Ten People Chasing Every London Rental Property
11-03-2014
Photo by M@
There are nearly 10 tenants chasing every London rental property, according to information released by a network of estate agents.
Agents are registering 9.7 people for every property that comes onto the market, compared with 5.3 people per property a year ago. This level of demand isn’t being met by supply, which has fallen by 11%. And as you won’t be surprised to learn, being intelligent folk who know exactly what happens in a free market with an imbalance of supply and demand, rents have risen 9% year on year. This takes the average London rent, according to Sequence, whose London sales and letting agent arm trades as Barnard Marcus, to £1,591.
That’s a hideous figure but there are faint glimmers of things possibly getting better — or perhaps, not much worse. There was no increase between August and September, and separate figures from the Valuation Office back in January put the median inner London rent at £1,500, ‘only’ £91 less. However, Stephen Nation who is Head of Lettings for Sequence, is rather more pessimistic, saying “I would expect demand will undoubtedly lead to future rent increases before the year is out”.