Track key Build to Rent Values
Access below our interactive Build to Rent map, showing key multifamily data for 20 cities across the UK.
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One and two bedroom average apartment rents
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Indicative prime forward
funding net initial yields -
Historic 5 year rental(per annum)
growth analysis 2016–20 -
5 year rental growth forecasts 2022-26(per annum)
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Number of completed
BTR apartments -
Number of BTR apartments under construction
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Number of BTR
apartments in planning
Key Findings & Methodology
- Positive rental growth expected across all cities analysed
- Rental growth expectations range from 1.5% pa in Nottingham to 4.9% pa in Belfast
- The predicted average rate of rental growth across the 20 cities is 2.8% pa, level with the 2.8% pa average seen and achieved between 2016 and 2020 across the same 20 cities.
- Eleven of the 20 cities are expected to see stronger rental growth than their historic growth
- Largest improvement expected in London where rents fell by 0.3% pa between 2016 and 2020 but are expected to show growth of 1.8% pa
- Across our models the most important drivers of determining rental growth were household income, population growth, and employment
- London is the UK’s most supplied city with 91,623 units either built, under construction or in planning, larger than the rest of all other analysed cities combined
- Manchester remains the second largest market by some distance, with over four times more built units than Liverpool, the third largest market
- Behind London, Birmingham has the largest pipeline of units, ahead of Manchester, Leeds and Glasgow
- In terms of projected growth, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Brighton and Newcastle have the largest pipeline of units in relation to the amount of their current existing tenanted stock
- There is a notable lack of tenanted stock in key southern regional cities, such as Reading, Brighton, Cambridge, and Bournemouth
- When looking at the number of BTR units in each respective city in relation to the size of the wider PRS (graph, right), London is the fifth largest BTR market, behind Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Sheffield
- Overall, UK BTR remains embryonic, with three of the 20 analysed cities having no built apartments at all, five cities having less than 200 apartments, and only five of the 20 cities have more than 1,000 built apartments
Rents: Our average rental values are to be used as a high level guide only, and assume a scheme is purpose built, in excess of 100 apartments, in a central city location, with average size units and access to standard BTR amenities.
Indicative prime BTR forward funding yields: Our forward funding yields are indicative and assume operational costs of around £5,000 per apartment per year in London and £4,000 per apartment per year in the regions, inclusive of standard purchaser costs, investor CapEx and mobilisation, but not investor finance costs.
Supply: Our supply data has been sourced using a combination of data from the British Property Federation and our own market intelligence.
Rental growth: Our analysis and forecasts use data from the Private Market Rental Statistics from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) for English cities, Citylets for Scottish cities, the Rent Officers Wales - Lettings Information Database for Welsh cities and Northern Ireland Housing Executive for Northern Irish cities. It should therefore be noted that our forecasts relate to private market rents, rather than BTR-specific rents.
For each city the relationship between residential rental growth for a 2-bed* property and several economic, demographic, and other relevant indicators were analysed before running various linear regression models. Each city’s best fitting linear regression model was chosen by analysing the adjusted R-square and P-values.
Once the best model was identified, we then relied on Oxford Economics’ forecasts for the relevant independent variables to calculate the city-specific rental forecasts. Each forecast was then peer-reviewed by our in-house experts and, where appropriate, lightly modified.
*with the exception of Belfast
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