Average asking rents outside London have topped £1,400 a month for the first time, according to new figures from the property website Rightmove.
The typical advertised rent across Britain outside the capital climbed to a record £1,418 per calendar month in the third quarter of the year. In London, rents reached an all-time high of £2,825 a month.
Slower, but still rising
Behind the record, the pace of increases has eased considerably. Annual rent growth outside London was 2.4% in the third quarter, compared with rises of around 10% a year between 2021 and 2023.
"Average rents have reached another new record and have now surpassed £1,400 per month outside London for the first time," said Colleen Babcock, a property expert at Rightmove.
"However, beneath the headline figure, rental growth has continued to settle compared with the exceptionally fast pace we saw a few years ago. Supply remains constrained, which is continuing to put upward pressure on rents, but demand is also more measured. That has helped to create a more balanced market overall, even though affordability remains a challenge for many renters."
The number of homes available to rent fell by 2% compared with a year ago – matching a 2% drop in tenant demand.
Scotland in the spotlight
Scotland remains one of the cheaper parts of Britain to rent, with an average asking rent of £1,160 a month. But it recorded one of the fastest increases: 3% over the year and 2.1% in the latest quarter alone – among the sharpest quarterly rises in the country.
Scotland also offers landlords the highest average yield of any region, at 7.9%.
The figures will feed into the long-running debate over Scotland's rental policy. Rent controls introduced during the cost-of-living crisis, and the framework that has followed, have been criticised by landlords who say they discouraged investment and reduced supply, and defended by tenant groups who say they protected people from steep increases. Asking rents measure only new lets, not the rents paid by sitting tenants.
London squeeze
In London, a sharper shortage is driving faster growth. Rents rose 3.2% over the year. The number of homes available in the capital is down 9% compared with a year ago, while demand from renters has risen by 6%.
Elsewhere, the South East averaged £1,959, the East of England £1,697 and the South West £1,532. The North West, at £1,273, and Yorkshire and the Humber, at £1,131, remained among the most affordable areas, although Yorkshire saw the fastest annual growth, at 3.5%.
Landlords under pressure
Rightmove said elevated mortgage rates were continuing to deter new buy-to-let investment.
Matt Smith, a mortgage expert at the website, said: "One of the biggest challenges for many landlords at the moment is managing the properties they already own when the time to remortgage comes around. Some landlords are still reaching the end of much cheaper fixed-rate deals taken out when borrowing costs were lower. For those landlords, moving onto a higher mortgage rate can have a significant impact on monthly costs and rental yields."
Kesha Foss-Smith, head of lettings at John D Wood & Co, said tenants were becoming "increasingly discerning" and that maintaining a healthy supply of rental homes would be key to easing competition.
The bigger picture
Aneisha Beveridge, head of research at Hamptons, cautioned that asking rents "only tell part of the story", with some of the largest rises now happening within existing tenancies.
For renters, the slowdown in growth is welcome but offers little relief. Rents are still rising faster than many expect, from a level that has already climbed dramatically in five years – and with supply shrinking, few in the industry expect that to change quickly.
