But-to-let £90 more expensive

The buy-to-let boom has pushed up the cost of the average home by £14,000, according to the first independent research into how investment buyers affect the housing market.

The report, published today, shows that buy-to-let has made it harder for first-time buyers by adding an average £90 a month to the typical owner-occupier's mortgage payments.

The study comes from the National Housing and Planning Advice unit, an independent body set up in 2004 to advise the government on housing supply and affordability. It showed the price of the average home had risen 150% in real terms since the mid-1990s.

The unit's chair, Stephen Nickell, a former member of the Bank of England's rate-setting monetary policy committee, said: "Without the impact of buy-to-let mortgages, the figure would have been nearer 130%. The typical home would have been £169,000 rather than £183,000. This will increase mortgage payments from £1,100 to £1,190 a month."

Nickell conceded that his figures, based on national statistics, ignored "buy to let hotspots" such as university towns and city centres, where the effect may have been greater. He said other factors, such as "interest rates, the growing numbers of households, rising incomes and constrained housing supply have contributed much more to house price inflation".

The buy-to-let sector has boomed in recent years, with an estimated 2.5m homes in England being rented from more than half a million private landlords. The market took off in the late 1990s, helped by the introduction of buy-to-let mortgages calculated on the anticipated rental income rather than the landlord's earnings. Buy-to-let investors receive tax relief on loan interest

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