SHOCK: Fifth of properties for sale are former rental homes
Claim is made by TwentyEA, which looked at the 28,000 advertised for sale during June and looked at their previous rental history.
Many rental property organisations and letting agents have said in recent years that landlords are quitting the sector at a greater rate than usual – but now there is hard evidence to back these claims, research firm TwentyEA reveals.
Its latest property market report shows that 18% of properties listed for sale last month – some 28,000 – had also been listed for rent within the previous three years which is 100% higher than the previous year and a third higher than in June 2019.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty in the buy-to-let market around what the change in government means for landlords but they have also been hit by steep interest rate rises and rising costs generally, so it’s likely there are several factors at play here,” says Katy Billany, executive director of TwentyEA.
Her research shows that pressure in the sector is starting to ease from the duress caused by a lack of stock, white hot demand and rising rental costs.
New landlord instructions have risen by 5% compared with Q2 2023 and lets agreed by nearly 19%.
But stock levels and availability remain at historic lows and with demand hugely outstripping supply, rents continue to ramp up.
Billany says that everywhere apart from within London there is an average of only a month’s worth of stock available to rent, meaning that a property coming to let is snapped up immediately.
TwentyEA says that, much like the owner-occupied market, renters are either adjusting to higher rental prices or are unable to afford homeownership and therefore have little choice but to accept the substantial cost of renting a property.
No surprise.
Meanwhile unsustainable mass migration continues at 700,000 a year.
Labour government will implement draconian regulation.
More landlords will leave the market.
Anyone see a problem?
Our politicians think it’s all rosie in the garden…………..
This information may be somewhat dated now, as I raised these concerns over 18 months ago. We are a small, independent estate agency in West Yorkshire. At one point last year, over 70% of our sales stock had previously been rented. The warning signs were evident up and down the country, yet the Government did not heed them. They continued forward, seemingly unaware of the damage their proposed EPC regulations and the Renters Reform Bill were causing to the private rental sector. The issue arguably began in 2019 with the implementation of the Tenant Fees Ban. It appears that those in Parliament are disconnected from the realities we face on the front line, but unfortunately, that seems typical of politicians.