85% of tenants are renting through necessity, unable to afford to buy their own home, market insight from Monta Capital has revealed.
Monta Capital commissioned a survey of 1,586 renters to find out whether renting is a lifestyle choice or necessity, and to understand more about the things that people like and dislike about living as a tenant.
24% of respondents had been renting for six to 10 years, 22% for 10 to 15 years, 13% for up to 20 years, and 20% for more than 20 years.
The majority (85%) said they were renting through necessity, with just 15% saying that renting was a choice.
In addition, 33% of tenants cited the overall cost of renting as their biggest concern.
An common pain point was the lack of security provided to renters through short tenancy agreements, with 35% stating that this was worst part of renting.
As such, 41% of renters said that the best way to improve the renting experience would be for landlords to offer longer tenancies, giving them more security in their home.
Thomas Balashev, chief executive of Monta Capital, said: “If the vast majority of people are renting through necessity, I believe that there is a significant burden and moral obligation to provide them with quality, nourishing homes
“Let’s use an analogy, albeit one that might not be very popular among certain groups: for many kids in this country, their school dinner is the best, if not only opportunity to eat a good, nutritious meal every day.
“Because of this, schools have an obligation to make sure that the food they’re putting on kids’ plates is healthy and nutritious.
“That plate used to be piled high with turkey twizzlers and chips, but now our society has evolved and learned that this is damaging and immoral, so we have changed our ways.”
He continued: “The same revolution needs to happen with our housing, an objective which is entirely achievable if only enough developers and public stakeholders were willing to create rented homes with the same level of respect they do for-sale homes.
“Currently, rented homes are not held to the same high standards that for-sale homes are where quality directly impacts value. Instead the only metric in delivering rented homes is the price point.
“We should also be looking seriously at creating longer tenancies in order to give renters the security they desire and deserve.
“To this end, we would love to see government legislation move with the times and push for the provision of longer tenancies.”
Balashev concluded: “Not only would this benefit tenants, but it would also be a huge boon for property investors.
“For example, when a commercial building is sold with an existing 20-year tenancy agreement in place, its value is higher than if the current tenancy expires in 12 months.
“So for residential investors, not least in the build-to-rent sector, a building that has tenants signed up for five or seven years provides much more investor security than a building where tenants only sign up for a year at a time.”
