A new rental market snapshot from the respected property website Home makes bleak reading for the private rental sector investor.

The May edition of the Home market report says the annualised national growth in asking rents is sliding further into the negative: it’s now down -1.8%, driven down by a 7% increase in supply. 

The national growth figure is in the red due mainly to the negative performance of London, says Home, although negative contributions also now come from the West Midlands, the South East and Yorkshire. Meanwhile, the East Midlands continues to show exceptional performance with rental growth of 9.0%.

Only nine of the 33 London boroughs indicate positive asking rent growth and three of those are below the 1% mark. In the boroughs of Camden and Islington, rents are down by 8.9% and 9.9% respectively.

On the sales side, annualised home price growth across England and Wales continues to be well below the level of inflation at just 1.4% overall.

Home says the unsold sales stock count for England and Wales has now increased massively for two consecutive months. Some 30,621 properties were added to agents’ portfolios during the last month, which is far above seasonal expectations. 

The website says the current total of 533,797 is relatively very high and is the largest such figure since October 2013.

Supply of new sales properties entering the market during April 2025 remains moderate in most areas except for minor surges in the North East and the South West. Hence, the rapid build-up of stock indicates a fall in demand since the hike in stamp duty.

Still in the sales market, the largest April price rises were in Scotland and Yorkshire with month-on-month gains of 1.6% and 1.0% respectively.

Scotland remains the top regional property market growth leader with an impressive year-on-year gain of 4.5% followed by Yorkshire at 4.3%. Meanwhile, the South East retains its position as the worst regional performer with a dire annualised loss of 0.4%.

Sales market momentum shows a further increase over and above that of May 2024. High activity has upped the property turnover rate to be above any of the previous ten years of May readings. However, even this heightened throughput is not enough to prevent a serious build-up of unsold stock. 

Typical Time on Market is now five days higher than in May last year and rising.