It’s easy for the whole concept of finding, living and paying for a home to feel like a black pit of doom. A third of us are getting into debt just to cover the cost of renting, one study recently said that rent prices are going to rise a hell of a lot faster than house prices over the next five years and, as we’re now just days away from the General Election and still trying to get our heads around what all those manifestos really mean, there isn’t a particularly clear picture of what the future of ‘affordable’ housing looks like at the moment.
However, there is a potential positive to be found in our turbulent muddle of a housing market at the moment. According to the latest rental index by HomeLet, a Landlord and Tenant services supplier, the average monthly cost of a new tenancy has fallen. Besides the general relief of there being a general slowing down of rental inflation and you know, possibly being able to afford your flat and the journey to work someday, it’s even more of a big deal because this is the first time an annual decrease has been recorded by the index since the December 2009.
For a tenancy started in May 2016, the average monthly rent was £904 whereas for a new tenancy that started in May this year was £901, reports the Guardian. Now, a 0.3 percent decrease doesn’t seem like a huge deal, but let’s not forget that this is the first drop of its kind in almost eight years. Rent in London of all places as fallen by 3 percent in a year though. In fact, the capital has seen the biggest dip in rent prices – average monthly rent was £1572 last July and were £1502 this May.
Don’t worry, it’s not just London that has seen a decrease in rent prices. The north-east, south-east, Yorkshire and Humberside and Scotland regions of the UK have all experienced decreases between 2.3 and 0.6 percent.
As for why this is all happening, you wouldn’t be wrong for suspecting Brexit has something to do with it. Only last week we found out that house prices had fallen for the third month in a row, again, the first time we’ve seen this type of fall since peak financial crisis in 2009. When gathering these stats, Nationwide found that the weakness of the pound (hi, Brexit) may well have played its part alongside things like the very fact that we’re about to make our way over to the polling booths on Thursday.
It's hard to say whether the trend will continue or not, though. Sure, rent prices do seem to be following the recent housing pattern, but, as much as I hate to rain on any more affordable rent parades, sadly it fully doesn't negate the fact that the UK housing system is still very much broken, and our ability to find and afford properties will certainly be impacted by how the general election results pan out and what the state of the government looks like afterwards.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.