Rents in London have fallen for the first time in eight years, while rental price inflation across the UK as a whole has dropped to its lowest level since 2010.
According to new data from HomeLet, London rents have fallen 1.2% in the last year, the first fall since December 2009.
The slowdown in the capital and falls in the wider South East region have pushed rental price inflation down across the country.
Rents on new tenancies signed across the UK during April were just 0.4% higher than in the same month of 2016 – the lowest figure recorded since February 2010.
This means that tenants signing up to a new tenancy last month agreed to pay an average rent of £904 a month, or £754 not including the Greater London market. The average rent in London now stands at £1,519.
The areas of the country where rents are rising more quickly are those that saw much less rapid rental price inflation during the first half of 2016, when prices in regions such as London, the South-East and East Anglia spiked sharply.
Wales (2.3%), North-East England (2.2%) and Scotland (2.2%) saw the highest levels of rental price inflation during April.
Martin Totty, HomeLet’s chief executive, said: “Rents have been rising at a much more modest pace across the whole of the UK in recent months, with lower levels of rental price inflation and even falling rents seen in areas of the country where prices were previously rising most quickly.
“This trend is ongoing: we continue to see landlords’ and letting agents weighing tenant affordability considerations very seriously.”
Rental figures from the April 2017 HomeLet Rental Index
| Region | Average rent in April 2017 | Average rent in March 2017 | Average rent in April 2016 | Monthly variation | Annual variation |
| Wales | £610 | £616 | £597 | -0.9% | 2.3% |
| North East | £525 | £522 | £514 | 0.6% | 2.2% |
| Scotland | £632 | £610 | £618 | 3.6% | 2.2% |
| Northern Ireland | £614 | £614 | £602 | 0.1% | 2.0% |
| South West | £802 | £798 | £787 | 0.5% | 1.8% |
| East Midlands | £604 | £602 | £598 | 0.3% | 1.0% |
| North West | £677 | £675 | £671 | 0.4% | 0.9% |
| Yorkshire & Humberside | £619 | £619 | £614 | -0.1% | 0.8% |
| East of England | £904 | £902 | £898 | 0.2% | 0.7% |
| West Midlands | £661 | £663 | £658 | -0.3% | 0.4% |
| South East | £1,003 | £997 | £1,007 | 0.6% | -0.4% |
| Greater London | £1,519 | £1,546 | £1,537 | -1.7% | -1.2% |
| UK | £904 | £904 | £900 | -0.1% | 0.4% |
| UK excluding Greater London | £754 | £751 | £748 | 0.4% | 0.8% |
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