Thousands of London investors snap up buy to lets outside M25

London-based buy to let purchasers in the first half of the year have looked outside the capital in high numbers according to an analysis by Hamptons.

It says investors and second home buyers made up 20 per cent of all those from London and buying outside the capital in the January-to-June period.

This equated to 12,360 purchases in all – nearly the same number of homes sold in Birmingham in 2019.

City out-migration has been one of the key house buying trends of the pandemic with Londoners leading the charge, says Hamptons.  

During the first six months of this year, Londoners purchased 61,830 homes outside the capital, the highest half-year figure since our records began in 2006. This equates to just 10,030 fewer homes than those sold in London during the whole of 2020.

While overall transaction numbers in Great Britain have risen by 52 per cent during the first six months of the year compared with the same period in 2019, Londoner purchases outside the capital are up by 85 per cent on the 33,480 homes they bought in H1 2019.  

So far this year Londoners made up 8.6 per cent of all buyers outside the capital, the highest proportion on record and up from 6.6 per cent in 2020.

The average Londoner paid £389,975 for their new property, which means Londoners have spent a collective total of £24.1 billion on homes outside the capital so far this year, more than twice the £11.9 billion they spent in H1 2019.