The collapse of Britain’s giant Inside Track property investment company has sounded a death knell for the unsustainable boom in fashionable city centre apartments – according to a leading national organisation for professional landlords.

And the casualties, says the Residential Landlords Association, whose members own over 100,000 private rented properties throughout the UK, are not only counted in a generation of stranded amateur armchair investors but also in cities where skylines have been changed forever by towering blocks of purpose-built ‘white elephant’ apartments.

Inside Track, which went into administration this week, epitomised that corner of the buy-to-let market. Says RLA director Chris Town: “They reserved much of this new stock of property in northern cities, off plan, and sold the dream to wannabe amateur landlords who wanted to invest in property, affordably, and rent it out, or rely on the capital growth, to supplement or even replace under-funded pensions.

 “The collapse of the lending market has been blamed as a trigger for Inside Track’s problems but, although that’s a contributory factor, the real answer lies much deeper.

 “At the height of this city living trend, developers were selling 80 per cent of units off-plan from predominantly city centre sites - but they didn’t know when to stop and went on to oversupply the market.

“Landlords started to find these apartments difficult to let, were forced to drop rents and many eventually disinvested and moved out of that market.

 “Overestimated property values and rental yields began to plummet, resales became difficult and those ‘dream’ properties began to look as if they could turn into the inner city slums of the future.

“Some of the amateur ‘buy-to-let’ investors have lost a lot of money and the collapse of Inside Track has left many  high and dry, on their own, with no support.

“We believe this is the beginning of the end for that particular market sector and might even mark a swing back towards traditional landlords who have a different, more professional, motivation and whose property portfolios represent, for them, a longer term investment.”