A University of Greenwich report for the Migration Advisory Committee, published on 19 June 2026, reviews international evidence on immigration and UK housing costs. It finds positive but small effects on house prices and rents.
Report published 19 June 2026.
The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) commissioned the University of Greenwich to review international evidence on how immigration affects house prices and rents. The report, dated April 2026, asks how large the effects are, under what conditions they arise, and how relevant the evidence is to the UK.
The authors searched English-language studies and identified 94 relevant ones as of March 2026. Section 4.1 says 31 were retained for effect size comparisons, while Section 5 refers to a core sample of 33. The core sample covers 14 countries.
The main measure is the percentage change in housing costs linked to a one-percentage-point rise in the immigrant share of the population. The summary says most estimates for house prices are roughly 0–3%, with mean and median estimates below 1%. It says rent effects are similar.
Section 5.1 summarises 45 baseline estimates from 22 studies on house prices. The median effect is 0.36% and the mean is 0.8%.
For countries the authors judge institutionally similar to the UK, such as Anglo-Saxon and Northern European countries, the median estimate is 0.65% and the mean is 1%. The authors say that, taken at face value, this implies immigration can explain approximately 4–6% of the total increase in UK house prices over the last three decades.
The report says effects vary with context. Immigration-driven demand shocks are more likely to raise prices in dense areas or where planning constraints limit construction. Higher-income immigrants exert stronger demand pressures than lower-income immigrants. Studies using smaller geographic units often find weaker or even negative effects, partly because native residents move out.
The authors conclude that the evidence does not point to a single precise estimate. They say immigration "appears unlikely to be a dominant driver of rising housing costs in the UK" and that policy focus should be on how immigration and other demand factors interact with the structural features of the UK housing system.
Sources
- Migration and housing costs: what does international evidence imply for the UK?, GOV.UK, published 19 June 2026