There’s good news for buy to let landlords in the latest statistics on national rent levels in the UK in September.
Landlord Today recently reported that the average monthly rent in the previous month in the private rented sector stood at £697 – a rise of 2.2% on the same period last year.
The increase in private sector rents in London has been even more marked – going up by 3.3% over September 2018 to a current monthly average of £1,694.
Across all 12 of the regions examined in the current survey, rental income had risen during the period from September 2018 until the end of August 2019, specifically:
- the biggest annual increase of 4.4% in the Northwest of England;
- the Southwest, East Midlands, Northeast, and Greater London all registering increases of more than 3%;
- the West Midlands, Yorkshire and Humberside, Wales and Scotland, all with increases of more than 2%; and
- Eastern England, Northern Ireland, and the Southeast, recording increases of 1% or less.
In a separate report by the BBC, it was revealed that in a handful of English cities private sector rents have risen appreciably faster than the national average. In Nottingham, for example, average rents are 5.4% higher than they were the previous year, while in both Bristol and Leeds the increase was 4.5%.
At the other end of the scale, the BBC reported that rents in Aberdeen – which are directly related to the local economy – had slumped by 4.1% in the third quarter of 2019. In both Middlesbrough and Coventry private sector rents have also fallen.
