It’s difficult perhaps to paint a picture of a typical landlord in your mind’s eye. If you close your eyes and think about it, are you perhaps imagining an older investor or somebody that’s already quite wealthy?
We’ve all got our inherent biases but the UK property market has taken off like one of Elon Musk’s latest projects to the moon recently, and the demand for UK investment property has followed a very similar trajectory up and through the atmosphere.
That’s meant that it’s created a quite extraordinary demand for UK buy to let, with many people who may not have considered this type of investment before now thinking about investing their money in bricks and mortar.
It’s not perhaps surprising given the amount of media coverage this has garnered recently, with most mainstream media outlets having dedicated significant column inches to covering the explosion in price, yields and demand.
This has also meant that people you may not have expected are getting into the market, as we can attest to, but also means that demand is fierce.
Younger investors
The millennial generation has already sparked a financial revolution by driving fintech innovations, and it seems that they’re now starting to get into property investment too.
New research by Knight Knox has shown that just under half (47%) of landlords in the UK are now under 40.
According to the press release, ‘The research also showed that younger landlords are also more optimistic about the future. 54 per cent of under 30s surveyed were ‘very confident’ about the market predictions for the next 12 months.’
This follows trends seen for some time as the UK market gains more popularity; younger investors who are already more familiar with investment opportunities in stocks and shares, are now seeing the huge returns available to them in buy to let.
Soaring demand
The UK market saw a price rise of 10.9% year-on-year from May 2020, showing its strongest growth in decades.
Along with this, rental growth and yields have followed in the same direction. Yields across the whole country have seen that as asset value increases, so too does the rental price that can be commanded for limited resources.
We’ve certainly seen an increase in traffic coming through our website enquiring about our properties, with some extraordinary opportunities coming to market considering the environment.
Younger landlords now appear to be sensing that opportunity too, with the stock market fairly volatile and open to slumps on the back of bad news about the pandemic, meaning that secure and reliable returns are much preferrable.
Many are even buying buy to let properties before they purchase their own first property and continuing to rent privately, as the returns are so strong.
Regardless of your age, this could well turn out to be the year of the property investor, and you’d be advised that if you’re considering increasing your exposure to the UK market then speed may be of the essence as you’re fighting for limited resources.
