It stands to reason, with the current attitude that banks have towards lending, that there are more people looking at renting than ever before. Not just renting of commercial property or serviced offices, we are also talking about residential renting.
Buyers who can’t sell are letting their houses in order to move on. Those testing country life are renting before buying, and nearly everyone in their twenties and thirties have to rent, because they can’t afford to buy in the London property hothouse. In Islington, for example, Winkworth reports that there are more tenants than there are flats to let. More than half are snapped up by professional singles and couples.
More families are doing it too. A market snapshot by the Association of Residential Letting Agents says that 66 per cent of agents report an increase in semi-detached houses to let and a 63 per cent increase in detached property.
Hard-pressed first-time buyers are being outrun by canny buy-to-let investors. The reason is that risk-averse lenders prefer investors to first-time buyers who want high loans. Assetz, says investors are reappearing in large numbers – they have doubled since April 2010 – to take advantage of lower prices and strong rentals. ‘Lenders are making no secret of the fact that they would rather allocate the limited funds they do have to the lower-risk option of buy-to-let loans, with deposits of 25-40 per cent, than first-time buyers with loans of 90 per cent of value,’ says Stuart Law, chief executive of Assetz. ‘As a result, the buy-to-let sector is recovering remarkably.’
In fact, it has come to light that quite a few offices in London are giving up a floor or two and using the new relaxed planning laws to enable them to convert some of their unused space into residential space for either self use or for renting out.
