In the past, many housebuilders have bought pubs to convert to flats. However, UK housebuilding has recently stagnated due to the increased costs of building materials, the lack of skilled labour and higher mortgage rates.

Therefore who is buying pubs today? Many pub deals are now being done by pub companies. After we came out of the last lock-down, the pub market saw a lot of activity as many pub groups started to buy and open new pubs. These companies were mainly selling over the past 10 years, as the pub sector suffered, but are now buying again. However, this resurgence has slowed down over the past couple of weeks and is likely to slow down even more as a result of the weakening economy.

Buying pubs is a very specialist investment to make and not for the faint hearted. Whilst inflation continues to soar, interest rates continue to rise and consumer spending starts to fall, pubs will suffer and may return to the pre-Covid shelf of properties which people don’t want to buy.