‘The changing characteristics and motivations of Scottish private rented sector landlords and their investments - 30 years of surveys’ analyses and summarises secondary data from a smattering of Scottish private landlord surveys, that have emerged from disparate sources over the last 30 years, and through identifying how the characteristics and motivations of landlords and their SPRS investments have changed in this time.

Written by Dr Andrew Robert Watson, the report includes insights that will be useful to policymakers and sector stakeholders.

The research finds that:

• the sector has become increasingly cottage-like over time, meaning that it has become dominated by a large number of small-scale, part-time, investor landlords;
• SPRS landlords have become increasingly investment-focused in their motivations, with an increase in those citing investment motivations increasing from 43% in 1997 to 72% in 2023;
• SPRS income has become increasingly important to landlords with a higher proportion now deriving more than 25% of their income from landlordism.

The current composition of the sector suggests a continuing failure to foster a new class of professional landlords, a goal that has been a cornerstone of SPRS advocates from the outset of the sector’s resurgence. Specifically, there has been no fundamental shift from small-scale individual investment to large-scale institutional investment via the build-to-rent sector, which has attracted significant policy attention and preferred consideration in policy outputs. 

As this composition is unlikely to significantly alter in the short, mid, and potentially long term, the report concludes that there is a clear need for policymakers to understand and work more closely with the landlords who currently comprise the sector.

To support this, the report recommends that the Scottish Government introduce a regular survey of SPRS landlords to reliably capture the data required for creating effective, evidence-based policy. It also recommends the establishment of a landlord panel to facilitate direct engagement between policymakers and the landlord community.