A new national rental index has been launched, targeted at investors looking to get the highest yields on their property investments.
The report publishers say it will allow investors to track rental pricing trends in different regions. They say it will also provide evidence to help make informed investment decisions and help landlords evaluate the performance of property portfolios.
However, the new index is entirely at odds with the longer-established one from LSL.
It is being launched by Move with Us, a network of property agents, in conjunction with an economist at the London School of Economics and property search engine Home.co.uk which aggregates listings from all the main UK portals.
The first report pinpoints an immediate problem, however: it puts rents much higher than the LSL report, quoting an average of £970 per month against £741. In London, the Move with Us index puts London prices ‘stable’ at £2,270 per month, against LSL’s booming £1,062.
Such large discrepancies could cause investors problems, and the explanation for the differences are hard to find: LSL quotes asking price rents, but so does the new Move with Us index, as it is based on rental properties being marketed through portals.
According to the new Move with Us index, average rents fell slightly early in Q3, before recovering in September.
Robin King, director of Move with Us, said he expects rents to rise over the current quarter.
Comments
Looking at the Samples used there is little to be confused about. LSL use 18,000 properties under management where there is a let agreed. They have a methodology that extrapolates out the sample to a national Index.
Move with Us use a sample of 150,000 asking rents taken weekly and uses a methodology eliminates outriders that are outside a tolerance ratio for price and time on market.
The differences are that LSL provide an Index on the current lets that are under management all be it on a smaller data set. Move with us are providing a leading indicator of where rents are trending toward. They cannot be directly compared.
That will be the London Clueless School of Socialist Economics you are quoting I think?