Research from estate agent Hamptons shows that 63 per cent of London renters who chose to move somewhere bigger between May and August left the capital.
This resulted in the cost to rent an upsized home within London dropping by 4 per cent, or £86 less per calendar month, the only region in Great Britain that recorded a fall in this metric.
Incidentally, the North East of England is the area where it cost the most to upsize, the data shows, with the average cost of £72 per calendar month more equating to a 48 per cent rise.
In the North West, the average cost of upsizing grew by 47 per cent within the same time period – or £301 per calendar month.
Throughout Great Britain, tenants moving to a bigger property between May and August paid 23 per cent – £149 per calendar month more – to add an average of 1.4 more bedrooms to their home.
Hampton adds that 34 per cent of tenants who moved after the lockdown did this – an increase of 25 per cent on those who did in the first quarter of this year.
Overall, rents in Great Britain fell 0.5 per cent over the year, coming to an average of £1,014. The biggest fall was in Great London, with a drop of 3.9 per cent recorded, while the biggest rise was seen in Wales, at 3.9 per cent.
Hamptons head of research Aneisha Beveridge says: “Renters have joined homeowners in the race for space by rushing to the suburbs where the number of tenants looking to rent is up on last year. With tenant’s priorities changing, upsizers have swapped smaller city centre flats for three-bed semis on the fringes of town.
“While the premium placed on green space is growing each month, upsizing tenants have typically stuck to the outskirts of cities they know rather than leaving altogether.
“The number of homes coming up for rent is down on last year, partly due to landlord purchases being much slower to bounce back in comparison to the number of homes bought by first-time buyers and owner-occupiers.
“Demand from new tenants also remains below last year’s levels across most of the country, with those choosing to move and take on higher rents less likely to have been affected by the economic crisis.”
