Yahoo Finance Renters seek 'bills included' as cost of living bites
Tenant searches for properties with bills included are up 57% compared with this time last year as Britons are increasingly concerned about energy costs.
Tenants have faced fierce competition this year, with four times the number of renters enquiring about properties to move into, as there were properties to rent, according to property site Rightmove.
London was the most searched for destination by buyers looking for their next home in 2022. Searches for London increased by 9% compared with last year, while searches for Cornwall dropped by 18%, and by 17% in Devon.
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“This year people searching for their next home have well and truly returned to the capital – we started to see the tide turning towards the end of last year, and throughout 2022 a lot of our trends in the market have started to head back towards where they were in 2019,” Tim Bannister, Rightmove’s property expert, said.
London has 36% more buyer searches than Cornwall at the end of the year, which is the biggest gap since 2019. This compares to last year when there was just a 3% gap in number of searches between London and Cornwall.
“Tenants have shown through their search behaviour how appealing a home with bills included could be. Any landlord who is able to offer this added incentive next year, is likely to be met with an orderly queue of ready-to-go tenants to choose from,” he added.
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Livingston in West Lothian, Scotland is this year’s quickest market – with homes in the area finding a buyer in an average of just over two weeks (15 days). All of the top five areas are in Scotland, with Bo’ness, West Lothian in second place and Larbert, Stirlingshire in third.
The small village of Picket Piece in Hampshire is the quickest market outside of Scotland. Sellers in Picket Piece found buyers in an average of 16 days this year.
