The increase in the cost of rent across Great Britain has eased up it was reported in August this year. Every area saw lower rent increases than in previous quarters according to a recent report.

On average monthly rents in the UK stand at £921 a month. Compare this with last year’s average of £851 which was put together by Homelet Rental index who are the country’s biggest monthly supplier of data on monthly tenants.

In London things also reflected this trend with the average monthly rent for private tenants set at £1,464, whereas in the rest of the country this figure was around £729 per month. Some regions that had shown high growth over preceding months had now fallen so that the total average monthly rent variation in Great Britain was around 2.3%.

So where was an increase in rents seen? There were only two areas – firstly in London with 2.4% as well as the South East at 3% – these were increases of 2%. As you can expect this is fantastic news for Eastbourne Landlords. Compare this to the slowdown that was witnessed in East Anglia, which had been recording strong growth up until recently but which in August abated. Now rents can be seen to be increasing by only 1% in East Anglia while in the South West this has dropped to only 0.9%.

In Scotland and Wales as well as the North West and North East of England and the East Midlands rents have also gone down. Where rents fell the most however was the North West where rents paid for new tenancies were 3.5% lower than they had been in July.

Some areas that did see an increase in rents were the West Midlands and Northern Ireland which saw a rise of 1%.

Martin Totty who is the chief executive of the Barbon insurance group that runs Homelet had this to say, “August can traditionally be a slower month for the rental market and similar dips have been seen in rental prices in previous years. Nevertheless, the cooling in the rental sector may prove to represent the beginning of a trend towards a more settled market after several months of much more significant growth. A similar cooling has been seen in the wider housing market, with house price indices recording an easing of house price growth”.

If we look at annual rental figures the picture is certainly one of growth with only the North East and East Midlands demonstrating lower rents in August for new tenancies when compared to August of the previous year.  This means that despite Mr. Totty’s slightly lukewarm explanation of the current state of the market and the August figures, everything looks to be on the up, particularly for Eastbourne landlords. To put it in perspective the average private home rental price rose between the two Augusts by 8.2%. This is a significant figure. Comparatively in London the increase was at a figure of 11.4% compared to the previous year, with East Anglia at 8.4% and the South East at 5.3%. Great news for Eastbourne landlords.