Record rental growth in Reading's housing market

Reading’s residential lettings market has experienced a record December along with Q4 rents increasing more than six per cent year-on-year.

Haslams Estate Agents has published its Q4 assessment of the town’s housing market and despite a levelling off of rental values in Q3 and Q4, the final month saw growth of 2.38 per cent which was 13.76 per cent higher than December 2021.

The report goes on: “We see no reason why the volume of lets will not continue throughout 2023, although we believe that value growth will settle at around five per cent.”

However Haslams’ report on residential sales revealed more of a mixed picture.

The aftermath of the mini-Budget in October led to a 5.13 per cent fall in values, the first drop for a year. Overall in 2022, prices dropped 2.47 per cent with all the decline coming in the final quarter.

The numbers of people applying to be registered as potential buyers at Haslams dropped 20 per cent year-on-year and Haslams says it’s now buyers’ market.

The report states: “Whilst there is likely to be a decline in values in 2023 we expect this not to exceed the increases seen in values over the previous two years and we are unlikely to see the level of decline we experienced in Q4.”

However, new homes has been the hardest hit sector in 2022, despite a year-on-year increase in prices of 5.4 per cent. All of the increase was in the first half of the year.

See the full Haslams report here.

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