High end agency Strutt & Parker is warning that older properties in prime central London are getting harder to let, with achievable rents falling as a result. 

The agency’s head of residential lettings, Kate Eales, says rental stock levels in prime London are healthy – at least partly because frustrated sellers letting out their homes are compensating for landlords who have quit the market as a result of buy to let tax changes.

“These properties let quickly and easily as they are in turnkey condition and are snapped up by increasingly discerning tenants” notes Eales, who says such properties help rents at the ‘super prime’ end of the market stay strong.

However, while she says new build rental units carry a premium “older rental stock becomes more difficult to let, so there we may see those rents soften slightly.”

Strutts says there will be 0.5 per cent price growth in prime central London rents this year; it says the take up of new rental tenancies is 5.5 per cent up on this time last year but a hefty 23.7 per cent down on the full-year five year average.