Private renters are increasingly staying for longer in their homes, contrary to tenant groups’ argument that they face ‘insecurity of tenure’.

According to the latest English Housing Survey, private renters spent an average of 4.6 years in their current home during 2023-24, while in 2010/11 it was 3.7 years and has been steadily increasing since then.

Only recently, Housing and Planning Minister, Matthew Pennycook (pictured), told a housing conference: “There are millions of people in insecure, often substandard private rented accommodation. There are millions of people in cold, damp and mouldy substandard properties.”

He also dismissed suggestions that ending Section 21 no-fault evictions would drive landlords away and reduce the availability of private rented properties, The New Statesman reports.

Puff of smoke

“First of all, a home doesn’t vanish in a puff of smoke [with the end of no-fault evictions],” he says. “Someone might buy that home, the local authority might acquire that home, it might go to a more professional landlord. So those homes don’t disappear. Second, I don’t think there’s any evidence of an exodus of landlords. None of the statistics bear this out. So I take that with a pinch of salt.”

The latest government figures also reveal that in 2023-24, 57% of private renters (2.6 million households) expected to buy a property at some point in the future, which has fallen during the last 10 years - it was 61% in 2013-14. However, among those who planned to buy, the highest proportion (39%) expected to do so in two to five years, an increase from 35% in 2022-23.

In 2023-24, approximately 1.8 million households moved home in the previous 12 months. Around half of these were moves into or out of private rented properties; in total, 680,000 households moved from one privately rented home to another, and 159,000 new households moved into the PRS. There were 155,000 households from the PRS who bought their own homes.