[alexgmcm]

Traditionally those letting houses owned the houses outright - the mortgage was paid off.

"Buy-to-let" has changed this but perhaps that is not a good model.

[ghaff]

>Traditionally those letting houses owned the houses outright - the mortgage was paid off.

So, in other words, they have a bunch of money invested in an asset that, if they sold it, could otherwise be earning some rate of return in some other investment.