A specialist rental platform says its research shows a growing number of people intentionally renting long-term.

Ocasa says the reason is the high entry cost into the UK housing market for buyers, who typically require £41,765 for a 15 per cent deposit which is the average required to secure an attractive mortgage rate. 

On top of this, unless you are buying for the first time, more upfront money is required in order to pay stamp duty.  In England, an average house price of £297,524 means the average stamp duty bill is £4,876. 

“In the UK, popular opinion has long said that owning a home is better than renting; renting is something you do while you wait until you can afford to buy. But this isn’t the case in other countries, and it’s become less and less so here” says Ocasa’s Jack Godby.

“People are now choosing to rent for the long-term, rejecting buying altogether because of the many downsides that come with ownership, from the growing expense to the risk and inflexibility. In reaction to this growing demand, rental providers are upping their game, providing high quality homes with tenancy agreements that offer greater security and more freedom to make the property their own. 

“This is particularly true of the Build To Rent sector which has grown phenomenally in just a few years and looks to be one of the driving forces of change when it comes to how we choose to live.”

The platform says the number of rental properties of all kinds in the UK has climbed by over 1.1m since 2012.

It says that a decade ago, there were just shy of 27.5m total dwellings across the UK property market. With almost 9.4m rental properties, the lettings sector accounted for 34.2 per cent of all dwellings. 

Fast forward a decade and the latest figures show that there are now over 29.5m dwellings across the UK market, a 7.5 per cent increase versus 10 years ago. 

However, the number of rental properties now stands at over 10.5m, indicating a larger rate of growth at 12.2 per cent, but it now accounts for 35.7 per cent of total UK dwellings.