Buy to let is Back comes the headline in the Landlord and BTL blog at Property Hawk, after the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors revealed a 2% increase in the number of surveyors that reported an increase rather than a fall in buy-to-let demand in the three months to September.

This follows a report last week from the Association of Residential Lettings Agents, which said that buy to let landlords were buying again, after it found an increase in the average number of properties they own.

The RICS report would seem to confirm ARLA's conclusion, until you dig a little deeper:

The RICS housing market survey -- the subject of the Property Hawk post -- has found a 2% increase in demand for buy to let property in the 3 months ending September. This is not the same as an increase in sales, or rather an increase in buying.

Another thing is the fact that ARLA recorded that landlords owned an average of 6.4 properties in Mar, increasing to 7.5 in June, and then decreasing again to 7.0 in the 3months to September -- the period that RICS said demand had risen.

Out of the 2, the better data comes from RICS. This is because if you look at the ARLA survey, in June when it said landlords owned an average 6.4 properties, it said that 375 people had answered the question. In June, when the average ownership increased to 7.5, 428 people had answered the question, and in September when average ownership was down again to 7.0, 363 people had answered the question.

It could be that the increased number in June made the survey more accurate, or it could be that most of the additional 53 people who answered owned substantially more than 7 properties and that pushed up the figure, we just don't know. As everyone who has ever studied anything knows, when you want to determine a change in one variable, all other variables must be kept constant throughout the series.

Thus ARLA's data is inherently unreliable. However, as approximately the same number of people answered in Mar and September, we can assume that the average number of properties owned by buy to let landlords increased from 6.4 to 7.0 between March and September. However, as was well covered in this article, this could be because of the spree on auction buying earlier in the year, though there were substantial numbers of new investors buying at those auctions according to reports.

Like I said, the more accurate data comes from RICS, if RICS say that demand from buy to let'ters increased in the three months to September then it more than likely did. I say this partly because it goes with what I know from outside sources, the recent price rises has optimists believing that the market has bottomed and they are getting out there looking for bargains. However, most of the bargains are currently still to be found at auctions, which are not covered by the RICS survey.

If anyone knows of a comprehensive source of information on auction sales, and the prevalence of buy to let landlords purchasing at auction please post it here in the comments. Until then, we just have to go with what we have, which is enough to suggest but not to irrefutably confirm that buy to let landlords are actively beginning to look at increasing their portfolio.

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