As I was just about to start writing this piece an email flashed up in the bottom righthand corner of my computer screen. It was from my bank and had the subject line ‘How are you preparing for the future, Mr Tan?’ This was followed by the line ‘Take action today for a better tomorrow’.

This was both a very pertinent question and a particularly strong call to action, especially after I had just read some snippets of an OMS report: “Living longer: changes in housing tenure over time”. The report examines changes in housing tenure between 1993 and 2017 and what those changes might mean for older people in the future.

The main points from this being:

• Almost three-quarters of people aged 65 years and over in England own their home outright.

Does buy to let still present opportunities for brokers? What innovation does the future hold for this market? And what benefits are there for brokers looking to expand into this sector?

Listen in to the latest podcast from Accord Mortgages in which Ying Tan, Dynamo for Intermediaries’ founder and chief executive, is interviewed on all things buy to let by Chris Maggs, Senior Commercial Manager at Accord BTL.

https://blog.accordmortgages.com/podcast-35-buy-to-let-in-2020-whats-in-it-for-brokers 

No two landlords are the same. There are those who fall into the ‘accidental’ landlord bracket and at the other end of the scale we have professional landlords who have built a business around their property portfolios. Somewhere in between, we have people who have purchased additional property for short-term investment/refurb purposes, for their children to live in when at university, to talk about at dinner parties and/or as part of a pension pot. In short there are many reasons why people have become landlords over the years.

Short-term lets were a hot topic for landlords in 2019 and this is an area which is expected to continue in prominence over the course of 2020. Nationally, ARLA Propertymark estimates that as many as 500,000 private rented homes could soon switch from the traditional private rental market to holiday or short-let accommodation, primarily due to tax and legislative changes in the PRS. And a new report from the letting agents’ regulatory body, in partnership with Capital Economics, revealed that the number of active listings on Airbnb in the UK rose by 33% to 223,000 in 2018 from 168,000 in 2017.

Since the turn of the year there has been a plethora of images all over social media showing photos of people comparing themselves from the start of the decade to the end of the decade.

This outpouring also reflects just how much social media and technology has dominated the 2010s. Instagram in particular has become a digital oasis for millennials and Gen-Zers to share more of their personal lives. After being acquired by Facebook in 2012, the photo-sharing network has grown to over a billion registered users as of last year. This makes it one of the most impressive growth businesses over the past decade and also home to a whole new way for individuals and companies to build brands and generate income.

Around this time last year, I completed a search on relevant BTL news and quickly noticed a pattern which kept diverting me to the same website – a provider of financial advice for investors.

I remember being somewhat taken aback at the sheer volume of articles produced around a similar topic which included “forget buy-to-let” (as an investment vehicle in 2019) in the headlines or words to that effect.

When embarking upon a repeat search just now, similar phrasing and headlines were still visible but the volume of such articles on the first three pages of the Google search engine was noticeably fewer.

So, what can we take from that?