The UK Property Investment Market could be a leading indicator of what is ahead for our market. But in the UK just 15% of all mortgages are for investment purposes (Buy-to-let), compared with ~35% in Australia. Yet, in a down turn, the Bank of England says investment property owners are four times more likely to default than owner occupied owners when prices slide and they are more likely to hold interest only loans. Sounds familiar?
According to a report in The Economist, “one in every 30 adults—and one in four MPs—is a landlord; rent from buy-to-let properties is estimated at up to £65bn ($87bn) a year. But yields on rental properties are falling and government policy has made life tougher for landlords. The age of the amateur landlord may be”.
Investing in the housing market has seemed like a one-way bet, with prices trending upwards in real terms for four decades, mainly because government after government has failed to loosen planning restrictions on building new houses. Now, however, there are signs that regulatory changes have begun to send the buy-to-let boom into reverse.
Yields on rental properties have fallen. House prices have risen faster than rents, in part because buy-to-letters have reduced the supply of housing available to prospective owner-occupiers while simultaneously increasing the supply of places to rent. Britain’s ratio of house prices to rents is now 50% above its long-run average. All this makes buy-to-let investment less lucrative. Data from the Bank of England suggest that yields in September were below 5%, their joint-lowest rate since records began in 2001, when they were above 7.5%.
One consequence of this could be a more stable financial system. Roughly 15% of mortgage debt is on buy-to-let properties. The Bank of England has warned that there are risks associated with this. One problem is that property investors buy when house prices are rising but sell when they are falling, making house prices more volatile. Buy-to-let landlords are also more likely to default than owner-occupiers. One reason is that doing so does not force them out of their home. Another is that buy-to-let mortgages are more likely to be interest-only (ie, where the principal is not repaid). That can be tax-efficient but it means that monthly repayments can jump sharply if interest rates rise. The Bank of England’s stress tests last month showed that the rate at which landlords’ loans turn sour could be four times greater than the rate for owner-occupiers’ loans. All things considered, the shrinking of the buy-to-let sector may come as a relief to regulators.
The future for buy-to-letters will not get much brighter. In January a tweak to the rules on capital-gains tax will increase the liabilities of landlords who register as businesses. Large institutional investors are moving on to buy-to-letters’ turf, hoping to benefit from their economies of scale to offer better-quality housing to tenants. It was good while it lasted, but the golden age for the amateur landlord may be over.
