Rents set to 'remain stable' for the time being

Posted: 26 Mar 2009 13:23:08 GMT

The cost of renting a property in the UK is not likely to change in the near future, it has been suggested.

According to Property Hawk, rents will remain "fairly stable in the long-term" because first-time buyers are struggling to come up with large enough deposits.

Chris Horne, editor of the site, pointed out that while rents noticeably dropped towards the end of last year, they began to level out at the start of 2009.

He said that in some areas rents dropped because of the rise in "accidental landlords" – property owners who decided to rent out a house or flat that they were unable to sell.

Mr Horne commented: "The glut areas seem to be metropolitan city centres and that is largely as a result of oversupply of city centre flats."

However, he went on to say that while there has been a rise in the number of rental properties in some areas, this is being balanced out by the number of FTBs who can't afford a deposit and therefore still need to rent.

"In the long-term, there is going to be an equilibrium reached and the thing that is going to keep rents relatively strong is the difficulty in accessing the alternatives - in the sense that it is very difficult for first-time buyers to be able to afford to raise increasingly large deposits," Mr Horne added.

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