Average rents have continued to hit new record highs as the amount of available housing continues to fall short of demand, a property website has said.
The average rent being asked across Britain outside London, which has been rising every quarter since the end of 2019, has reached a new record high of £1,190 per month, according to Rightmove.
Within London, average asking rents have surpassed £2,500 for the first time to reach a new record of £2,501 per month in the first quarter of 2023, the website said.
Housing Supply ‘Squeezed’
Rightmove said that there have been some signs of slow improvement this year.But supply remains very constrained in the rental market, with a significant imbalance between renters looking for properties and the availability of homes to rent.
There is an especially big gap in the terraced houses sector, said the website.
Rightmove’s director of property science Tim Bannister said: “We have seen some early signs of improvement on squeezed supply levels this year, though with no significant influx of new properties becoming available to rent currently on the horizon, the mismatch is set to continue for some time.
“Many agents are having to manage a very high volume of tenant inquiries for every property that they let in the current market.
“Properties in popular areas within an affordable asking rent range of that local area are likely to be snapped up almost immediately, and on average homes are finding a tenant much more quickly than this time in 2019.
“Although there are some early signs that the gap between supply and demand is starting to narrow a little, it will still feel very competitive for tenants trying to secure a home.”
Craig Webster, managing director of Tiger Sales & Lettings in Blackpool, Lancashire, said: “The rental market remains very busy, with multiple applicants competing over a shortage of property to rent.
“We are seeing more tenants staying put in their current home, which is having a knock-on effect for the rest of the market and contributing to the shortage.
“We are also seeing some of our landlords decide to sell up for a variety of reasons—more legislation to navigate, higher mortgage costs, or because they can now get a good price for their home.
‘Frenzied’
According to official figures released last week by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), private rental prices paid by tenants in the UK increased by 4.9 percent in the 12 months to March 2023, representing the largest annual percentage change since similar records started in January 2016.The annual growth rate of private rental prices in the UK started to increase in the second half of 2021, the ONS said.
The ONS highlighted a separate report from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), indicating strong demand for homes in the rental sector.
The RICS report said that fierce competition for rented properties is squeezing prices higher in a “frenzied” lettings market.
Tenant demand reached a five-month high with strong demand seen across the country, said the report.
But the degree of new landlords to instruct properties declined, leading to a demand and supply imbalance that means rents could be pushed higher.
The proportion of surveyors who said they expect rents to rise in the next three months jumped to 59 percent, up from 45 percent in the previous month’s survey, and nearing the highs seen towards the start of last year.
All parts of the UK are set to see an increase in rent prices in the year ahead, property professionals said. The research is a monthly sentiment survey, which also included the views of property professionals.
One, based in Hexham, said: “Frenzied is possibly the ideal word to sum up the rental market. Fierce competition for too few houses; a direct consequence of years of ill-judged government policy in the private rented sector.”
According to research released by HSBC and housing charity Shelter on Monday, one in five (20 percent) people feel less confident than they did six months ago about being able to pay their rent or mortgage on time for the rest of the year.
According to results of the YouGov survey of more than 2,100 adults across the UK, the “squeezed middle” age group aged 35 to 54, who often have childcare responsibilities and may also be caring for elderly parents, were found to be the most likely to have lost confidence, with 28 percent feeling this way.
Single people who had never been married were also particularly likely to have lost confidence in their ability to pay for the roof over their head, with 25 percent saying this was the case.
