Landlords & Tenants

It’s been a busy year so far at Barbers Lettings and for the Newport area, the busiest on record. The number of investors who purchased prior to the stamp duty changes helped increase our stock levels, but now the industry reports a slowdown in buy-to-let lending by investors since the deadline passed at the beginning of April.

On a local level we are still seeing plenty of interest from investor landlords with new properties coming to the market that fall under the banner of second homes!

With every property we let we monitor why the landlord is renting and why the tenant needs to rent. The results are very interesting and something I have monitored for many years across our network of offices.

From 1st January 2016, looking at landlords first, they are split into several categories with the bulk of them falling under the title investment landlords, 58% of our landlords fall into this area. 26% of these are new landlords; this percentage is greater than any previous record with the high number of investors coming to the market before stamp duty changes. 10% of properties let were for accidental landlords who simply couldn’t sell, this number is lowest in our Newport office which Mark will surely be pleased with! 9% of landlords were relocating away from the area either abroad or to other parts of the UK, 6% were people renting family or parents’ homes and 10% were landlords with rural estate or farm cottages etc.

As far as tenants go, far and away the greatest number of properties we have let have been to people who are simply moving from one rented property to another with 54% of all tenancies created since 1st January going this way. There are two main reasons for this, tenants choosing to move as they require larger property or because their existing landlord needs their property back either to live in or to sell. 17% of all tenancies are let to tenants who have been living with parents or family, renting instead of buying for obvious reasons. Sadly 10% of all lets are to people in family break-up situations, post-Christmas sees the greater number. Bizarrely, that figure is at its highest in the Newport area (16%), I can only conclude there must be something in the water! 8% of all lets are to people relocating to an area through work or schools, again this figure is higher in Newport (19%) which is easy to understand. 5% of all tenancies are to people who have sold and are going into rented for a time, other tenancies include sharers and company lets. Comparing these figures over previous years, they are not too dissimilar, the number of tenants moving from one rented property to another has increased from 50% in 2015.

Richard Heath
Lettings Manager

July 2016