Buy-to-let landlords bought 42,980 homes across the country, around $11.09bn worth of property, the Hamptons monthly index shows
Investors purchased one in every 10 properties (13.9%) sold across Great Britain in the first three months of 2022, according to a new index.
Buy-to-let landlords bought 42,980 homes across the country, around £8.5bn ($11.09bn) worth of property, the Hamptons monthly index shows.
That is almost twice the figure (£4.6bn) recorded pre-COVID in the first three months of 2019.
Appetite in property is on the rise as investors look to the highest yielding areas of the country as a way to maximise their returns and hedge against inflation.
So far this year, over two-thirds (71%) of investors bought in the 50% of highest yielding areas of the country, up from 57% a decade ago.
It is also one of the reasons why nearly three quarters (73%) of London-based landlords bought their buy-to-lets outside the capital this year, where yields tend to be higher, up from less than a quarter (24%) a decade ago.
UK inflation is rising at its fastest rate for 30 years as fuel, energy and food costs surge. Inflation reached 6.2% in February according to official figures.
Aneisha Beveridge, head of research at Hamptons, said: Tax and regulatory changes have weighed heavily on the buy-to-let sector over the last five years causing more landlords to sell up at a time when fewer new entrants were looking to buy. As a result, there are around 300,000 fewer privately rented homes in Great Britain today than at the peak of the sector in 2017.
While we expect investors to continue purchasing at around the same rate over the course of 2022, it’s unlikely to be enough to make up for the full loss of rental homes during the last five years, she said.
She said: A lack of rental homes is one of the reasons why rents have been rising at such pace over the last year. March set a new record for rental growth as rents bounced back from 2021 lockdown lows last March.
