Keir Starmer hints at new housing market restrictions for buy-to-let investors

Labour’s leader Keir Starmer has hinted that buy-to-let landlords and second home owners may be prevented from buying properties meant for first-time buyers.

His comments came during today’s address to the Labour conference in Blackpool, during which he also said a Labour government would seek to raise home ownership to 70%.

This will be a challenge – the national homeownership rate peaked in 2003 at 71% but has been steadily declining ever since and currently stands at 63%.

Starmer said he wanted to see “no more buy-to-let landlords or second homeowners getting in first” and that he wanted to “help real first-time buyers onto the ladder with a new mortgage guarantee scheme” and “reform planning so speculators can’t stop communities getting shovels in the ground”.

Tilt the balance

His comments about landlords follow a speech by Lisa Nandy on Monday during which she said a Labour government would, for private renters, “tilt the balance of power back to you through a powerful new renters’ charter and a new decent homes standard written into law”.

Starmer’s speech will leave many landlords wondering if any of the parties support the idea of buy-to-let at all – Labour’s pitch in recent days has sounded almost identical to the Conservatives’, while the LibDems and Greens aren’t far off and, in the latter’s case, are even more radical.

Ben Beadle (pictured), Chief Executive of the NRLA, says: “It is depressing that the Labour Party is once again demonising all landlords.

“The vast majority do a good job, providing a fifth of all housing in the country. That is why private tenants are more likely to be satisfied with their accommodation than those in the social rented sector.”