Highlights

Cambridgeshire rents hit another new record:

• The average advertised rents for a three bed home in Cambridgeshire (excluding city centre) now stand at £1,219 per calendar month (up 6% vs last year). Compare this with the average private rent in England at £1,092 a month. Social renters pay an average of £545 a month.
• Higher number of properties coming on to the market
• The average number of enquiries per rental property is holding at 17
• Available supply has increased by 18% year-on-year
• Between September 2022 and June 2024, UK inflation exceeded the annual rate of house price growth.

Rental market overview in Cambridgeshire

We now know that the Committee Stage for the Renters (Rights) Bill will take place on 22 April and will run for six days so wrapping up on 14th May. Between now and then a lot of conversations between the major rental groups including PropertyMark the NLRA and Lettings Council will be taking place, in order to educate our law makers so that they have a better understanding of the consequences of the new laws.

Regarding the abolishment of section 21 we are finding that things are already taking longer to go through the courts. A recent example was that gas certificates had to be reissued to the resident before notice could be given as the post code of the property was not on the gas safety certificates!

To all intense and purpose, the government want to push this through so although the spring deadline has been missed we are expecting things to happen by October 2025 with implementation in 2026.

The next webinar we have planned is on Thursday 1st May where we can advise what we know so far in the conversations. If you would like to be part of that just register here.

Spread of bedrooms in the area

The spread of bedrooms remains the same with two bed homes making up the majority of the homes available

Property availability

The graph above shows the number of properties that were available to rent in the area in the year so far (figures from Rightmove). In March we saw an increase of 18% compared with March 2024.

Activity

As I have always said the market is driven by supply / demand / affordability.

In March we advertised an average of 29 properties each week and received 407 applications. However, it must be remembered that only around 25% of these applications amount to people who are really interested in renting a property. Our job is to sort out the active people from the window shoppers!

The number of properties actually let in the whole of the market went down very slightly by 2% this could be due to more properties coming online with owners holding out for higher rental amounts.

In the area as a whole there were 129 properties let in the local Cambridgeshire area.

Marketing time

We are still seeing that properties over £1,500 are taking far longer to find new residents than in the past.

Rental up to £1,000 per month have taken 16.5 days compared with 13 days in March 2024. To find a tenant with rents from £1,001 to £1,499 21 days down from 26 days in March last year. The biggest change as mentioned above is for properties over a rental of £1,500 now taking 50 days as opposed to 22 days this time last year.

Rental comparisons for PE27, PE28, PE29, CB23 and CB24

You know we love a database and by having this type of detail we are best placed to give you the right guidance when looking at rental reviews and when you are considering extending your portfolio.

These average figures come from our records. Therefore, they are a mixture of the rent reviews that have been put in place over the last year. Plus, the rental figure achieved at the point of remarketing and are split by the number of bedrooms.

One bed property is now achieving on average £872
Two bed property is now achieving on average £1,002
Three bed property is now achieving on average £1,219
Four bed property is now achieving on average £1,654

Which areas have the highest year on year increase by number of bedrooms?

PE29 has performed by far the best for 1 bed homes
PE29 and PE27 have performed the best for 2 bed homes
PE27 for 3 bed homes
CB23 the best for 4 bed homes

The average YOY rental increase over the area is holding at 6%. Again, the main driver of these increases is down to mortgage rate rises and although the supply has slightly increased, we are still seeing an average of 15 people actively applying for each property.

We are also seeing landlords with long term residents who historically have kept rents lower than market rate now asking for an increase to market rate or in some cases higher than market rate as their mortgage has increased.

Has prospective tenants’ behaviour changed?

No change here from recent months – but we are seeing more people not be quite as open on their initial conversations with us!

What return can I expect?

As I have said many times before this is very much down to when you bought the property.

In this market the average gross rental yield that you should expect is anything between 5 – 6%.

If you are considering extending your portfolio why not book in a call with me to discuss the off market opportunities we have available.