Rent prices hit new highs as lack of homes available continues

According to the UK’s leading property website, average rental costs have hit record new highs as the severe shortage of available affordable homes progresses.  

Announced today, Rightmove – the UK’s leading property website – have revealed that asking prices for rents outside of London have reached an average of £1,190 a month, whilst in the capital city they have risen above £2,500.

The reason behind these skyrocketing prices is because people have been competing with one another against bagging the most affordable home – with only a limited number available, landlords have been upping rental costs.

However, within their research, Rightmove said there were promising signs of more properties coming to the market.

Despite this, while the number of properties available to rent between January and march this year were up by 8% from the previous year, the number was still nearly half that seen before the pandemic in 2019.

The gap between the number of tenants seeking properties and the homes available to rent also narrowed, Rightmove said, but it still remained ‘near record levels’.

The leading property site added that average asking rents for new tenants outside London have now risen for 13 consecutive quarters.

Tim Bannister from Rightmove 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 enquiries for every property that they let in the current market.’

Image: Jon Tyson