The Home property website has identified locations where rents have risen by up to 38 per cent in the past 12 months.

It says key areas of London are now seeing a 54 per cent drop in the number of properties available to rent compared with November 2020. “The boroughs of Kensington and Chelsea, Camden and Tower Hamlets lead the charge with annualised hikes of up to 38 per cent, more than compensating for last year’s declines during lockdown” says Home.

Across England as a whole it says stock is 46 per cent lower than a year ago , and has prompted significant rent increases – although nowhere on the scale of parts of London.

For example, the south west of England has seen hikes averaging 10.5 per cent while in Greater London the figure is 10.2 per cent over the year; across the UK as a whole the average increase is 6.5 per cent since November 2020, and that’s even taking into account falls in typical rents in both Scotland and Wales. 

Looking at the UK as a whole, Home says: “Our forecast is that prices and rents will continue to rise overall due to the vast amount of recent credit expansion. A significant loosening of supply in the near term appears unlikely, and any sort of significant mortgage rate hikes look impossible given the indebtedness of government and the private sector alike.”

Home also says that there is little likelihood of rental properties being repossessed in any number and then coming to the market for future buy to let investors, even as a result of an additional £2.2 billion being pumped into the court system to help clear backlogs built up during Covid.

“What is essentially a technological revamp, will take at least three or more years to implement so don’t expect a flood of repossessed properties hitting the market any time soon” says the website in its latest monthly report.