Rents in Greater London are up an annualised 25 per cent, with much of the increase attributed to the stock of properties to let being down by 41 per cent over the same period.

The data comes from the housing website Home which says that rents in central London continue to skyrocket. 

The greatest rises in asking rents over the last year are in the City of London (up 98 per cent), Westminster (up 53 per cent), Kensington and Chelsea (50 per cent) and Hammersmith and Fulham (49 per cent), as demand returns.

“As the Covid exodus [from London] has gone into reverse, demand has returned and supply has plummeted. The result of this rapid recovery is that rents are back to pre-pandemic levels and therefore the fundamentals underpinning the value of property in the capital have been restored” says Home’s latest index.

It continues: “In fact, rents continue to rise in London, with every one of the 33 boroughs showing a hike in the mix-adjusted average during the last six months. Moreover, the greatest annualised rises are concentrated in the more central districts, namely the City, Westminster, Kensington & Chelsea, Hammersmith & Fulham, Camden, Tower Hamlets and Islington.”

Outside of the capital, the supply of rental properties is low or falling in all English regions, Scotland and Wales – down 24 per cent overall since December 2020. 

This is creating significant upward price pressure, says Home. 

Rents are up an annualised 7.2 per cent across the UK since January last year, and the pace appears to be picking up with 5.8 per cent of this rise occurring in just the last three months.

The largest annualised average rent hikes outside of London are in the East of England and the South East, up 7.0 and 6.1 per cent respectively.