Data revealed on Friday that 75% of income is required to rent in the nation’s capital.
The latest research by the lettings and sales agent Benham and Reeves revealed that the amount of net income needed to pay rent has increased to 45.5% in England, and accounts for 74.8% of the average salary in London.
At the start of the millennium, the average rent made up 28.7% of the average income in England, and 41.1% of income was needed to cover the cost of rent in London.
The political and economic uncertainty to prevail in the UK over the past year has caused concern for the housing market. Indeed, with several extensions to the nation’s Brexit deadline, an attempt to prorogue parliament and a general election all happening in the space of one year, the UK’s political landscape has been rather chaotic, to say the least.
The housebuilding company Taylor Wimpey (LON:TW) said earlier this week that it welcomes the “increased political stability” to come following last year’s events.
“There’s been plenty of positive changes to the rental market in the last 20 years with better codes of practice and improvements through technology allowing for a fairer, more transparent process for both landlords and tenants,” Marc von Grundherr, Director of Benham and Reeves, said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, the one thing this can’t address is the huge demand for rental properties and the resulting increase in the cost of renting as a result and with wage growth failing to keep pace, the proportion of our earnings required to cover rent has spiked notably since the turn of the millennium,” the Director of Benham and Reeves continued.
Shares in Taylor Wimpey plc (LON:TW) were up on Friday, trading at +0.81% as of 09:22 GMT.
