D J Alexander launches quarterly monitor of private residential rental costs

21/04/2010

Scotland’s premier independent residential letting agency has launched the D J Alexander Rental Monitor, a major initiative that will clarify the cost of private rented housing in our two major cities, benefitting property landlords, their tenants and the wider general public.
The Monitor is in response to the growth of privately rented housing in Scotland, largely as a result of the mortgage famine but partly also due to a definable shift in lifestyle choices as regards housing tenure.
David Alexander, sole proprietor, explains. “House price surveys have been a regular feature of the Scottish owner-occupier market for two decades but up to now this has not applied to the rental sector,” he said. “With more flats and houses being made available for private rent, and lease terms on existing rental properties getting longer, we felt the time was right to launch this initiative which we hope will become the benchmark for the rental sector in Scotland.
“Most people who have become landlords over the past two years are not property investors per se but owner-occupiers who have wanted to move on in life but have been unable to sell their main home, or at least unable to find someone willing to pay the right price. Our Monitor should help home owners come to a decision on what they can reasonably charge if they rent out rather than sell and it will also provide valuable information to present and future tenants in terms of what they might reasonably pay for rented accommodation.”
Meanwhile, the first Monitor has shown the average monthly cost of privately renting a flat in Edinburgh to be £776, based on new rental agreements that occurred during the first quarter of 2010.
Renting a one-bedroom flat in the capital will cost, on average, just under £560 a month, rising to £735 for a two-bedroom flat. Apartments with three bedrooms or more (which will include all those with an HMO licence) are averaging £1,500 a month in rent, although this figure is slightly skewed by the £2,000 a month rental charges that landlords can achieve for the relatively rare stock of HMO flats with five bedrooms.
Rents for houses ranged from £660 a month for those with two-bedrooms to £1,715 for five-bedroom villas, with an average for the sector of £1,136.
In Glasgow, the average cost of a rented flat is only slightly above the rate for the capital at £777 per month. A one-bedroom flat costs £509, rising to £783 for those with two-bedrooms. Larger flats (three bedrooms or more) are averaging at £1,104.
The results are based on 429 residential property lettings, carried out by D J Alexander in Edinburgh and Glasgow, during the period 4 January to 31 March 2010. For the purposes of the Monitor, ‘Glasgow’ is defined as the administrative area of the city plus adjacent suburban districts such as Bearsden, Milngavie, Bishopbriggs, Giffnock, Clarkston and Newton Mearns.
Mr Alexander said: “These statistics have been compiled from an extensive database of new lettings and, therefore, can be relied upon to provide a genuine view of the trend in the cost of privately rented housing in Scotland’s two major cities.”
He added: “Hopefully, the housing market will eventually revive and prosper but we are thinking in terms of several years rather than several months, therefore our Monitor is likely to have a fairly long shelf-life. And although owner-occupation will continue to be the most popular form of tenure in both Scotland and the wider UK, I believe that the effects of the banking and lending crisis will lead, indirectly, to a new and sustained market in long-term, non-social renting for a significant minority of the population.”

21 April 2010