Rents today are much higher than when the pandemic started
Asking rents across the UK, excluding London, have jumped by almost 11% in what has been deemed as the most competitive rental market ever.
According to Rightmove’s Quarterly Rental Trends Tracker, national average asking rents outside of the capital hit a new record of £1,088 per calendar month (pcm), up from £982pcm last year.
This 10.8% rise in asking rents is the first time annual growth has exceeded 10%, Rightmove said.
Average rents are now 15% higher than the same period two years ago, when the pandemic was just beginning.
Rightmove’s director of property data, Tim Bannister, said tenants are now faced with the most competitive rental market ever recorded, with more than triple the number of prospective tenants as there are rental properties available.
“In the first three months of this year, we’ve seen tenant demand exceed the high levels set last year, which, when coupled with the fewer available homes for rent, has resulted in the most competitive rental market we’ve ever recorded,” Bannister noted.
Statistics show total tenant demand is up 6% and available properties are down by 50% compared to last year.
Official government numbers published yesterday also showed that private rental prices paid by tenants in the UK rose by 2.4% in the 12 months to March 2022.
Read more: Revealed – how much UK house prices have risen in the last year.
Meanwhile, average asking rents in London hit a new record of £2,193pcm, which is a 14.3% rise from £1,919 last year. This is the biggest annual jump of any region since records began.
Tenant demand in the capital city is up by 81% and available rental properties down by 47% in London compared to the more normal 2019 market.
Despite the mismatch of tenants enquiring and rental properties available, there are some positive signs of more property choice. The number of new rental properties coming on to the market rose by 5% in March compared to January, and 16% compared to the shorter month of February.
Rightmove also reported a rise in demand for areas outside of Manchester and Liverpool as rents in these cities jumped by 20%.
Read more: Rightmove: Supply and demand imbalance increasing rents.
Bannister said there are several factors currently affecting supply and demand.
“On the supply side, we’re hearing from agents and landlords that tenants are signing longer leases, which has prevented some of the stock that would normally come back on to the market from doing so,” he noted.
“When it comes to demand, we’re still seeing the effects of the pandemic, whereby tenants are balancing what they need from a home and how close they need to live to work with where they can afford.”
Simon Thompson, lettings director at Miles & Barr in Kent, said that there are more available properties now that it is starting to slow the rapid rental price growth of the last 18 months.
“This means that tenants are starting to experience a wider choice of properties and… the rental market returns to a new normal level,” Thompson commented.
“We’ve also seen that the impact of increasing cost-of-living prices is affecting tenants’ choice of property. Landlords and tenants are also looking to purchase insurance policies to cover rental income or renting costs should their situations change.”
The Rightmove Rental Trends Tracker dataset was compiled from the asking rents of properties coming on to the market on Rightmove’s website. For its quarterly data, Rightmove measured 311,261 asking rents of the properties advertised on its website by agents from January 01 to March 31, 2022 – all short lets removed, and all rents throughout are per calendar month.
