Property Update: Rental market booms

RENTS are up to five times higher in London than in the rest of the country, even though they are falling in the capital and rising elsewhere. Renting is booming in what has become the only healthy sector of the market, says a national survey by the Association of Residential Letting Agents. Average returns on two-bed flats, the most common property, range from pounds 314 a week in central London to pounds 92 in the Midlands and pounds 71 in the North and Scotland. Averages for a two-bed house are pounds 378, compared with pounds 91 and pounds 81 respectively.