The average new monthly rent outside London has passed £1,000 for the first time, figures show, with tenants in Great Britain now typically paying 25% more than they were at the start of the Covid pandemic.
The estate agent Hamptons, which issued the data, warned that the rate of rent rises was “unlikely to slow considerably due to the number of landlords looking to pass on their rising costs” and this may force some tenants to downsize or relocate to a cheaper area.
Many landlords with buy-to-let mortgages have seen their costs rise sharply after 12 consecutive interest rate rises and the chaos of last autumn’s Truss government mini-budget.
The average rent on a newly let home outside the capital rose to £1,002 a month in April, according to Hamptons, which was 7.8%, or £72, higher than the figure a year earlier.
Meanwhile, the London rental market is continuing to speed ahead of the rest of the country: annual rental growth in the capital was running well ahead of inflation at 17.2%, said the firm, with the average monthly bill passing £2,200 for the first time last month. That would cost the average tenant moving into a new home an extra £3,895 a year.
Across Great Britain as a whole, the average monthly rent rose 11.1% year-on-year in April to reach a new high of £1,249 – the second-highest figure for rental growth across the country on record. Overall, rents across the country have leapt 25% since the eve of the pandemic.
This is the latest in a series of surveys that have highlighted how sizeable rent hikes – also fuelled by severe shortages of properties – are piling yet more pressure on households already facing severe strain.
Earlier this year, some city mayors in England called for an immediate rent freeze and a ban on evictions to help renters deal with the cost of living crisis.
Some in the property sector have claimed that the government’s renters’ reform bill, which will include a ban on property owners evicting tenants without showing any fault on the tenants’ part, could prompt more buy-to-let landlords to quit the sector, causing rents to rise further.
At the end of April, the property website Rightmove reported that average monthly asking rents outside London had soared to a record high of £1,190 in the first quarter of this year, with tenants in the capital paying more than £2,500 for the first time.
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Hamptons said that in February 2013, when it launched its lettings index, the average tenant who moved into a new home outside London paid £677 a month – £325 less than in April 2023. That represents a 48% increase in a decade.
Aneisha Beveridge, the firm’s head of research, said: “Affordability constraints will likely hit the brakes on rental growth at some point this year; however, it’s unlikely to slow considerably due to the number of landlords looking to pass on their rising costs.”
