Tenants Leaving City Centres For The Suburbs

The latest data from property portal Rightmove has shown that asking rents in major city centres have dropped by as much as 12 per cent as tenants, looking for more space and amenities such as gardens during the lockdown, have been heading towards the suburbs.

Inner-city London has been hardest hit, with tenants reportedly snapping up properties in the Chilterns, to the north-west of the capital, and has seen rents fall over the last year by 12.4 per cent, followed by Edinburgh city centre rents down by 10 per cent, and Manchester down by 5.3 per cent.

Available rental properties on Rightmove have doubled in some city centres, including Leeds, which has experienced a jump of 179 per cent, and both London and Nottingham up 139 per cent, as renters move out of metropolitan centres.

Rightmove studied data from 10 of the biggest cities around the UK, which revealed that there has been an increase in the number of tenants who currently live in a city enquiring about properties outside.

53 per cent of Inner London renters have enquired about a property outside the city, up from 45 per cent in the same period in 2019. In Edinburgh, the number of renters inquiring about leaving the city has risen from 29 to 37 per cent.

However, there are some city centres where asking rents are still rising annually, including Bristol and Liverpool, both up 2.0 per cent, although both of these are below the national average of 3.7 per cent.

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