Interactive: Here’s how much rents have gone up where you live as London prices spiral
Rents have spiralled across the country over the past two years as a combination of high demand, low supply and upticks in the cost of landlords’ mortgages have pushed up tenants’ obligations.
London has been particularly hit hard, with areas like Camden and Islington seeing almost 20 per cent increases in rental costs over the past year.
Now new official data from the country’s stats body, the Office for National Statistics, demonstrates the scale of the increase in rents.
The stats body is now incorporating changes in rents at a more local, and live, level – which they believe will help give a better picture of inflation.
The map below allows you to investigate the average rent and annual change in your area.
Rents across London have spiked with particular hotspots closer to Zone 1.
However, the three biggest growth areas in the country since 2015 have been in the City of Bristol, where rents have gone up. more than 60 per cent over those eight years, with South Gloucestershire (+57.4%) and Salford (+53.5%) in second and third place.
New house price data released today suggests property prices are recovering from the hikes to interest rates.
November marked the third straight month of successive price increases, according to the latest Nationwide data.
There has still been a year-on-year fall in prices of 2 per cent, driven by interest rate increases filtering through to the wider UK economy – not least in mortgage rates, which shot up earlier this year.
However changes in interest rate future path expectations – with markets now beginning to believe we have reached the peak on interest rates and that the Bank of England may move to cut them as early as next summer – have given the market some momentum.
“These shifts are important as they have led to a decline in the longer-term interest rates (swap rates) that underpin fixed rate mortgage pricing,” said Robert Gardner, Nationwide’s chief economist.
“If sustained, this will help to ease the affordability pressures that have been stifling housing market activity in recent quarters, where the number of mortgage approvals for house purchases has been running at c.30% below pre-pandemic levels,” explained Gardner.