UK Living Roundup July 2026

UK BTR investment took a sharp turn in Q2. A slow start to the year in the first quarter was soon shrugged off and forgotten when volumes in the second quarter propelled H1 2026 to a near-record high. But, as always, the headline figure can tell us only so much – the real story is buried a little deeper.

In this roundup:  

• Another quarter, another record-breaking deal
• Viability vs volumes
• What about single family?

Let’s start with the positive. In Q2 we saw the largest ever UK multifamily deal when L&Q sold its Metra Living business to Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing and Ridgeback. The £1bn+ deal saw the transfer of 3,200 homes in Greater London and came shortly after the largest single operational asset deal on record – the sale of Ebb and Flow by Lincoln MGT to Pension Insurance Corporation in Q1. Two quarters, two records, and a sign that demand is alive and well.

Loyal readers might remember how the exceptional Q1 for student housing was bolstered by portfolio deals that were months in the making. This is no different. L&Q first announced its intention to sell Metra Living in November 2024. Its completion in Q2 reflects interest in the sector over the last 18 months, not just at the point at which documents were signed and hands were shaken.

But that lag between initial interest and eventual completion is always the case, whether the deal is big or small, so there is no need to caveat the headline figure. In this case that headline figure is £3bn: the second largest H1 total on record for BTR.

The first half was driven by three significant deals: Metra Living, Lendlease’s Elephant Park and Blackstone’s sale of around 1,200 single family homes from its Leaf Living business. Combined these three deals amounted to £2bn – two-thirds of the total.

Indeed, there has been a concentration of activity in fewer, larger deals this year, with fewer than half the number of transactions recorded in H1 2023 (15 vs 37), which is the only other year with volumes at or above £3bn in the first half.

There’s no getting away from discussions around viability, the myriad challenges to it in the UK and how developers are finding ways to make the numbers stack up. And even as we’ve seen those concerns seep into the numbers we track – whether it’s investment or the size of the BTR market – H1 2026 volumes are, perhaps, the clearest indication of it yet.

But first some context.

When we started talking about the shift towards operational assets in multifamily, forward investment of some sort (whether forward funding, forward purchase, joint ventures or land acquisitions) still made up the majority of transactions by volume. Between 2023 and 2025 – when viability was already stretched amid rapidly rising costs – future stock accounted for two-thirds of investment. At the time, that was (for a sector still in its relative infancy in the UK) a noteworthy contraction from the 80-90% we were used to seeing.

Compared to that, H1 2026 is remarkable, with forward investment making up just 10% of all multifamily transactions. This figure likely undercounts the total marginally, because it doesn’t fully capture the amount of development assets in portfolios that are predominantly operational stock, but it is nevertheless inarguably the lowest proportion we have seen.

True, some of this is down to the fact that we saw a record operational portfolio trade in Q2, but even in absolute terms, multifamily forward investment was down 80% against the five-year average in H1. Even after the last couple of years of tough conditions, this represents the steepest decline yet in this part of the market.

Amid all this, single family is flying a little under the radar. But that doesn’t mean it’s slowing down. In H1, single family investment reached £1bn – 7% above H1 2025 and 3% above the five-year average as evidence of continued investor appetite for suburban rental homes. With Border to Coast Pensions Partnership investing more than £500m into single family in H1 and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board rapidly growing its presence (alongside Kennedy Wilson), institutional investors are becoming a dominant force in the sector.

But given the sheer size of the multifamily portfolios that traded in H1, single family this year is less likely to have a repeat of 2025 when it overtook multifamily as the most active BTR sub-sector.

Away from investment volumes, we recently published a report exploring how London’s housing crisis is pricing out its workforce and what can be done about it.

‘The missing middle: London’s rental crisis’ shows how 90% of young professionals cannot afford to rent a home alone in the capital. Part of the solution – the one most directly relevant to the Living sector – could be a simplified co-living model, which would feature compact studios without the range of amenities current co-living typically offers.

The full report is available here.