The cost of renting property is spiralling out of control with the average price of a flat or a house in London now hitting £1,500 a month, a survey has shown.
According to data collected by HomeLet, rents have shot up 12.5% across the country with tenants on average asked to fork out £751 a month outside the capital.
Its survey also shows rental costs over the past three months has gone up five times faster than tenant income.
The sharp rise in figures since the election will add to the pressure on workers who find themselves locked out of the first-time buyers market because they don’t have enough disposable income to save for the hefty deposit banks require before approving mortgages.
Only three regions in the country have shown a decline in rental prices – the north west, east Anglia and Yorkshire and Humber.
The spike in rental reflects the general crisis in the UK with a shortage of housing pushing the cost of buying a property beyond the reach of many first-time buyers.
This in turn has created an overheated demand for rental properties, says HomeLet.
The charity Money Advice Trust says the spiralling costs are of concern.
“The proportion of calls we were getting on rental arrears in 2010 was 6.6%. This year so far it’s 11.4%, so that’s a doubling,” said a spokeswoman. “It’s both in the public and private sector.”
HomeLet’s surveys are based on 13,000 tenant reference applications last month, 3,000 of which were in London.
The increase over the past year is five times greater than it was two years ago when the year-on-year increase was 2.6%.
