Foreign Homeowners Hold £84.2bn Worth of Property in England and Wales, Reveals Study

Newly released data from leading London estate and lettings agent, Benham and Reeves, suggests that foreign property owners hold assets worth a staggering £84.2 billion across England and Wales. Almost all of the ten highest-value markets for overseas homeownership are concentrated within the boundaries of London.

Benham and Reeves obtained this information through a Freedom of Information request to the Land Registry. The request focused on properties with titles registered to an international correspondence address or an overseas firm in all areas of England and Wales. They further coupled this with government data about properties registered with foreign companies. The final calculation of the overall value of these homes was based on their current market values.

The study highlights that there are around 280,021 homes in England and Wales currently registered with an international correspondence address or to a foreign company. Taking into consideration the current average house price in England and Wales of £300,636, these foreign-owned homes amount to a massive £84.2 billion.

On a regional level, London dominates not only in terms of the highest quantity of overseas-owned homes, boasting 103,425, but it also stands as the most profitable market for foreign property ownership with a worth of £552 billion.

The South East is the only region which approaches the capital in terms of value, with an estimated total worth of foreign-owned homes of £18.8 billion in the current market.

It comes as no shock, therefore, that London also takes up most of the places in the top 10 most lucrative markets for foreign property ownership at the local authority level. The only non-London locale to rank on this list is Buckinghamshire.

The City of Westminster leads the pack, with foreign-owned property estimated at a worth of £14.9 billion in the current market. The affluent borough of Kensington and Chelsea follows closely with a market value of foreign-owned homes projected at £12 billion. Tower Hamlets (£4.8 billion), Camden (£4.1 billion), Wandsworth (£3.8 billion), Hammersmith and Fulham (£3.3 billion), Hounslow (£2.3 billion), Lambeth (£2.3 billion), and Islington (£2.4 billion) are all in the list.

The lone entry not based in the capital, Buckinghamshire, ranks seventh overall. Foreign-owned homes in this region are estimated to hold a combined market value of £3.2 billion.