Renting Case

The reasons for this are mainly twofold. People who would like to buy a house a now finding it difficult to secure a mortgage in today's financial climate and so are turning to renting a property as a stop gap. However, those who have the credit available, or are cash buyers may be waiting until the housing market settles before they buy, and these too are looking at renting a property

until they can see how the housing market pans out.

Mark Homer runs a property-investment service that is based in the East of England. He says that the increase in the demand for houses to rent has caused rental prices to rise. He says that 'despite the gloomy headline, business has never been better. Rent in our properties is up 20% since the credit crunch hit.'

Recent data supplied by Paragon (Mortgage Lenders) showed that average rents for properties in the UK had risen by 12% since August 2007, when the credit crunch began to hit. Meanwhile, data released from Hamptons International (letting agencies), indicate that the number of tenancies has risen by 33% during January - April 2008.

However, this may be good news for landlords and related industries, but tenants are finding things increasingly hard as they have to compete for rentals in the marketplace.

Although there is a distinct upturn in the rental market, many lenders are closing their doors to what are termed 'short-term' players. These are people who, in the past would be looking to make a quick kill using the buy to let market. Nigel Terrington, Chief executive of Paragon mortgage lenders said that are not prepared to lend to short-term players at this time, and are focusing on career landlords who aim to keep their property for a longer period of time. He said that the market is now 'increasing restricted' being mostly limited to existing clients. He went on to say that he could not see