Starting off with rent data and it looks like private rents are still climbing fast, though there are signs the pace may be cooling. ONS data shows prices rose by 7.4% in the year to Apr 2025, a touch slower than the 7.7% annual rise seen in March.
But as always, the picture varies across the country. In Apr, the North East recorded the highest rental growth at 9.4%, while Yorkshire saw a much gentler increase of 4.0%.
Encouragingly, new let data is softening much faster. HomeLet reports growth for new tenancies slowed to just 0.3% in Feb, a sharp drop from the peak seen in late 2022.
However, the housing crisis persists and rental data alone doesn’t tell us much about affordability. What really matters is the relationship between housing costs and income.
A new EHS report on the crisis for 2023-24 tells us just that. It shows that private renters have been hit hardest, spending 34% of income on housing—far more than social renters (26%) & mortgagors (19%). For low-income renters, it's worse: an average of 63% goes to rent.
Now onto house prices - latest ONS data shows annual price growth reached 6.4% in March 2025, up from 5.5% in Feb 2025 and continuing the recent trend upward since the dip in early 2024 .
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