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How much do investors pay for houses?

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  • Bracke, Philippe

    (Bank of England)

Abstract

In 2013 buy-to-rent investors — referred to as buy-to-let (BTL) in the United Kingdom — accounted for 13% of all UK mortgage-funded housing transactions and for an even greater fraction of non-mortgage sales. This paper studies the behaviour of BTL investors using 2009–14 micro data. Combining the universe of transactions from the England and Wales Land Registry with online listings from WhenFresh/Zoopla, I identify a BTL purchase as a transaction where a rental listing on the same property appears on the web in the six subsequent months. The micro data reproduce the increase in BTL transactions over 2009–14 and show that BTL investors are more likely to invest in regions with large rental markets. I find that, on average, BTL investors pay 0.9%–1.1% less than other buyers for equivalent properties. Discounts are larger (around 2%) in regions with less liquid housing markets. Results are robust to including detailed geographical fixed effect and advertised sale prices in the regressions. I also show that properties purchased by investors spend on average five days less on the market.

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  • Bracke, Philippe, 2015. "How much do investors pay for houses?," Bank of England working papers 549, Bank of England.
    • Handle: RePEc:boe:boeewp:0549
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    Cited by:

    1. Lingxiao Li & Abdullah Yavas & Bing Zhu, 2023. "Externalities of residential property flipping," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 51(1), pages 233-271, January.
    2. James Mills & Raven Molloy & Rebecca Zarutskie, 2019. "Large‐Scale Buy‐to‐Rent Investors in the Single‐Family Housing Market: The Emergence of a New Asset Class," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 47(2), pages 399-430, June.
    3. Korevaar, Matthijs, 2023. "Reaching for yield and the housing market: Evidence from 18th-century Amsterdam," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(3), pages 273-296.
    4. Jeffrey P. Cohen & John P. Harding, 2023. "The Bargaining and Contagion Effects of Investors in Single Family Residential Properties: The Case of Denver Colorado," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 67(1), pages 29-64, July.
    5. Mark Andrew & Fabrice Larceneux, 2019. "The role of emotion in a housing purchase: An empirical analysis of the anatomy of satisfaction from off-plan apartment purchases in France," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(6), pages 1370-1388, September.
    6. Geoffrey K. Turnbull & Arno J. van der Vlist, 2022. "Bargaining power and segmented markets: Evidence from rental and owner‐occupied housing," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 50(5), pages 1307-1333, September.
    7. Erlend Eide Bø, 2019. "Buy to let. Investment buyers in a housing search model," Discussion Papers 896, Statistics Norway, Research Department.
    8. Marcus T. Allen & Jessica Rutherford & Ronald Rutherford & Abdullah Yavas, 2018. "Impact of Investors in Distressed Housing Markets," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 56(4), pages 622-652, May.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    House prices; rents; real estate investors;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • R21 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Housing Demand
    • R31 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Real Estate Markets, Spatial Production Analysis, and Firm Location - - - Housing Supply and Markets

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