Letting agents currently handling 25 rental enquiries for each property – London Wallet

Letting agents are currently handling an average of 25 email and phone enquiries from prospective tenants for every property available to rent.

This is more than triple the eight they were receiving on average at this time in 2019 and is five more than in May of this year, according to the data provided by Rightmove.

“We’ve been really feeling the pressure of having to manage the mounting number of enquiries for each rental property we have available,” said Ria Laitmer, lettings property manager at Clarkes in Dorset.

Highlighting the current gap between supply and demand, the number of available properties to rent has decreased by 35% compared with this time in 2019, though it has improved by 14% compared with last year.

Rightmove research found that the biggest imbalance between supply and demand across Great Britain is in two-bedroom semi-detached houses, followed by two-bedroom terraced houses, with smaller property types under more pressure from the demand and supply gap than larger properties.

Separate data released by Goodlord this week shows that strong demand for rental properties has pushed rental prices up by an average of almost 8% year-on-year.

Pressure on the rental market ‘more intense than ever’