UK rents continue to grow as housing market slows

In September, the average rental price for a new tenancy in the UK was £967 per calendar month, up by 2.5% last year, according to HomeLet’s rental index for the month.

Rents in London increased by 3.3% last month than on the same month of 2018, with the average rent in the capital now standing at £1,694 a month – 75% higher than the UK average. Excluding the capital, the average UK rental value was £797 – up 2.2% on last year.

Separate data from Nationwide reported that house prices rose by just 0.2% in September, down from 0.6% in August and marking the tenth month in a row that the annual house price growth was recorded as under 1%.

All 12 of the regions monitored by HomeLet showed an increase in rental values, which appear to be in line with inflation, recorded at 2% in the Consumer Prices Index (CPI) in June 2019.

Five of the regions saw a year-on-year increase of over 3%. The North West (4.4%), the East Midlands (3.8%), the South West (3.4%), Greater London (3.30%) and the North East (3.10%) all witnessed rent increases faster than the UK average.

HomeLet references over 500,000 tenants every year to provide up-to-date data on rental values in the UK. The trends reported within the index are brand-new tenancies, which were arranged in the most recent period.

The table below provides a regional breakdown of the latest average rental values across the UK: