The latest YourMove Rental Tracker has been released, providing interesting insight into how rents in England and Wales performed on a monthly and annual basis.
The data shows that rents in the South West grew faster than anywhere else annually, with prices rising by 4.3% in the year to November 2018, sitting at £701 – notably higher than the national average increase of 1.8% last year, leaving the average rent in England and Wales at £865 per calendar month.
The East Midlands took second place for annual rent increases, with rents ballooning by 1.9% to reach an average of £663.
On a month-on-month basis Wales and the West Midlands recorded the strongest increases, both seeing prices rise by 0.4%. In Wales the average price was £594 and in the West Midlands it was £627.
The report also looked at which landlords enjoyed the highest percentage returns, with the statistics showing that, on average, buy to let landlords in the Northern regions saw much higher yields than those in Southern areas. The average investor in the North East enjoyed an annual yield of 5% in the year to November while in the North West this figure was 4.8%.
Martyn Alderton, National Lettings Director at Your Move, commented: ‘Properties in the North appear to offer high percentage returns to property investors and, as a result, they are attracting interest even more. This strong appetite to buy has been accompanied by a rise in demand for rental properties, since the North is attracting many young professionals and families with its good transport links and job prospects.’
He added: ‘As the London market continues to gently slow down, other regions are coming to the fore and proving attractive to investors.’
Unsurprisingly the report shows that London is still the priciest place to rent in England and Wales, despite rents falling year-on-year by 0.8% to an average of £1,263.
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