In January of last year the average London rent was £1,627 per month, but this dropped by 4.4% to £1,556 in December.
However, the latest data for July shows that London rental values have bounced back, up 2.4% in the last month alone, and are now 5.7% higher than their December 2020 low.
In Q4 of 2019, prior to the pandemic, there were some 47,000 rental properties listed to rent across London.
However, this climbed to more than 100,000 by Q3 of 2020 and remained above this landmark threshold for three consecutive quarters.
The latest analysis by Benham and Reeves found that to date, this figure has fallen to 64,206, although it is yet to reduce to pre-pandemic levels.
Marc von Grundherr, director of Benham and Reeves, said: “It’s been a very tough year or so for the London rental market which has arguably been the worst hit in terms of dwindling demand and plummeting rental values.
“That said, we can finally say with confidence that we’ve seen the bottom and a number of factors are now spurring a market-wide recovery.
“We saw virtually no demand from overseas students last year which meant this stock further flooded a market that was already saturated due to a lack of interest from working professionals.
“Although widespread lockdown restrictions remained in place during the start of this year, the reversal of the working from home trend and the return of foreign student demand, in particular, are currently driving a London rental resurgence during the second and third quarters.”
