TPP230 13 surprising facts about the UK rental market and a rant

The Property Podcast

We've waited four years for Rob D to rant and this is the episode where it finally happens.

This week's topic takes information from an official government publication 'The English Housing Survey' which you can find here.

Here are some of the facts we look at in the report:

Size & composition of rental sector

• 4.5m households are in PRS. That’s 20% of all households. Up from 12% in 2006
• 24% of private renters receive housing benefit, but only 5% had their full rent covered by HB
• 74% were working

Ability to pay rent

• Households in the PRS spend 35% of their income on rent. 45% in London, 32% excluding London
• 71% found it “fairly” or “very” easy to pay their rent. Falls to 41% in London
• 9% of private renters had been in arrears in the last year, compared to 25% of social renters

• Mean weekly rent is £184 overall: £300 in London, £153 outside London. Slightly more expensive than the average mortgage payment
• 66% of private renters have no savings. Of the 1/3 who did, 41% of them were under £5,000. Scary!

Length of tenancy and satisfaction

• Average tenancy length 4.3 years

• 82% satisfied with accommodation. 10% dissatisfied, compared to 13% of social renters
• Of those who had repairs carried out in last 12 months, 18% were dissatisfied with how it was done. Compared to 22% of social renters

Why last tenancy ended

• 73% because they wanted it to. 11% ended by landlord. Only 2% left because of rent increase
• Of those 11% ended by LL, 63% were because the landlord wanted to sell or use the property (but could be skewed)

So these stats would indicate that private landlords are not doing too bad of a job in fact.

But hang on a minute, another perspective came out recently which, on the face of it, looks very different which was reported in Guardian as "Landlords are turfing people out of their homes without reason - and it's completely legal" And here we have the fuel for Rob D's very first rant in four years. You'll have to listen to the podcast in full to listen to him go...

Resource of the week

Thanks to Damien for this resource, which is a good one. It's another look at the private rental market and gives you even more data than we've discussed already. Check this one out here.

Join the conversation over in the forum

Want to join in the ranting? Join the conversation in the forum.

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