Buy-to-let customers will see their rate increased to Bank rate plus 4.49% on 1 May.
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"Buy-to-let is much more attractive now than before 2008, " said Nick Dunning, Countrywide's group commercial director.
Mr Reeve said buy-to-let had been unheard of in his area until about a year ago.
Bernard Clarke, of the Council of Mortgage Lenders, says the buy-to-let industry should continue to thrive.
But the number of buy-to-let deals on offer has fallen, according to the financial information service Moneyfacts.
More recently, buy-to-let investors have pulled in their horns, contributing to the weakening in the housing market.
But they have been replaced by buy-to-let investors who see property as an alternative to a pension or shares.
Buy-to-let investors, who have tended to purchase cheaper properties, have partially compensated for the disappearing first-time buyer (see chart).
So one group of people who do not seem to have much trouble borrowing money are buy-to-let (BTL) landlords.
Even when the landlord has a buy-to-let mortgage, the tenancy agreement becomes void.
Most buy-to-let landlords are long-term investors, according to a Bank of England survey.
Tim Hague, of the buy-to-let mortgage lender Birmingham Midshires, predicted the market would continue to be buoyant this coming year.
Home builders such as Crest Nicholson are planning to build more houses to sell to investors in the buy-to-let market.
Buy-to-let investors are emerging as one of the surprise beneficiaries of the famine in mortgage lending, according to new research.
It is worth noting that these two sources of investment demand are less likely to displace other demand than buy-to-let.
The main threat to the housing market is that house prices remain over-valued, whether for first-time buyers, buy-to-let investors or owner-occupiers.
Homes bought by landlords for buy-to-let have been excluded from the schemes.
You will have to make sure that your existing lender will allow you to 'convert' your loan to one that is effectively buy-to-let.
"With demand continuing to outstrip supply, buy-to-let will continue to be in demand due to socio-economic factors such as rising immigration, " he said.
"That is about 2% of the mortgage market and they would have been taken mainly by buy-to-let borrowers and sub-prime borrowers, " he said.
In Australia, where the house-price boom has been driven by the buy-to-let market, investors now account for 45% of all new mortgage lending.
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And numbers of first-time buyers and buy-to-let loans are not necessarily mirror images both were growing just before the crunch, for example (see chart).
When it does, this may start to curb speculative interest in the housing market, which has centred on the buy-to-let private rental market.
Investors also are encouraged by a growing number of people who are buying homes with plans to rent them out in so-called buy-to-let strategies.
Buy-to-let mortgages are another fast-growing sort of lending that raises eyebrows.
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The buy-to-let market, which many have turned to as an alternative to unsatisfactory pension investments, is looking less attractive as surveyors report a decline in rents.
"Traditionally, East London has had a buy-to-let system, but that will change, " said Matthew Black, head of the East London team at real-estate firm CBRE Group.
And there's a further problem now: with so many buy-to-let properties being repossessed, one may well end up in the same situation again in a few months' time.
If enough of them fail to pay the rent, the companies will have too little income to pay the interest on their buy-to-let mortgages, forcing them to go bust.
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