© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
Welcome
From the editor’s desk
This month Evening Standard writer Jane Barry takes a look at the buy-to-let market and the negative affect it can have on communities in blocks of flats. Read also John Peartree’s feelings about buy-to-let on this page.
This issue sees the launch (albeit a soft one) of our residential property business pages. In the future we will be expanding this section and we would like to hear your news.
Finally insurance is high on the agenda this month and you can read our special report in this packed issue, our largest yet by the way.
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Ben Lane, Publisher
By John Peartree, chief executive, Federation of Private Residents’ Associations (FPRA)
Buy-to-let is out of control. Until the Government makes personal pensions more attractive again then it is probably incapable of control. The double whammy, 10 years ago, of the Chancellor’s £5 billion a year raid on pension funds and the then imminent collapse of Equitable Life meant that people simply stopped buying pensions. But the money had to go somewhere and it went to the traditional haven of bricks and mortar. Buy-to-let was then in its infancy but took off like a rocket. The hard sell advertisements on television every night – actually called reality television shows – encouraged just about everybody to get in on the act. Ten years later we have an overheated property market, young people with little or no hope of getting on the property ladder, and large areas of the country with an oversupply of rented accommodation. Ironically it may well work to let a property stand empty and simply sell on at a higher price. But this is not buy-to-let, it is property speculation. If interest rate increases do burst the bubble the result could be catastrophic.
The Government should make pensions attractive again. Reinstating the tax relief on pension plan dividends would be a good start. Private savings are probably safer in sensible stock market investments – which also require less hands-on involvement – than in the increasingly vulnerable property market. If that results in more affordable housing for younger people and more friendly communities then we all win.