Buy to Let Activity Picks Up in the UK – RICS

Latest report published by Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) suggests that the UK buy to let property market is on the rise as more cash-rich landlords tend to purchase properties.
In the past quarter, the number of RICS surveyors reporting an increase of buy to let investors buying new properties grew by 2%. Interestingly, the situation is quite different from what was seen in the three months to September 2009, when UK landlords preferred apartments located in major cities of Great Britain.
Latest RICS figures suggest there is a 5% increase in the number of surveyors reporting that buy to let landlords are interested in houses, while the number of surveyors reporting that residential property investors are looking for flats, fell by 15%.
The report also suggests that the pick-up of buy to let activity is not equally spread over the territory of the UK. Rather, the demand is the strongest in the North West, where a 29% increase in the number of surveyors reporting a rise rather than a fall was registered. The demand is the weakest in the Midlands with 12% and 21% of surveyors reporting a fall rather than a rise in buy to let property investments in the East Midlands and in the West Midlands accordingly.
The report presented by RICS is at odds with the latest CML figures, which suggest that the number of approved buy to let mortgages loans amounted to 21,600 in the 3rd quarter of 2009, which is 4% less than in the 2nd quarter of this year.
UK estate agents, however, are determined that buy to let mortgage loans have little to do with the increased buy to let activity as most investors rely on their own funds rather on banks’ mortgage loans. As such, UK buy to let investors bidding at Allsop, country’s largest property auctioneer, constituted 85% of all bidders (the figure compares to 65% in 2008).