PETALING JAYA, Aug 6 — After setting sights on London’s commercial properties, Malaysians and fellow Asian investors are now snapping up new homes in the British capital and prompting concerns they are shutting out domestic buyers.

A recent Financial Times (FT) article quoted a survey by property group Knight Frank as saying foreign buyers accounted for nearly three-quarters of new home purchases in inner London, with only 27 per cent of buyers coming from the UK itself.

Together with Asian investors from Singapore, Hong Kong and China, Malaysians accounted for more than half of the purchases.

The FT also reported that most of the new properties in central London are being sold in events outside the country before they are even advertised to UK buyers, including Knight Frank that holds off-plan sales exhibitions in Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Singapore.

“We have seen a sea-change over the past year in terms of the kind of price point foreign buyers are chasing, whether it’s a studio apartment in Clerkenwell or a one-bed flat in King’s Cross,” Tom Rundall, an associate in Knight Frank’s international residential team, told the FT.

“This is not the jet-set but rather the working middle classes expanding into the world, often for the first time.”

Up to £150,000 (RM750,000) is spent by developers on each weekend event, but these are said to generate brisk uptake of British properties in their 48 hours versus the single-digit weekly sales back in the UK.

The trend has led to a phenomenon termed “Generation Rent”, in which millions of Britons complain of property prices being outside their affordability.

The same Knight Frank survey found that 60 per cent of tenants complained they were trapped in rented properties and unable to save enough to purchase homes for themselves.

Already, UK politicians such as Simon Hughes, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, have expressed worry that the current trend will drive property prices beyond the reach of the locals.

A separate piece by British newspaper The Guardian reported the National Housing Federation as saying house prices in England will go up by 42 per cent by 2020 while rentals are set to climb even further.

And against the backdrop of 96 per cent of the survey’s respondents expressing intent on buying a property of their own, all the ingredients of discontent appear to already have been assembled.

Ironically, despite the many high-profile forays abroad, Malaysians are also experiencing the same worry as their UK counterparts at home, as the country becomes the main focus for Hong Kong and Singapore property investors.

Iskandar Malaysia in Johor, Sabah’s Kota Kinabalu, along with Kuala Lumpur and Penang are set to become property hotspots after Hong Kong and Singapore imposed 15 per cent levies to slow down foreign investments that had overheated their property markets.

Last month, the FT reported that government-backed funds of Malaysia, Singapore and Korea are at the forefront of a new wave of investment in London’s booming property market.

Asian and Middle Eastern money accounted for 82 per cent of commercial transactions in London in the first half of the year.

In July, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak told the FT that Malaysia would continue to gobble up London property as cash-rich funds such as the Employees Provident Fund “need to take some of that surplus abroad”.

Najib also told the British newspaper that Malaysia aimed to be a “major player” in the London property market.

The FT reported that spending by Asian investors accelerated rapidly during the three months to the end of June, with the region responsible for £1.04 billion during the first quarter, up 166 per cent on the previous three months.