Average UK rent outside London hits record £1,344 a month

Rents across Britain have risen to record highs with would-be tenants still far outnumbering available rental homes.
Outside London, the average advertised monthly rent has climbed 2.3 per cent over the past three months to £1,344, according to Rightmove, the property search website. Rents have now risen in each of the past 19 quarters, dating back to the onset of the pandemic, Rightmove said.
London rents have also struck a fresh record high of £2,694 a month, having gone up by 1.8 per cent over the summer.
On average, rents across the UK have risen by 39 per cent since the start of 2020, which experts have blamed on a “chronic” mismatch between supply and demand.
For every rental property that comes to market, letting agents are getting 15 inquiries. That is down from 23 last year but still double the pre-pandemic average. There are 13 per cent more rental homes available now than there were last autumn, but that is still 27 per cent fewer than in 2019.
Supply is being further constrained by some landlords selling up, Rightmove said. Its data shows that 18 per cent of all homes currently up for sale were previously available to rent, a record proportion. Back in 2010, only 8 per cent of homes up for sale were former rentals.
There are some signs, however, that the supply-demand crunch which has fuelled the rapid rise in rents over the past few years is easing.
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Compared with this time last year, London rents are up 2.5 per cent, while rents outside the capital have risen 5.2 per cent, the slowest rate of annual growth recorded since 2021.
“While we’re seeing some signs of improvement in the market’s chronic levels of demand and supply imbalance helped by a slight increase in the number of available rental properties, affordability remains a key challenge for renters as prices continue to hit new records,” Tim Bannister, head of property data at Rightmove, said.
“Tenant competition has eased slightly from last year, but the market is still far from balanced.”
Lynda Woodcock, managing director of Pheasant Retreats, a letting agent in Witney, Oxfordshire, said the rental market was still “incredibly busy”.
She added: “With so many landlords considering selling their properties ahead of new legislation, such as the proposed changes around EPC [energy performance certificate] requirements and tax increases, we’re seeing fewer new instructions coming through.”
Rightmove has estimated that 2.9 million rental homes in the UK need upgrades to achieve an EPC rating of C, which would cost about £23.4 billion, or just over £8,000 per property, on average.