The demand shock that drove UK rent inflation to 9.1% in March 2024 has worked its way through the market, according to a ten-year review of housing data published by lettings platform Hello Neighbour.
The analysis argues that rents from this point will be shaped by how often existing rental homes return to the market and by what tenants can afford, rather than by any further surge in the number of people seeking to rent.
Net migration was the largest single driver of the demand spike in 2022 and 2023 but has since returned to historic norms. It peaked at 944,000 in the year to March 2023 and had fallen to 171,000 by the year to December 2025. The scale of the effect on rental demand reflects a structural difference in tenure: Census 2021 recorded 53% of EU-born residents in England and Wales privately renting, against 16% of UK-born residents.
Rent inflation for new lets peaked at 11.9% in 2022 and 9.7% in 2023. With the impact of tightened rules on work visas, student dependants and overseas recruitment already reflected in the figures, Hello Neighbour considers a further significant fall in net migration unlikely, and demand broadly in a steady state.
The data on enquiries supports that reading. Zoopla recorded 5.6 enquiries per available rental home in May 2026, down from 15.5 at the peak. Hello Neighbour’s own viewing request figures show an average of 69 requests per available property across January to July 2023, falling to 34 across the same months of 2026, and now running at 30 to 40 per property.
The company’s viewing data reflects its own platform activity rather than the wider market, but the directional trend is consistent with the Zoopla figures.
Overall rental stock has changed less than the volume of commentary on supply might suggest. The English private rented sector held 5,030,000 dwellings at 31 March 2025, the largest number on record and a sixth consecutive year of steady growth.
What has fallen, particularly outside London, is the rate at which homes cycle back to the market: average tenancy length recorded by the Deposit Protection Service rose 40% in four years, from 773 days in 2021 to 1,085 days by April 2025. A static stock that turns over less frequently produces fewer available homes each year, even without any reduction in the total number of rental properties.
New housebuilding will not resolve that gap quickly. England added 208,600 net additional dwellings in 2024-25, a sixth consecutive year below the 300,000 benchmark and a cumulative shortfall of 434,900 homes against that target. Even delivery at the most ambitious levels under discussion would take years to register meaningfully in rental availability.
A further reserve of latent demand sits outside the market: 28.7% of UK adults aged 20 to 34 were living with their parents in 2025, up from 25.4% in 2015.
Affordability is the factor Hello Neighbour identifies as the binding constraint on how far rents can rise. Average private rent absorbed 36.3% of median private-renting household income in England in the year to March 2024, an improvement on the 39.4% recorded in 2016 but still well above the 30% threshold the ONS uses as a reference point. The picture for owner-occupation has improved on a similarly modest scale, with the England house price-to-earnings ratio at 7.6 in 2025, down from a peak of 9.1 in 2021 but still far from the five times earnings level conventionally considered more accessible.
“The last decade was a demand story,” said Phil Shelley, chairman of Hello Neighbour. “Exceptional levels of net migration added households that rent at three times the rate of the UK-born population at exactly the point availability of rental property started to see the impact of tenants staying longer with rents rising sharply as a result. That phase is over. Viewing requests have halved in three years but are now steady. We are in a more normalised market.”
He added: “The pressure now comes from availability. Tenants are staying close to three years on average, housebuilding is running somewhat short of what is needed, and there is a queue of young adults at home who would enter the market if they could afford to. Incomes are now the binding constraint. We therefore expect moderate rent growth broadly in line with wages.”
On the Renters’ Rights Act, which came into force on 1 May 2026, Hello Neighbour reports some landlords pricing higher at the point of advertising, on the basis that securing in-tenancy rent increases has become more difficult under the new regime. Shelley said that dynamic accounts for what might otherwise appear contradictory: recent growth in advertised rents alongside fewer enquiries per property.
“We would caution landlords against reading this as a lasting gain,” Shelley said. “A rent above what the market will bear is precisely what the challenge mechanism exists to correct, and an empty property costs can quickly cost more than the increase was worth even if it isn’t challenged.”
