New data: property in England & Wales owned by overseas individuals
Update June 2023: We have published corrections to this report, due to errors in data supplied by HM Land Registry. Rather than cite the data below, please see the updated briefing and blog post.
Today, CFPD publishes new data and research on properties in England & Wales owned by individuals based overseas.
Gaps in published official data hamper our understanding of purchases by overseas buyers, While official data on titles in England & Wales registered to companies based overseas has been published since 2017, there is no equivalent official data for titles registered to individuals based overseas.
Via FOI requests, we obtained previously unpublished data from HM Land Registry on the number of property titles owned by individuals with an overseas correspondence address. The data shows that:
247,016 titles across England & Wales are now registered to individuals with an overseas correspondence address, nearly 1% of all registered titles. This has more than doubled since 2010, when such individuals owned around 0.4% of titles.
Three-quarters of the titles are registered to individuals with addresses in just 20 countries, with the main groups being the Crown dependencies and British Overseas Territories (Jersey, Guernsey, Isle of Man and the British Virgin Islands), South-East Asia and the Middle East, and English-speaking countries.
The growth in titles registered in Northern cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Salford and Leeds has also been notable, particularly since 2016.
Previous studies of the effect of such buyers on local markets have been limited, based on small samples or anecdotal evidence. The purpose of our work is to enable more systematic and better informed work on affordability, which we hope will support better-evidenced policy responses.
Our research highlights the need for better data on UK property, and the lack of progress on previous transparency and data commitments.