Concerns grow over reducing private rental supply

Concerns from various property experts, including well know TV personality Phil Spencer, have been voiced recently. 

Across the sales market the feeding frenzy which has characterised a buoyant market for the last two years now seems to be slowing. Activity remains strong, but prices are starting to soften.

This is however far from the case across the private rental market, where rents continue to increase being fuelled by an ever increasing demand and a static supply of new homes to rent.  

Phil Spencer, frontman of MoveIQ, a new property information and data resource, has recently been quoted: 

"There has been a lot of media attention given to the plight of private tenants in recent weeks. Letting agents have provided the data that shows why.

Put at its simplest, demand is continuing to rise (despite substantial rent increases) and supply is on hold. At least its not falling but the supply - demand dap is expanding nonetheless.

Specifically, Propertymark reports that each lettings agency branch had a total of 147 new tenant applications in September. While there were 11 available properties to let per branch.

A gap of this kind can only mean one thing - rent rises. So it's unsurprising that around three quarters of all agents have seen at least some of their landlord clients increasing rent in the last month" 

OXON Property Search's John Gebbels has also recently commented: 

"With demand set to continue increasing, the solution must be to increase the number of new available properties into the private rented sector.

The advent and growth of the Build to Rent sector is encouraging, and offers renters some significant benefits, however Built to Rent sector experts themselves admit it may take the around ten years to catch up with the current supply demand imbalance. 

In the short term term it seems likely that a growing call to Government will be to discourage private Landlords from fleeing the sector. Hopefully this call will he heard, as without it the short and medium term prospects for tenants look to be one of continually little choice, and increasing rental expenses" 

For the full MoveIQ article please follow the link below:

https://www.moveiq.co.uk/blog/news/housing-market?ck_subscriber_id=1867610353