Landlords have been selling more homes than they bought in every year since 2016 when a raft of tax and regulatory changes were introduced.  

Confirmation of this has come from lettings agency Hamptons which estimates that by the end of 2023, individual landlords will have sold 294,300 more homes than they’ve bought since 2016.

That’s more than the total number of homes in Manchester or Cornwall.

And Hamptons says that while institutional investment in the private rented sector through Build To Rent schemes will have filled some of the gap left by private landlords, overall there were 43 per cent fewer homes available for tenants to rent in the first 10 months of this year compared to the same period in 2015.

Hamptons adds that so far this year private landlords accounted for 14.0 per cent of all sellers in Britain. In number terms, this means that landlords sold 103,130 homes between January and September this year.

If this pace continues and a total of 1m sales of all properties take place across Britain this year, private investors are set to sell 139,820 buy-to-lets in 2023. That’s 53,240 fewer than in 2022 and 61,810 less than in 2021 when landlord sales peaked.

Despite this fall, landlords are still selling more homes than they’re buying.  

So far this year landlords purchased 11.2 per cent of all homes sold; so apart from the Covid market closure during the first nine months of 2020, landlords will have bought the fewest number of homes in any year since at least 2010 when Hamptons records began.