Demand from foreign renters jumps despite Brexit

Edinburgh and Glasgow are showing signs of economic buoyancy with demand for rental property from outside the UK increasing in the wake of June's vote to leave Europe rather than collapsing as feared, new data has found.

Demand from overseas renters has risen since the Brexit vote. Picture: Ian Georgeson

Residential property agency DJ Alexander Lettings, which has about 5,500 properties under management across the two cities and a quarter of all agency lettings in the Scottish capital, said non-UK citizens made up 43 per cent of its tenant applicants last month, up from 29 per cent in October.

Overall, the majority of new lettings were for monthly rents of £500 to £999.

Associate director Rob Trotter said: “Since we began recording the relevant statistics in the summer of 2015, applications for tenancies from non-UK citizens had been running at around 25 to 30 per cent of the total and November was the first month in which these exceeded 40 per cent.

“This shows that the much-feared collapse in demand for rented property among other EU citizens following the Brexit vote has simply not happened.”

He added that visits to its website are averaging 45,000 a month, and so far this quarter have come from 167 countries.

Additionally, the latest quarterly DJ Alexander Rental Tracker, covering September to November, found that in Edinburgh the average cost of new rentals of one- and two-bedroom flats was about £800 and £1,010 per month respectively and for Glasgow about £630 and £820. The average cost for all new rentals was £1,035 in the Scottish capital and about £840 in Glasgow.

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