A new Bank of England survey has confirmed a growing outflow of landlords from the private rental sector since 2020.

The Bank’s survey says the “post-pandemic peak in outflows was more notable in London and the South East than other UK regions.”

The verdict from the BoE comes after debate with some critics of the private rental sector claiming there has been no exodus of landlords, while private rental industry experts have pointed to reduced supply and growing demand being behind recent rent rises.

The Bank’s survey is contained in a new paper called The Buy To Let Sector and Financial Stability, which includes a section on whether the sector has seen an exodus of buy to let landlords.

The Bank says there are no available measures that fully capture the size of the PRS, with the main existing measures being Homes listed for sale within three years of being advertised for rent (compiled by Paragon Bank); Implied changes in the BtL mortgage stock (compiled by UK Finance); the number of second homes subject to capital gains tax (HMRC); and letting and estate agents’ record of the share of properties bought and sold by investors, applied to HMRC property transactions to estimate whole market numbers (Hamptons). 

The Bank of England says: “Measuring changes in the size of the PRS is challenging. It often requires using different property-level data sets, which can be hard to match. And distinguishing between properties moving between the private rental and owner-occupier markets versus properties changing hands between landlords is important. This is made more difficult when properties have complex or incomplete rental histories.”

So instead it has calculated its own measure of net additions to the stock of rental properties in the PRS, using HM Land Registry property transactions and rental advertisements provided by Zoopla. 

And it says: “While imperfect, our measure captures net flows across a significant share of the private rental market … Our measure indicates modest net outflows from the PRS in aggregate, and across UK regions and property sizes.

“Landlord outflows and inflows converged over 2016 to 2020. Outflows appear to have outstripped inflows for at least the past two years, but at a more modest rate than other measures suggest. These trends are broadly consistent across regions and property size. The post-pandemic peak in outflows was more notable in London and the South East than other UK regions.”