The proportion of Britons expecting an increase in property rents rose in the fourth quarter from a year earlier amid a shortage of homes, Rightmove Plc said.
Forty-two percent of 2,636 people surveyed last month said rents will be higher 12 months from now, up from 37 percent in the last three months of 2009, the London-based operator of Britain’s biggest property website said in an e-mailed report today. In the third quarter, 45 percent predicted higher rents.
A shortage of landlords buying property to let is limiting the supply of rented accommodation and keeping rents high, the report said. U.K. mortgage lending fell 9 percent from a year earlier in October, and the level of loans is “too low,” the Council of Mortgage Lenders said last week.
Prospective tenants are “experiencing a struggle to find suitable rental accommodation and losing out on properties to higher bidders,” Miles Shipside, director of Rightmove, said in the report. “The momentum for further rises continues.”
Rightmove conducted the survey of people who are currently renting and expect to be renting in a year from Oct. 4 to Oct. 18.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jennifer Ryan in London at jryan13@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Fraher at jfraher@bloomberg.net
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