A few notes on London residential rental market from Knight Frank‘s latest report:

1. Demand is expected to grow as much as 30% on a year on year basis.

2. For the first time in over 15 years, people are not so convinced by the statement that “rent is just dead money”. When house prices are falling rental payments seem more sensible than mortgage payments.

3. Forced landlords. With the volume of house sales at least 50% lower now than a year ago, there are a lot of people looking to move house who cannot sell at a price acceptable to them. Many of these people are letting their houses.

4. The property that does not sell and comes on the rental market instead, means that the quality of the rentals is improving.

5. Many developers are becoming landlords as they cannot sell the property for the desired price.

6. Rents, which grew rapidly in 2007 (up nearly 16% in central London), will probably rise again this year, but growth will be limited by wage inflation (4% to -5%).

7. The market is very sensitive to changes to corporate employment. Widespread job cuts or even recruitment freezes could adversely affect rental values.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 10:31 am and is filed under For Tenant. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.