But after three months of apartment hunting in London, which included hundreds of agency inquiries, 20 viewings and 10 property offers, she says she can’t take it anymore. Every time she and the boyfriend she had planned to live with made an offer on a property, someone else outbid them. “We bid over £200 [the listed price] and I didn’t get it because someone else offered six months in advance. I’ve heard of people offering £500 or £600 more or offering to pay a year’s cash up front,’ he said. Other times, she has arrived at pre-scheduled screenings to find 15 people in line ahead of her. Or worse: she called to try and see and was told the property was already gone, despite the fact that it was posted online just minutes earlier. “We just hit a tipping point,” Holloway said. “Everyone said, ‘Renting in London is going to be difficult’, and I said, ‘Yeah, OK.’ But I didn’t realize how bad it was. It’s absolutely crazy.” Holloway is one of thousands trapped in what campaigners call the “rental cost crisis”. High demand and a lack of housing supply have led landlords and agencies to raise rents to record levels at a time when soaring energy prices and rising inflation mean millions of people are already struggling to keep up with the bills. ‘I didn’t realize how bad renting was in London’: civil servant Beth Holloway, 23, pictured at her graduation. Figures from Rightmove show that rents in Britain have reached record highs, jumping more than 20% year-on-year in some areas such as Manchester and 15.8% in London. Tenants report that landlords are raising their rents by up to £700 a month, forcing them to leave. Others who moved out of their apartments say they checked real estate sites a few days later to see their former homes listed at twice the original price. A survey by PropertyMark, a membership organization for estate agents, found that agents received an average of 127 new applications per branch in July, but only had 11 properties available to rent. A record 82% reported month-on-month interest rate increases. For those trying to find somewhere to live, competition is fierce. Holloway, who works in London and desperately needs to live in or near the capital, has found that hunting for residents has become a “part-time job”, on top of her actual full-time role. Every day, she spent hours searching for real estate locations and arranging viewings on her lunch breaks and after work, in addition to receiving a stream of notifications alerting her to new properties. “It’s very tiring mentally. You’re constantly on the cutting edge,” he said. “Even when you’re trying to focus on work, you’re getting email alerts about new properties or the cancellation of a showing.” Despite needing to stay in London long-term for work, she has put the hunt on hold for now. She is in a privileged position, she says, and can live with her parents in Hertfordshire. But he worries about those who are not so lucky. “I put myself in a good position to do it again. A lot of people don’t have that.” Max Willson, 27, a research manager, describes a similar experience. He lived in the same flat for three years but, “after years of mice and cockroaches and general discomfort”, decided to move on. He turned to SpareRoom, the UK’s most popular flat and house-sharing website, but says it “quickly became apparent that it’s a crazy audition space for your personality”, with “hundreds of people” applying for the same room. “A lot of people were asking and coming for viewings. I was encouraged to ‘make your best offer’ by leaving the agents and the places would be off the market within an hour,” Willson said. “To make it worse, you’d have to give an escrow deposit before you even knew, so in theory you’d have multiple escrow deposits at the same time. And you had to write cover letters begging for the place. Some places were so terrible but demanded four-figure rents.’ After searching for two months, she finally found a flat in Oval, south London, which is “very nice but very overpriced”. The experience has left him scarred. “It was probably the most stressful time of my life,” he said. In Manchester, rents are reported to be rising faster than in the capital. 25-year-old TikTok influencer Jess Geary went viral last week after filming an angry video saying she had spent three months looking for an apartment in the city center to no avail. It only managed to get one view during that time, he told the Manchester Evening News, and said the flat ads were removed “within minutes”. “This is a public service announcement from me to you – don’t move to Manchester,” Geary said on TikTok. “There are no apartments available. I was on the phone every day, I didn’t sleep, I didn’t eat.” For those without a safety net, spiraling prices can have devastating consequences. Homelessness rates are now higher than they were before the pandemic in two-fifths of local authorities, according to figures from the Department for Regeneration, Housing and Communities. Homelessness charity Shelter says inquiries from people asking for advice on emergency support with their rent have risen 177% since the start of the year, from 8,195 between January and March to 22,677 in the quarter to end July. People on housing benefit, who often struggle to find places to rent, are most at risk. Vicky Hines, Shelter’s West Midlands strategic lead, said October’s rise in the energy price cap to £3,549 a year meant things were only going to get worse as people tackled rent with the cost of living. He said people would be forced into temporary housing, like one family he knows who had to leave their property because it was in poor repair but couldn’t afford anywhere else, so they put themselves in temporary accommodation two hours away from their children’s schools. He added that he was “scared” of what would happen in the coming months. Sophie Delamothe from the Generation Rent campaign called on the government to take urgent action, including introducing a “rent freeze now” and a pause in no-fault evictions and evictions for late rent. “There was action during the pandemic, so why not now?” he said. “I don’t think we’ve seen the worst yet.”
