At the HSBC Great Housing Debate in London today Dockar said that HSBC was seeing a trend that young professionals were increasingly delaying home ownership.
He said: “We’re probably going to triple the amount of buy-to-let lending we’re going to do this year versus last year, albeit from a small base.
“The aspiration for home ownership remains for the majority of people but there is a timing to that. We are seeing people choose to increasingly delay home ownership till marriage, kids etc.
“From our perspective buy-to-let is a viable and reasonable market to lend in.”
Nigel Terrington, chief executive of the Paragon Group of Companies which specialises as a buy-to-let mortgage lender, argued that it was also not sensible to push young people on to the housing ladder at the earliest possible moment.
He said: “For many the most appropriate form of housing is in the private rented sector. Everyone here will probably agree with what we’ve seen is that there is today a lot more tenant demand than supply.”
