Rents have risen for the thirteenth quarter in a row to a new record of £1,190 per month outside London, according to the latest Rightmove Rental Trends Tracker.
While this marks a slowing in the pace of growth, demand from tenants continues to ‘greatly outweigh’ the number of homes available to rent.
Average asking rents for all property types outside London have risen from £1,172 at the end of 2022, to the £1,190 recorded in the first quarter of this year.
Annually, this represents an increase of 9.4%. For Greater London, rents have breached £2,500 for the first time, at a record £2,501 – 14% higher than a year ago.
However, the pace of this growth has now eased for three quarters in a row.
The quarterly tracker picked up on some trends that suggest the supply versus demand gap might be starting to narrow slightly, but there are still nowhere near enough properties to go round.
According to the data, the number of properties available to rent is 6% up on this time last year and 8% for the quarter.
Supply remains historically low though, with the number of properties available to rent now 46% below 2019’s level. The number of tenants enquiring to move is up 4% on last year and 48% higher than in 2019.
The biggest gap between supply and demand is reported to be for terraced houses, with more than four times as many enquiries as there are properties available to rent.
Rightmove director of property science Tim Bannister comments: “We have seen some early signs of improvement on squeezed supply levels this year, though with no significant influx of new properties becoming available to rent currently on the horizon, the mismatch is set to continue for some time.
“Properties in popular areas within an affordable asking rent range of that local area are likely to be snapped up almost immediately, and on average, homes are finding a tenant much more quickly.”
Regionally, average rents are up both quarterly and annually across all regions of England, Scotland and Wales.
Outside London, rents are highest in the South East at £1,676 per month, attracting an average yield of 5.3%.
The biggest year-on-year increase was in Scotland, where rents rose 12.3% to £957 per month with an average yield of 7.8%. The smallest annual change was in the South West, where rents have still risen 7.5%.
Rental hotspots were identified in High Wycombe, Farnham, Edinburgh, Dundee and Rochester.
The average yield for Great Britain is 5.8%, a slight annual increase of 0.2%, the tracker shows.
