I read that earlier. In some ways, I'd hoped the obstacles would have helped keep house prices down.

They should except if you have access to the banks lending window. In the US the traditional buy to let investor has been crowded out by hedge funds.

Thnkfully I'll have enough equity not to be a risk when I remortgage. It must be depressing for people trying to get on the housing ladder though.

As long as your house price increases. With fewer first time buyers the scope for ever increasing prices becomes slimmer.

Consumer credit supply is only one factor in house prices, and its importance is further reduced if an alternative source of funding and a different type of buyer are available. If consumers and small buy-to-let firms are squeezed by a shortage of retail funding then that creates an opportunity for the bond market funded investment trusts to step in and reap decent returns. That's likely to be quite tempting anyway as the retail properties they own up and down all the high streets of Britain are, apparently, a wasteland now.

House prices will only fall significantly if demand does. That requires changes to planning permission rules so that it's easier for smaller operators to buy and develop land, and changes to the tax system so that it is less profitable to gain planning permission decades in advance of actually building anything. This would draw new money into the building of new houses rather than the buying of old ones.

If local authorities received a decent cut of the proceeds they would also be more likely to approve stuff, and if they were given a larger chunk still in return for excusing developers from the affordable housing portion of their commitment, more good quality cheap houses could be built too. So this shouldn't even be a partisan issue so far as I can see. I must be very naive for failing to understand why this hasn't been done already.

Nope. My equity increases because the longer I pay my mortgage, the more capital I've paid off and therefor the more equity I have.
Yes, my house is worth about £10-15k less now than when I bought it seven years ago. But that doesn't add up to the amount of deposit plus captial repayment I've made.
Even if prices stay the same, or even drop slightly, I'm not really a risk to the banks. I doubt anyone who has a mortgage for ten year (ish) or more is much of a risk, unless they're on interest only.

Yes but many people are on interest only mortgages. If you have a repayment mortgage then as you say over time the equity will build even if house prices are stagnant for the remainder of the mortgage. TBH we should only have repayment mortgages.

My thought's exactly.
If you can't afford to include the capital repayment, then you can't afford the mortgage.

what annoys me most really is that mortgage companies request that rents in buy to lets cover the mortage + x %. Which technically means than the people living in this property could have afforded the repayments themselves and are in effect buying someone else a home while insuring that they'll never manage to save enough to put a deposit together.

If used for the right people then there is nothjing wrong with Interest only - unfortunatly they were flogged to all and sundry as a way for them to take out an ever larger mortgage than they could afford with no thoughts to a repayment plan

That really only applies if the landlord has a very high loam to value. If the mortgage is less than 50% of the value of the property then it would have to be a very high margin to penalise renters over landlords. Personally there should be a much higher deposit imposed on landlords so that they do not necessarily price out first time buyers. It would also eliminate the risks of the landlord defaulting and leaving the tenant being given 7 days warning of eviction. The solution could be that the tenant could take over the mortgage if they are willing and able to take on the mortgage.