15th April 2005

The winding up by the Department of Trade and Industry of a string of Buy to Let advisory and investment services has been welcomed by the Association of Residential Letting Agents, ARLA.

The DTI announced yesterday that it had taken action in the High Court to have these companies wound up in the public interest. Two of the companies offered to help investors build £1 million property investment portfolios while others operated £6,000 courses to teach investors how to acquire Buy to Let properties without payment of deposits.

"ARLA has been campaigning against companies and services such as these since they first made an impact on the Buy to Let sector more than two years ago," said Adrian Turner, Chief Executive of ARLA. "We have has extensive help from the media and campaigning groups such as Which? We also ran a series of Buy to Let Masterclasses for investors last year in bid to counter the whole industry of false promises."

ARLA and the ARLA Panel of Mortgage Lenders, Birmingham Midshires, GMAC Residential Funding, NatWest Mortgage Services, Paragon Mortgages and The Mortgage Business, have dedicated extensive resources to providing all the information a new Buy to Let investor needs to make informed decisions. In addition to the detailed information available on the ARLA website, the links to the panel of mortgage lenders and the information available free from the 1,500 ARLA member letting offices throughout the country, ARLA and the Council of Mortgage Lenders jointly publish the ARLA/CML Buy to Let Guide each year.

"We can only hope that news of the DTI action gets around fast so that no more people are promised the earth at exhorbitant prices but make informed decisions based on professional advice which is available to them free," added Adrian Turner.

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