Rental property supply plummets

The supply of homes listed on the market to let has fallen sharply now that pretty much all of the buy-to-let properties acquired prior to the introduction of the 3% stamp duty surcharge in April have been filled.

Research by property crowdfunding platform Property Partner shows that four out of ten of major towns and cities in the UK saw a fall in the volume of homes available to rent in September compared to the previous month.

Eight out of ten locations, which saw a drop in new rental listings in August, registered a further decrease in new buy-to-let homes for the second consecutive month, owed in part to a fall in the number of buy-to-let homes being purchased by investors following the recent tax changes in the sector.

In most areas, there was a decline in new rental homes advertised, led by Grimsby which saw rental listings fall by 26%. The next three locations were in the South East – Oxford (-24.4%), Canterbury (-23.9%) and Brighton (-18.7%) but no region was unaffected by the shortage in supply of new buy-to-let properties.

Most major English cities saw new rental property listings fall, but London bucked the trend and posted a 1.43% rise in September.

Dan Gandesha, CEO of Property Partner, commented: “You’d expect a seasonal drop off in the number of new buy-to-let properties coming onto the market during August but September has also proved worryingly slow. We’ll have to wait until next month to determine whether this is just a short-term problem or something to be increasingly concerned about.

“The new stamp duty hike in April for buy-to-let and second homes saw a rush by landlords to beat the deadline with a subsequent rise in stock levels. But now that the dust has settled, we’re seeing some significant declines in new listings, particularly surprising after the summer.”

Earlier this month, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) warned that the UK is facing a severe shortage of homes to rent, largely because of tax changes for landlords.

At least 1.8 million more households will be looking to rent rather than buy a home by 2025 mainly because of rising house prices, according to RICS.

Gandesha continued: “Like RICs, we believe Britain should be building more homes across all tenure types. Over the past decade, more and more people have moved away from home ownership and become long-term renters.

“It’s time for the new government to make build-to-rent a key priority, encouraging the private sector to build properties for residential letting with incentives for institutional and professional landlords.”

The following table shows the 29 UK towns and cities that saw the decreases in new rental property listings for both August and September:

Source: research by Property Partner

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