In mid-November, Hamptons revealed that landlords were on target to have bought the fewest number of homes to rent this year since 2010 – once the period of the first Covid lockdown is discounted from the data.

The estate agent said that while the 2023 sell-off had been less pronounced than over the last two years, it was continuing the trend started in 2021. The share of homes sold by landlords in Great Britain fell from 15.7% in 2022 to 14% so far this year. Investors have bought about 11.2% of all the homes put up for sale this year, compared with the 15.7% bought in 2015.
Hamptons said individual landlords have sold 294,300 more homes than they have bought since 2016, more than the total number of homes in either Manchester or Cornwall.

Changes to the way buy-to-let incomes are taxed, significantly higher mortgage costs that have followed 14 consecutive interest rate rises, and the mooted changes to house emissions regulations have all played their part in weakening the attraction of buy to let as an investment.

From 2028, landlord-owned properties were previously set to require an energy performance certificate (EPC) rating of C or better. This was scrapped by the government in September, but it is thought it led to plenty of landlords opting to sell up rather than carry out expensive upgrades.

Ageing landlords
Aside from higher taxes, higher mortgage costs and EPC upgrades, around 140,000 landlords also retired in 2022, while a combination of high house prices and buy-to-let tax changes, means ‘the next generation of landlords has been stemmed,’ says Hamptons.

Properties sold by retiring landlords accounted for 73% of all sales by BTL investors last year, and a further 96,000 landlords have turned 65 this year, ‘which will likely mean that demographics will drive landlord sales to a new peak in the next five years,’ the estate agent stated earlier this year.