Good luck Keir! UK needs 120,000 rental homes immediately says Rightmove
Portal says only way for Labour to rein in runaway rent inflation is to build thousands of rental homes as soon possible - a difficult task given the Tory's failure on this front.
Britain needs 120,000 more rental homes to be built immediately in order to bring rent increases back to a ‘more normal’ 2% a year as new figures show they are rising at 7% year-over-year, says Rightmove.
Its latest research reveals that the average per property rent outside London has now hit a record £1,316 a month or 7% higher than last year while the capital’s renters pay £2,652 or 4% higher.
Given these shocking figures, Rightmove is calling on Labour, which remains the favourite to run the country after July 4th, to accelerate housebuilding, incentivise landlords to invest in more homes for tenants, improve the supply and demand imbalance in the market and stabilise annual rent growth.
The portal says the imbalance between supply and demand from tenants enquiring about homes is one of the key drivers behind the rapid increase in advertised rents since the pandemic, and that Scotland has the greatest imbalance while London the smallest.
Pandemic
“We’ve been talking about the imbalance between supply and demand in the rental market for a long time now, so it’s easy to forget that there was a time before the pandemic where rental price growth was more stable,” says Tim Bannister, Rightmove’s property expert.
“Double-digit yearly rent increases were not sustainable, and, whilst there has been some improvement in the ratio between supply and demand, price growth at +7% suggest we are still out of balance.
“The next government should be prioritising an improvement to the planning process, an acceleration of housebuilding, and encouraging more supply into the rental market.”
