Rents 'at highest for two years'

Gorgeous_George

According to the Beeb (link), a reduction in the number of landlords and a rise in wannabe tenants have caused rents to rise.

I don't see any rises in my area.

GG

julie03

mines just gone up £50, to £1300 pcm for a 3 bed semi west london

and the LHA rate has just gone up as well, only £2 per wk tho

Morglin

Can't see much rise in rents here either, if the local papers are anything to go by - they seem to be dropping a little.

According to a government minister, they are hoping that the capping of LHA will force the prices of private lets downwards still further when it comes into effect.

Lin

theartfullodger

Seen gentle rises... and the usual daft froth of "rents are shooting up you can't lose money as a landlord" c**p from dodgy mortgage brokers & even dodgier "property investment" crooks...

I think with the HB/LHA cutbacks there's gonna be an interesting slump in rents in the "expensive" areas and perhaps (from shifted-from-expensive-areas) some small increases in a very few areas April/Oct 2011.

Anyway. 'tis a long term game.. you don't know if any individual property was a good deal for 5-10 years, surely??

poppysarah

The same report on another site added in that a large % of tenants are also behind with the rents.

high rents = arrears?

And why the decline in landlords?

bristol_pilot

Rents in my area are showing gentle rises, but still show only a 2% yield for new landlords as property prices remain crazy. It's a well-off area and I can't imagine the cap on LHA having much impact.

jozbo

We've been priced out of rentals in the area - have rented in E London for a few years and luckily not had our rent increased but find if we wanted to rent something similar now it would be around 5-10% more expensive than it was.
That could just be down to increasing gentrification of this area though..

bristol_pilot

At £400 per week, the cap on LHA is still way above what working people paying their own way can usually afford so I don't think there will be a great deal of impact on rents except on a few rogue landlords who currently rip off the taxpayer. However, if the Lib-Con government do what I hope and expect them to do - impose further LHA cuts - we could see some impact on rents.

bitsandpieces

bristol_pilot wrote: »

Rents in my area are showing gentle rises, but still show only a 2% yield for new landlords as property prices remain crazy.

That's a good point. Yields on quite a number of properties are so low that it doesn't make financial sense to BTL unless you're assuming capital growth (even with lousy interest rates, there are plenty of properties for rent where you could get a better yield just sticking the cash in a bank). Maybe some landlords are trying to get a better return on their investment?

dizziblonde

Shortage of "good" rented properties (there'll always be the 1 bedroom broomcupboard or comedy DIY ones around) around here aimed at the professional market. Anything we were interested in was going within a day of hitting the market - it's pretty bad if you're trying to move around here.