While house prices across the UK rose by 0.6% in the year to February 2019, according to\u00a0the Office for National Statistics (ONS), London house prices dropped by 3.8%, the largest annual fall in over a decade, understandably resulting in\u00a0a cautious buy to let market.<\/p>\n
However, London boroughs vary significantly in terms of house prices and rental yields\u00a0and in\u00a0some areas, house prices may have fallen,\u00a0but net rental yields\u00a0have increased, providing an opportunity for landlords more interested in short-term profits.<\/p>\n
The ONS data shows that\u00a0Hackney, Tower Hamlets, Wandsworth and Westminster have all had an increase in yields and a drop in property prices.\u00a0\u00a0For the highest yields, the data\u00a0highlights the\u00a0boroughs\u00a0of Newham (3.63%), Tower Hamlets (3.4%) and Lambeth (3.3%)\u00a0as attractive possibilities for landlords.<\/p>\n
According to\u00a0research by\u00a0London\u00a0letting agents Chestertons\u00a0the\u00a0shortage of rental properties in the capital is driving up rents\u00a0(and therefore increasing yields).\u00a0 The agents have seen\u00a0South West London\u00a0start to\u00a0outpace the rest of the capital\u00a0with\u00a0significant\u00a0rent rises.<\/p>\n
The exit of many smaller landlords from the London market, in particular\u00a0the South West which was dominated by \u2018accidental\u2019 landlords, has had a significant impact on the number of rental properties available to prospective tenants which\u00a0is\u00a0undoubtedly\u00a0driving an increase in rents.<\/p>\n
The research shows\u00a0that\u00a0the number of tenants registering for a rental property\u00a0between\u00a0January and\u00a0March 2019 increased by 48% on the same period last year.\u00a0However,\u00a0in the same period, the number of properties available dropped\u00a0by\u00a030%.\u00a0\u00a0According to Chestertons\u2019 data,\u00a0rents are climbing three times faster in South West London than anywhere else in the capital;\u00a0a substantial\u00a05.9% in Q1 2019 year on year.<\/p>\n
While London has been traditionally favoured by investors wanting longer-term price growth, the current marketplace is an opportunity for landlords looking for short-term rent profits.<\/p>\n
Head of Lettings at Chestertons, Richard Davies highlights Clapham, Putney and Wandsworth as \u2018hot spots\u2019, but \u2018Wandsworth is expected to become increasingly attractive to landlords\u2019, as it registered a 0.4% rent increase between January and March this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Savvy landlords\u00a0looking for short-term profits are\u00a0watching the London property market\u00a0and\u00a0keeping a keen eye on falling house prices and rising rents. While house prices across the UK rose by 0.6% in the year to February 2019, according to\u00a0the Office for National Statistics (ONS), London house prices dropped by 3.8%, the largest annual fall in over a… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3380,"featured_media":4769,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,12,6],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5023652"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3380"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5023652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5023652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6097632,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5023652\/revisions\/6097632"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5023652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5023652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.buyassociationgroup.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5023652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}