Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, what estimate he has made of the value of UK property sold to foreign buyers between 2010 and 2015.

My Department does not monitor the purchases of property by foreign buyers.

The housing market is at the heart of our long-term economic plan – getting homes built, creating new homeowners and delivering hundreds of thousands of jobs. Foreign investment is helping to deliver new housing for UK residents and supporting jobs and long-term economic growth.

Following the financial crisis and subsequent recession, foreign investment in new housing has been helping to provide the finance needed to build homes. Without upfront investment from buyers, financiers would not have released the cash needed for development to go ahead, and building would have stalled.

These new developments not only provide homes, they also unlock associated affordable housing development In 2013, Savills suggested in their report “Spotlight World in London” that international sales of newly built properties helped to finance 3,000 new affordable homes that may otherwise not have been built.

In their report of July 2014, Savills estimate that “those buying an investment property from overseas only account for an estimated 7 per cent of all greater London residential transactions”.