Assetz® News » HOME | RSS Feed FEED | LIST ALL ARTICLES | ASSETZ HOMEPAGE
Investment Property News from Assetz

Assetz® Property News Service

Booming buy-to-let sector in the UK

3rd April 2006 | back to article listings BACK    print this article PRINT

The latest figures from Paragon Mortgages' Buy-to-Let Index indicate that the buy-to-let market is again buoyant, with no evidence of the recent upturn coming to an end.

Buy-to-let investors ideally hope for higher yields, property values and rents and the latest data suggests that all three were on the up in February.

Investors saw rents rising by an average of 6.39 per cent in the three months to February, for instance, from £9,954 to £10,590.

As a long-term strategy, buy-to-let investment also relies on house price inflation as investors look to sell their properties after a number of years. Furthermore, higher house prices typically mean that more people will look to the rented sector for their accommodation and so landlords generally welcome this trend on both fronts.

Encouragingly therefore, the average property price paid by a landlord now stands at £163,417, representing a 0.5 per cent rise in the month to February and a 5.72 per cent rise from November.

At the same, yields in England and Wales were up to 6.48 per cent in March, showing solid if unspectacular growth from the 6.45 per cent in February.

Having peaked at 7.27 per cent in April 2004, rental yields have actually been in gentle decline for some time, but the last two or three months have certainly been positive, with the figures heading in the right direction again.

"Increasing yields, rents and property values are only part of the positive story surrounding the buy-to-let market. The beginning of 2005 was relatively slow, but activity picked up in the second half of last year and 2006 has seen momentum gather and investor confidence grow," said John Heron, managing director of Paragon Mortgages.

Demand for rented accommodation has now been on the rise for some time, with the 24 per cent increase recently observed by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) the highest for over four years.

A variety of factors are combining to boost tenant demand, including a social shift by which living in rented accommodation is becoming more and more desirable.

The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) recently predicted that the number of households in the UK will increase by around 209,000 each year for the next decade and this is also going to benefit buy-to-let investors in the UK.

Regionally, the East Midlands saw rental yields rising from 6.22 per cent to 6.55 per cent in February, putting it at the top of this particular league table. The north-west also performed well again, however, with yields jumping up from 6.38 per cent to 6.49 per cent in the month.

The East Midlands also topped the chart for rents, with a rise from £8,993 to £9,545 between January and February.

Only three of the ten regions saw rents falling in fact, as England and Wales continue to offer lucrative opportunities to buy-to-let property investors.

This is a press release by Assetz also available at http://press.assetz.co.uk/articles/2599.html. Alternatively, please see our full press release archive.

Assetz® is a UK and International Property Investment Specialist. Please visit our property sites shown below.

Assetz for Investors UK Assetz Hotels Assetz Homes Assetz International Assetz France Assetz Spain Assetz Cyprus Assetz Germany Assetz Portugal Assetz Ski Assetz Cape Verde Assetz USA Assetz Finance Assetz Fund Management

Accessing the news service

You can view all of the Assetz® UK, International and UK Property Investment Articles and News here.

We also provide an RSS Feed Feed of the news service, or you can view all articles. Click here to view more information on RSS readers and how they make reading online news more convenient.

eXTReMe Tracker