Rent outside London passes £1,000 for first time, figures show

theguardian.com:

The average new monthly rent outside London has passed £1,000 for the first time, figures show, with tenants in Great Britain now typically paying 25% more than they were at the start of the Covid pandemic.

The estate agent Hamptons, which issued the data, warned that the rate of rent rises was “unlikely to slow considerably due to the number of landlords looking to pass on their rising costs” and this may force some tenants to downsize or relocate to a cheaper area.

Many landlords with buy-to-let mortgages have seen their costs rise sharply in the wake of12 consecutive interest rate rises and the chaos of last autumn’s Truss government mini-budget.

The average rent on a newly let home outside the capital rose to £1,002 a month in April, according to Hamptons, which was 7.8%, or £72, higher than the figure a year earlier.

Meanwhile, the London rental market is continuing to speed ahead of the rest of the country: annual rental growth in the capital was now running well ahead of inflation at 17.2%, said the firm, with the average monthly bill passing £2,200 for the first time last month. That would cost the average tenant moving into a new home an extra £3,895 a year.

Across Great Britain as a whole, the average monthly rent rose 11.1% year-on-year in April to reach a new high of £1,249 – the second-highest figure for rental growth across the country on record. Overall, rents across the country have leapt 25% since the eve of the pandemic.

This is the latest in a series of surveys that have highlighted how sizeable rent hikes – also fuelled by severe shortages of properties – are piling yet more pressure on households already facing severe strain.

Earlier this year, some city mayors in England called for an immediate rent freeze