Rental data everywhere - but not a drop of truth

There are endless press releases from letting agents and letting sites claiming rents are up, rents are down, rents are up and down.

The majority of this rental data is absolute piffle, without substantial numbers of data, the figures will change with the wind, up 10% this month, down 5% next week.

Many are calculated from a few hundred advertised properties, some even less, they are a joke.

Closer to reality

Our Rental Index shows rents having dropped by 0.8 percent over the past 12 months, and this analysis comes from recording over 20,000 actual agreed new tenancies.

So as you can see, in the real world rents don't change with the wind, but most rental data press releases will blow around like paper in the wind and the best place for them is the bin.