Mildly reassuring.

Lola spotted the article in the Torygraph bemoaning and bewailing the fate of the poor hard-pressed buy-to-let landlords, some of whom might face ever so slightly higher income tax bills in future.

The first few comments are pure Home-Owner-Ist drivel, but the bulk of the rest of the comments are pretty rapaciously anti-BTL.

For example:

nicholasportsmouth

Good. Happiness, for us owner-occupiers, will be seeing the BTLers sell up and for us to gain neighbours who own their properties, care for them and connect to the local community. I hope this measure will lead to many more fellow citizens becoming owners-occupiers for the first time.

nautonier

BTL is strangling the UK housing market - BTL parasites need to be taxed until their pips squeak as makes it easier for push-push Cuckoo immigrants to enter the UK job and housing markets both as Landlord and tenants and to be subsidised as Landlords on tax relief on mortgage interest tax relief.

BTL prevents young British families from getting on the housing ladder and causes UK rents and house prices to rise to unsustainable purchase prices for owner occupiers.

UK housing is now a special commodity and needs to managed as such... there is no housing shortage if the BTL parasite is fully taxed out of the market.

The Chancellors budget is welcome in reducing the size of the nanny interfering state that subsidises mass immigration to England but it has substantially failed to redress the UK obsession with subsidising the BTL parasites and as permanently damages the prospects for most British families in terms of them ever getting on the housing ladder and as damages investment in the real productive, industrial economy.

The main thing missing from the Chancellor's budget was a mechanism to allow private pensioners to invest in the real industrial economy and get a realistic rate of return.

BTL is killing the UK and is doing great damage.