Over half of tenants – 52.6% – are expecting to pay higher rental prices over the next 12 months, as stock shortages worsen.
According to Rightmove’s latest rental survey, the worst shortages are in London and East Anglia, with tenant demand ‘insatiable’.
The report said that the rental sector is creaking under the strain of demand from people who, in normal markets, would be buying.
Miles Shipside, director of Rightmove, said: “Letting agents in many areas are reporting an insatiable demand, with prospective tenants coming from all backgrounds and requiring all types of property.
“Those traditional tenants that are leaving the family nest are increasingly being joined by those that can’t sell or get a mortgage to trade up, putting unprecedented pressure on the rental sector of the housing market to provide homes to rent on most rungs of the property ladder. Such demand inevitably creates supply shortages and pushes up the cost of the rented roof over the tenant’s head.
“In spite of the country’s economic hardship, the desire or need for suitable accommodation is set to further test the elasticity of tenants’ purse strings.”
He added: “With lenders not singing the same tune as many hopeful property purchasers, housing aspirations are like a broken record, continuously stuck in the groove of high deposit requirements, rising rents and challenging economic factors. The result is an over-crowded and increasingly under-stocked rental market.”
Rightmove questioned over 3,000 people for the survey in January.
RICS surveyors have also said they expect rising rents. See next story.
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Comments
DO NOT USE NETMOVERS. Netmovers has taken £29.95 from my son on 31st May 2011 and has not provided any viewings, not returned any phone calls and have refused to refund any money. My suspician is that this is a SCAM. My some (23yrs) made repeated unreturned phone calls after he was not provided with any properties to view. He complained and was told to put his complaint in writting, which he did only to received a letter from Alfred Bird, Customer Service Manager to say that he has never recieved any complaints about service and refusing to refund any money. I have just done a quick google search to find many postings from people (some homeless) who have fallen foul of this SCAM. I will now be going to my local Trading Standards office in Lincoln and will also be interested to hear from anyone else who has recieved a similar level of NO SERVICE, MONEY TAKEN FOR NOTHING.
Rick, has anyone yet reported Netmovers to Trading Standards? If not, I'll happily do so.
Any company taking a registration fee from an applicant when they knowingly cannot deliver any element of what they purport to offer is acting fraudulently. Any company director hiding behind a corporate entity acting fraudulently can be held personally accountable also.
Rick is that also why Netmovers pretends to have received instructions to list the properties? And charges prospective tenants £25 to "arrange a viewing" (of course the viewing never actually gets arranged ) on a property found on your website? When in fact the property can easily be found on a legitimate portal like Rightmove or one of the DPG websites free of charge and then the prospective tenant can make a viewing directly with the agent who has actually been instructed on the property.
Avoid Netmovers like the plague
'Insatiable' is a good way to describe the sentiment of the rental market at present.
Prospective tenants all over the country are discovering that property they have seen advertised has often been let before they get a chance to enquire about it - there is a serious shortage of quality homes for this sector.
It is one reason NetMovers decided that just being a property portal was not enough to meet the demand - why a Relocation Service is invaluable support for tenants and landlords.
Rick Jones
Development director, NetMovers.