Average London tenant now requires £3,000 deposit, claims agent

A warning has come from a campaigning letting agent that London’s landlords agents could be costing themselves tenants by requiring them to pay deposits of up to £8,650 just to move into a rented home. 

Research from deposit-free renting firm Dlighted has revealed that the average London tenancy deposit now stands at £3,014 even when capped at the equivalent of six weeks’ rent by the government’s draft Tenant’s Fees Bill.

Renters in Kensington and Chelsea face far higher average deposits of £8,650, with Westminster renters needing to find £8,081 on average.

Bexley renters face the capital’s lowest deposits of just £1,655, followed by Havering on £1,731.

According to Dlighted’s figures, the top five most expensive London’s boroughs for deposits Kensington and Chelsea on £8,650;  Westminster on £8,081; Camden on £5,894; then Hammersmith and Fulham at £5,490; and Wandsworth costing £3,569.

The five cheapest boroughs on the other hand are Bexley at £1,655; Havering with £1,731; then Croydon on £1,808; Sutton at £1,848; and Barking and Dagenham at  £1,898.

The recently published English Housing Survey revealed that 30 per cent of homes in the capital are now privately rented, with private rented homes overtaking owner-occupation as London’s most popular form of housing tenure.

Dlighted says that with 862,000 households in London living in the private rented sector at the time of the last census, this could mean £2.6 billion sitting in tenancy deposit accounts, “lost to the capital’s economy.”

“Recent research showed that a quarter of UK families have no savings, and another quarter have less than £100 in the bank. Asking them to find more than £3,000 just to become your customer is simply terrible business” claims Ajay Jagota, managing director of Dlighted.

“Restricting potential renters to people who have thousands of pounds in the bank, or risking renters getting into a huge amounts of debt just to rent with you costs you customers. Deposit free renting makes it easier to find and keep good tenants, whilst offering you 200 times more protection against damage and rent arrears” he adds.