Lorna White, Senior Associate with the George F. White Residential team, looks at the recent residential lettings market statistics and gives her view on the months ahead.

As we venture into the second quarter of 2023 interestingly the rents overall are still rising giving a similar message to that of the first financial quarter across England, “rents hit a new record high”.

Rightmove statistics are showing that the rents across England are now a third higher than pre-pandemic with the average rent in the North East having risen to £822pcm, this was £789pcm from quarter one. 

The average time for a landlord to find a tenant has also been revealed at a mere 17 days, this is a marked slow down from the frenzy that followed the mid-pandemic reopening of the property market but clear evidence that there is still a lack of properties and demand is still strong.

I certainly don’t think rents will be dropping any time soon however we are noticing that supply is starting to creep back up to help with the demand, national statistics indicate that compared to last year we have increased available properties by 7% where as demand has only risen by 3%. With all these changes, we are finding the majority of landlords (57%) are keeping their tenants in their properties for longer than 24 months.

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