start considering whether they are able to manage their properties themselves,” says Richard Lambert, CEO of the NLA.
“However, this sudden spike, which is completely out of step with recent trends, completely turns this theory on its head. The big question is whether or not it’s a blip or if it will continue to rise”.
What the NLA figures mask is how varied reliance on letting agents is among landlords across the UK.
Within England the North East has the highest proportion using a letting agent, although it’s the highest in Scotland, where nearly 80% manage their properties through an agent. Landlords in the North West use agents the least, the NLA figures show.
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