Spotting a chance to generate income, institutional investors such as pension funds have taken to developing blocks of professionally run rental homes across the UK to compete with the part-time landlords who have traditionally dominated the country’s £1tn rental sector.
While politicians have broadly welcomed the prospect of greater institutional ownership in the private rental market, other people have raised concerns that developers are turning out premium apartments for affluent millennials, rather than family homes.
Caroline Simmons, a strategist at UBS Wealth Management, says that many of these build-to-rent developments were on the outskirts of London as investors sought to maximise returns.
