Many tenants will never be able to afford to buy their own home, a leading London estate agent has warned.

Rupal Patel, Director of Winkworth in Shepherd’s Bush and Hammersmith (pictured), said renters in the capital were now forced to rent for much longer.

It means they may have to adapt to the European way of always being a tenant, he explained.

Renting for life

“Tenants are now going to be more likely to adopt the European system where they are going to be renting for life,” he told Mylondon.

“Historically people have had ambitions to own their own properties and join the property ladder, so I think people are going to be renting for a lot longer, this has already happened, I have noticed so in the last five to 10 years that people are renting a lot longer before taking that next step.”

Tenants are now going to be more likely to adopt the European system where they are going to be renting for life.”

But he also said that tenants are not being forced to leave London, despite rising rents.

“I thought with the way prices are going this would be the case, however I have not quite seen this as of yet,” said Patel, who has previously worked for Savills and Benham & Reeves.

“You can still only take one tenant per property so I haven’t yet seen a massive shift of people moving away from London. Also a lot of the large corporate companies have done a whole U-turn in encouraging people to come back into work.

“One of the biggest demands for tenants is that they want to be close to a station to get to work and historically, because there was so much competition we may have had seven to ten people interested per property, but now if it has gone down to six to eight.”