Overseas students already registering for August and September move-ins

Our London lettings offices, particularly Fulham and Brook Green lettings, have already registered a score of tenants looking to move in to property in August and September.

This is always a busy time of the year as it's the start of the new acedemic year. Given that most tenancy agremeements are for a year many tenants "trade up" at this time of year as well. Over half the tenants looking to rent property in Fulham and Brook Green later in the summer are indeed students, mostly from overseas with relatively good budgets (certainly by impoverished UK student standards), many with around £300 per week for one bedroom flats and £300 - £400 per week for two bedroom flats.

It seems they are looking at flats to rent on-line and realising that there isn't the choice of property to let in London that they'd been expecting. Flats to let in Fulham and Brook Green within these price ranges (let alone in the "posher" areas of Kensington, Chelsea and Belgravia) are being let as soon as they hit the market.

With the recent introduction of HMO legislation effectively making it illegal for landlords to let properties to four or more sharers unless they equip their property to satisfy a host of fire safety and compliance procedures, tenants are finding that there is less choice - or are having to search out less scrupulous landlords with the risks that that entails.

Representative of the shrinking choice facing would-be tenants and the consequent increase in demand for smaller flats, is a four bedroom house in Pembroke Road, Kensington where the landlord had been unwilling to re-invest to cater to the higher end corporate market. It was previously let by Chard lettings to well heeled overseas students at rents of up to £1000 per week, representing £250 per week each, the cost of a reasonable studio flat. Today it can only be let to a family, if four or more people are to be in residence and the landlord has arranged for our refurbishment team to oversee a major update (it's now let at around £1500 per week to a family on a corporate relocation package).

The net result? Less demand for family houses and more tenants chasing smaller studios and one bedroom flats.