In their rental market update for Q4 2024, Suzanne Smith and Richard Jackson discuss the impact of Labour’s first budget on landlords and property investors, the latest on the Renters’ Rights Bill and what’s happening with rental trends.

>> Ask a question: Click here for question form

Richard and Suzanne discuss the key changes for landlords and property investors in the budget:

>> Blog post: What the 2024 Autumn Budget means for landlords and property investors

The Renters’ Rights Bill is making good progress through the House of Commons, and entered the Committee Stage on 22 October 2024.

The Committee are going through the Bill on a clause by clause basis. The Housing Minister has made it clear that they won’t be backing down on fixed terms or making exceptions for students. The ambiguity around up front rent payments has been discussed a lot, and the Minister said he will make the position clear in the Bill.

>> Blog post: The latest on the Renters’ Rights Bill

>> Related episode: What the Renters’ Rights Bill changes about rent

There are signs that the renal market is slowing down, with demand softening. Anecdotally, Richard and Suzanne have recently seen it in London and Kent respectively.

This is backed up by Rightmove’s Rental Trends Tracker for Q3 2024 which says the average number of enquiries per rental property is now 15, down from 23 last year. However, this is nearly double the 8 before the pandemioc in 2019.

The advertised rental price is dropping before finiding a tenant for more than a fifth of rental properties.

Music: “Paradise Found” by Kevin MacLeod of Incompetech. Licensed under Creative Commons: Attribution 4.0 License.