Mortgage availability has been suffering increased pressure, leading to the number of people renting property in the UK increasing in turn. This has led to demand for rental property beating supply, according to Email4Property.co.uk.
Research by Key Note showed that 95 per cent of teenagers over 15 years old would expect to rent rather than buy a home in the future. Coupled with that, it also reported that lettings agents have seen the number of properties available to rent fall by around 20 per cent since last summer.
Key Note spokesman Steve Lees said that the lettings market had contracted during the last few years with a dramatic slowdown in the number of properties coming on to the rental market. “Fierce competition from tenants means that when properties do become available they are snapped up. As a result, landlords have also been able to push up rents,” he said.
Mr Lees added that the Government had offered a small boost to the rental sector with a lower CGT increase than was expected. However, he would like to see restrictions on buy-to-let lending relaxed to encourage more new landlords. He added: “Once this happens, I would expect to see a slow but steady increase in supply, benefiting those who are unable to find a property and bringing rental prices down.”
Nick Barrow, branch manager at Linley & Simpson, Leeds, told propertytalklive.co.uk that they had also seen the number of properties on their books fall by at least a fifth in the last 12 months, but the numbers looking to rent had gone up. “This is because many tenants are deciding to stay in their current properties rather than terminate contracts and there are fewer individual buy-to-let landlords entering the market,” he said.
