The Government is aware of buy-to-let lenders that stipulate no housing benefit tenants, but will not intervene.

Building a portfolio of student properties has become one of the most popular investments in the UK in recent years, as a steady rise in the number of young people heading to university has assured the market remains buoyant. But British buyers must not be naive enough to presume that snapping up any property in any location will lead to a deluge of tenancy requests, as demand is not consistent across the country.

The career of a high-flying criminal barrister lies in tatters after he was jailed for three years for taking more than £70,000 from his own chambers to try and stave off the collapse of his buy-to-let business.

The number of properties bought with buy-to-let mortgages increased by around 84,000 last year, according to latest data from the Council of Mortgage Lenders.

A new buy-to-let lending product has been launched, containing a bridging element from one lender enabling the purchase to go ahead and a remortgage product from a second lender enabling the investor to know that funding will exist at the end of the bridging term.

Yorkshire Building Society is to roll out its buy-to-let mortgages from today across the whole of England and Wales, after relaxing its criteria.

Woolwich relaunched its 75% LTV buy-to-let deals yesterday.

Bank of Scotland and Northern Rock are together facing a shortfall of almost £15m on loans made to three buy-to-let property companies which have since gone into administration.