Yahoo Finance London rents fall for the first time in 8 years - but tenants still pay £1,500 a month
Rents in London has fallen for the first time in eight years, according to new data.
Rents in the capital were actually 1.2% lower in April than in the same month of last year, the first time average rents have fallen on an annualised basis since December 2009.
April’s rental price inflation means tenants signing up to a new tenancy last month agreed to pay an average rent of £904 a month, or £754 stripping out the Greater London region. In London itself, the average rent now stands at £1,519.
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The picture in the capital, along with a marginal decline in the wider South East region, pushed rental price inflation down across the country as a whole, according to specialist private renting insurer HomeLet.
Rental figures from the April 2017 HomeLet Rental Index
Region | Average rent in April 2017 | Average rent in March 2017 | Average rent in April 2016 | Monthly variation | Annual variation |
Wales | £610 | £616 | £597 | -0.9% | 2.3% |
North East | £525 | £522 | £514 | 0.6% | 2.2% |
Scotland | £632 | £610 | £618 | 3.6% | 2.2% |
Northern Ireland | £614 | £614 | £602 | 0.1% | 2.0% |
South West | £802 | £798 | £787 | 0.5% | 1.8% |
East Midlands | £604 | £602 | £598 | 0.3% | 1.0% |
North West | £677 | £675 | £671 | 0.4% | 0.9% |
Yorkshire & Humberside | £619 | £619 | £614 | -0.1% | 0.8% |
East of England | £904 | £902 | £898 | 0.2% | 0.7% |
West Midlands | £661 | £663 | £658 | -0.3% | 0.4% |
South East | £1,003 | £997 | £1,007 | 0.6% | -0.4% |
Greater London | £1,519 | £1,546 | £1,537 | -1.7% | -1.2% |
UK | £904 | £904 | £900 | -0.1% | 0.4% |
UK excluding Greater London | £754 | £751 | £748 | 0.4% | 0.8% |
Notes: | Based on new tenancies in April 2017 | Based on new tenancies in March 2017 | Based on new tenancies in April 2016 | Comparison of average rent in April 2017 and March 2017 | Comparison of average rent in April 2017 and April 2016 |
Rents on new tenancies signed across the UK during April were on average just 0.4% higher than in the same month in 2016 – the lowest figure recorded since February 2010.
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“Rents have been rising at a more modest pace across the whole of the UK in recent months, with lower levels of rental price inflation and even falling rents in areas of the country where prices were previously rising most quickly,” said Martin Totty, HomeLet’s CEO.
“We continue to see landlords and letting agents weighing tenant affordability considerations very seriously.”
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HomeLet data reveals that the areas of the country where rents are rising more quickly are those that experienced less rapid rental price inflation during the first half of 2016, when prices in regions such as London, the South-East and East Anglia spiked sharply.
In Wales, for example, rents were 2.2% higher in April compared to the same month of last year.
Some 4.5 million people are renting in the UK – up from about 3m just over a decade ago.
