The demand shock that drove UK rent inflation to 9.1% in March 2024 has worked its way through the market, says a lettings agency.

Lettings platform Hello Neighbour has identified the trend in its 10-year review of housing data. 

It says rents from here on will be set by how often existing rental homes come back to market and by what tenants can afford, rather than by any further surge in the number of people looking to rent or a change in overall supply.

In 2022 and 2023 Migration was the largest single driver of a significant increase in demand but has now fallen to historic norms. 

Net migration peaked at 944,000 in the year to March 2023 but was at 171,000 in the year to December 2025. 

Arrivals rent disproportionately: Census 2021 recorded 53% of EU-born residents in England and Wales privately renting, against 16% of UK-born residents. 

Rent inflation for new lets peaked at 11.9% in 2022 and 9.7% in 2023. 

The impact of tightened rules on work visas, student dependants and overseas recruitment has already been felt so a further fall looks improbable. Demand has returned to more of a steady state.

Zoopla recorded 5.6 enquiries per available rental home in May 2026, down from 15.5 at the peak. 

Hello Neighbour’s own viewing request data shows an average of 69 requests per available property across January to July 2023, falling to 34 across the same months of 2026. It has now plateaued at 30-40 viewing requests per property.

Perhaps controversially – in the light of speculation about landlord sell-offs – Hello Neighbour says overall supply has changed far less than the headlines suggest. 

The English private rented sector held 5,030,000 dwellings at 31 March 2025, the largest number on record and a sixth consecutive year of steady growth. 

But what has fallen, particularly outside London, is availability, because tenants are staying longer: average tenancy length recorded by the Deposit Protection Service rose 40% in four years, from 773 days in 2021 to 1,085 days by April 2025. 

A static stock that turns over less often produces fewer homes to let each year.

New building will not close that gap. England added 208,600 net additional dwellings in 2024-25, a sixth consecutive year below the 300,000 benchmark and a cumulative shortfall of 434,900 homes. 

Even delivery at the most ambitious targets under discussion would take years to register in rental availability. A further reserve of demand is waiting outside the market, with 28.7% of UK adults aged 20 to 34 living with their parents in 2025, up from 25.4% in 2015.

Affordability is the constraint on how far rents can go. An average private rent absorbed 36.3% of the median private-renting household’s income in England in the year to March 2024, better than the 39.4% recorded in 2016 but still well above the 30% threshold the ONS uses. 

Buying has improved on a similarly modest scale, with the England house price to earnings ratio at 7.6 in 2025, down from a 2021 peak of 9.1 and still far from the five times earnings benchmark.

Phil Shelley, chairman of Hello Neighbour, says: “The last decade was a demand story. Exceptional levels of net migration added households that rent at three times the rate of the UK-born population at exactly the point availability of rental property started to see the impact of tenants staying longer with rents rising sharply as a result. 

“That phase is over. Viewing requests have halved in three years but are now steady. We are in a more normalised market.”

He adds: “The pressure now comes from availability. Tenants are staying close to three years on average, housebuilding is running someway short of what is needed, and there is a queue of young adults at home who would enter the market if they could afford to. Incomes are now the binding constraint. We therefore expect moderate rent growth broadly in line with wages.”

On the Renters’ Rights Act, Hello Neighbour reports some landlords are pricing higher at the point of advertising on the view that in-tenancy increases are now harder to secure. 

That explains the otherwise contradictory picture of recent growth in advertised rents alongside fewer enquiries per property. 

Shelley says: “We would caution landlords against reading this as a lasting gain. A rent above what the market will bear is precisely what the challenge mechanism exists to correct, and an empty property costs can quickly cost more than the increase was worth even if it isn’t challenged.”

The full analysis, “What drives UK rental prices? Ten years of evidence”, is at hello-neighbour.com/insights/what-drives-uk-rental-prices