Rents are rising at record levels because the private rental sector needs an extra 120,000 homes, the UK’s largest property portal has claimed.

Rightmove says that asking rents advertised on its website have reached another record of £1,136 a month per property which is 7% higher than a year ago - and that’s outside London. Inside the capital the average monthly rent is £2,652.

To reduce these runaway increases and return to a more normal and pre-Covid 2% annual rise, the imbalance between supply and demand must be levelled off which means, across the UK, a huge increase in supply.

Landlords

Rightmove is calling on the next government – likely to be Labour if polling is to be believed - to accelerate housebuilding and incentivise landlords to invest in more homes for tenants.

The imbalance between supply and demand from tenants enquiring about homes is one of the key drivers behind the rapid increase in advertised rents since the pandemic, with nowhere near enough homes to satisfy the number of tenants looking to move, the portal says.

Also, these figures will give those who argue that the Tories’ anti-landlord policies have reduced supply more ammunition and it is notable that the portal twice calls for the next Government to back private landlords within its commentary, published today.

Stable

“We’ve been talking about the imbalance between supply and demand in the rental market for a long time now, so it’s easy to forget that there was a time before the pandemic where rental price growth was more stable,” says Rightmove property expert Tim Bannister (pictured).

“The next government should be prioritising an improvement to the planning process, an acceleration of housebuilding, and encouraging more supply into the rental market.”