Potential tenants looking to rent in Hackney will find asking rents are almost £700 higher for a two-bed home compared to 10 years ago, an analysis of over 200,000 two-bed rental properties by Rightmove has found.
Potential tenants looking to rent in Hackney will find asking rents are almost £700 higher for a two-bed home compared to 10 years ago, an analysis of over 200,000 two-bed rental properties by Rightmove has found.
The top 10 highest growth areas over the past 10 years are all in London, the list being a mixture of relatively more affordable areas like Dagenham and Eltham and areas like Harold Wood and Southall where upcoming Crossrail has pushed up rents.
Miles Shipside, Rightmove’s housing market analysist, said: “Hackney has seen pretty heady increases in both asking rents and house prices in the area over the past 10 years, as it has been transformed from a cheaper location into a more popular and higher-priced address.
“Its rise has been enhanced by the 2012 Olympics effect and improvements to transport links, with rents peaking in the second quarter of 2016 and plateauing in recent years.
“The growth in these areas compares with places like Barnes, Chelsea and Canary Wharf which seem to have topped out long ago as rents are pretty much the same as they were 10 years ago.”
Outside London the highest growth in rents is in Dartford, where asking rents are now over £300 more expensive than 10 years ago.
Alongside other London commuter-belt areas in Kent and Hertfordshire are two Scottish cities, Dundee and Edinburgh, which have seen rental increases of 40% and 39% respectively.
Renting a two-bed home in Edinburgh is now almost £1,000 a month, compared to just under £700 per month back in 2008.
Dominic Kleywegt, head of lettings at Robinson Jackson in Dartford, said:“Tenants have been attracted to Dartford over recent years because of the quicker links into the capital.
“Dartford station was recently revamped and boasts links into Cannon Street, Victoria, London Bridge and Charing Cross and commuters have been able to use their Oyster card since 2015.
“With easy access to the M25, Bluewater and the Dartford tunnel, the area is highly sought after by tenants and therefore buy-to-let investors.”
So far in 2018 asking rents outside London have fallen by 0.2% when compared to Q4 of 2017. Annually, the strongest performing region is the East Midlands, where asking rents are up 2.6%. This compares to a national average annual change outside London of 0.9%.
Shipside added: “Although the growth in asking rents has slowed over the past few years, people new to the rental market or those looking for a bigger property could find that they need to look further out than their initial wish-list of places, especially in the bigger cities around the country.
“A look at the first few months of this year shows the usual seasonal trend of asking rents falling slightly compared to the last quarter of last year, but we’re likely see a rise again next quarter.
“London asking rents remain flat compared to this time last year, a sign that we are highly unlikely to see the same big increases over the next ten years that we’ve seen in some areas in the capital over the previous ten years.”
