Up and Up! Hamptons says rent growth shows no sign of slowing

There are few signs that the pace of rental growth is slackening, warns Hamptons.

It says the cost of a new tenancy is up 9.9 per cent year-on-year across Britain to an average of £1,282 pcm .  

On an annual basis, rents have risen more than 5.0 per cent for 27 consecutive months and above 7.0 per cent for the last 10 months.  This prolonged period of growth leaves the average rent 28 per cent higher than in February 2020, on the eve of the pandemic.

Over the last year rents in London have continued to rise faster than anywhere else in the country, with the average price of a new let up 13.9 per cent.  

Annually, London rents have been growing at a double-digit pace for 15 of the last 17 months. However, the rate of Inner London rental growth has slowed as rents surpassed pre-Covid levels, with growth now broadly on par with Outer London.

Looking back to the onset of Covid, rents have grown faster in the North than in the South.  

While average rents in London and the South East are up 26 and 24 per cent respectively since February 2020, in the Midlands they are up 31 per cent and in Northern England they are up 33 per cent. Here, rents have risen on the back of higher house price growth as yields have held steady.

Aneisha Beveridge, head of research at Hamptons, says: “New homes coming onto the market continue to achieve record rents and in the short term it’s hard to see what would put concerted downward pressure on the pace of growth.  

“With around 35,000 landlords coming off fixed rate mortgages each month, the upward pressure on landlords’ costs marches on.  In the run up to remortgaging, landlords are fighting to balance the books by paying down debt and hiking rents that have dropped below market rate.”