The final quarter of 2021 witnessed continued high demand for rented housing, shows a survey carried out by the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA).

Of the near-800 NRLA members interviewed by the association, 56% reported a rise in demand from would-be renters in the final quarter of last year, broadly in-line with the 57% who saw this during Q3 of 2021.

And ratcheting up this effect is the fact that, according to the NRLA, 24% of landlords plan to reduce the number of properties on their portfolio compared to 14% who plan to add more.

In the South West, 77% of landlords saw increased demand, as did 74% of landlords in central London – significantly up on the 54% who answered positively to this question in Q3 2021.

NRLA chief executive Ben Beadle says: “The rental housing supply crisis is only set to worsen, as renters continue to feel the effects of a market starved of a healthy supply of homes for private rent.

“The government needs to accept that for all the rhetoric about homeownership, many people need to rent beforehand. Policies that dampen investment in the private rented sector serve only to reduce choice, drive up rents and, as a result, make homeownership more difficult to achieve.”

The NRLA buttresses this point by highlighting research from Capital Economics which last week stated that, to meet government housing targets, private rented stock (PRS) needs to increase by 227,000 homes a year.

Capital Economics says that without major change in the way the PRS is governed, stock could decrease by 540,000 properties over the next decade.