Rents rising faster outside London than in the capital – Rightmove
Rents are rising faster outside of London than in the capital, according to a new report out today.
Rightmove, the property website, said that rents have risen 1.3 per cent in the rest of the country, compared to 0.2 per cent in London, in the last three months.
Rightmove also said that the so-called affordability ceiling in London “looks to have been reached”, given rents jumped by 1.6 per cent in the capital over the same period last year.
Yet London remains unaffordable for many propsective renters – something that Rightmove pointed to when reporting a strong increase in demand for tenancies in Essex and other areas east of the capital.
Read more: Cost of renting a room in London rises to an all-time high
Rightmove found that annual rental growth in the east of England was 6.4 per cent, with rents rising by 2 per cent in the region in the last three months.
Sam Mitchell, head of lettings at Rightmove, said: “We’ve been reporting high tenant demand for rental property in Essex for a while now, so it makes sense that it should feature strongly.”
“Investors and tenants who’ve been priced out of London and the South East have looked for better value areas in the East, and it seems they’ve both found a winning formula,” he added.
The Rightmove report also included a new metric, a “total returns calculation”, identifying locations where buy-to-let investors have seen the highest overall returns on their investments. Ten towns in the east of England – including four in Essex – took the top spots in the ranking.