The last few months have seen three exciting new entrants into the Private Rental Sector
- Goldman Sachs who have purchased a portfolio of over 900 properties with a view to building a portfolio of 3,000 properties
- Lloyds Bank who have created a company to buy/ develop a private rental portfolio
- John Lewis who are going to build buy to rent properties in and around a number of their department stores
We hope to track these exciting new entrants into the market. But what we need to understand is how important these events are. Because up to now none of these parties would have ever considered getting involved in this market on any terms ( except in regard to mortgages for Goldman Sachs and Lloyds)
So why is this change taking place? Because at long last the Institutions have woken up to the potential of the private rented sector. A variety of factors may be the cause of this. Certainly the changes of the last 2 years in the economy must have had an effect. You may no longer be able to rely on commercial property or office developments or hotels and restaurants or a variety of other investments that in the past attracted Institutions But throughout the pandemic residential property has shown its worth even with the problems that the inability to evict Tenants could have caused.
And this move falls in line with the Government’s desire to encourage larger private landlords into the market. They do not really consider that part time or accidental Landlords to be the right solution no matter how good they might be as individual landlords. But they believe larger Landlords will have the capital and resources to provide the type of Private Landlord they do want to see.
This could be the start of a seismic change in this market and tracking this is one of the prime purposes of this website. So iwe welcome any information from readers of this website either about these transactions or about similar transactions in the market