National average asking rents outside London have hit a record of £1,172 a month, said Rightmove.

This takes average rent increases for newly listed properties to 9.7% for 2022 as a whole – the second largest year on record for rent growth behind only 2021.

London also hit a new record asking rent of £2,480 a month and Inner London rents passed an eye-watering £3,000 a month for the first time.

Competition easing

Rightmove said there are signs that competition between tenants for the homes available to rent is starting to ease as more properties become available, but the imbalance between demand and supply is still very high.

The number of available homes to rent is up by 13% compared with last year, the biggest annual jump since May 2013, while new properties coming up for rent are up 5%

The number of people enquiring about a rental property is up by 7% compared with last year and up by 53% compared with pre-pandemic 2019.

The property portal also predicted that national average asking rents for newly available properties will rise a further 5% in 2023 unless there is a significant addition of available homes to rent.

Rightmove’s director of property science, Tim Bannister, said: “Although the fierce competition among tenants to find a home is starting to ease, it is still double the level it was back in 2019. Letting agents are seeing extremely high volumes of tenant enquiries and dealing with tens of potential tenants for each available property.

“Landlords will need to balance any rent rises with what tenants can afford to pay in their local area, to continue to find tenants quickly and avoid any periods where their home is empty due to tenants not being able to meet the asking rent.

“There appears to be some more property choice for renters compared to the record low levels of last year which would slightly ease the fierce competition to secure a home. This is why we’re forecasting that the pace of annual growth will ease to around 5% by the end of the year nationally, although this would still significantly exceed the average of 2% that we saw during the five years before the pandemic.”