London rents just jumped 9.8% in a month. Here's what's really going on in Clapham

Stand outside any letting board on Clapham High Street for ten minutes and you'll see it: a viewing, then another, then a couple already filling in a holding form on their phone before they've left the pavement. The queue is real. And this week the numbers caught up with what we've been living down here all summer.

Advertised rents across London rose 9.8% in August. That is not a typo, and it is not annual growth dressed up as a monthly figure - that is where asking rents landed last month as landlords listed higher. At the same time, flatshare supply fell 3.2% and room rents hit a fresh record high. Fewer rooms, fewer flats, more people chasing them. Nationally, gross rent on the average landlord's portfolio has climbed to somewhere between £88,454 and £90,000 a year, and rental growth is now accelerating across five English regions since the Renters' Rights Act landed.

So what is actually driving it? Part of it is the Act itself. With Section 21 gone and rent reviews tightened, a lot of landlords are front-loading: if you can only realistically move the rent once a year through a formal process, you set it higher at the start. That is not greed, it is arithmetic, and it is showing up in the asking prices from Stockwell to Streatham. The other part is plain supply. Every landlord who has sold up over the last two years, spooked by tax and regulation, is a flat that has left the rental pool for good. Down here, where two-bed conversions off Abbeville Road and around Clapham Common are the backbone of the market, that thinning stock bites hard.

If you're renting in SW London right now, the honest advice is to move fast and come prepared. Have your references, deposit and proof of income ready before you view, not after. A well-presented flat near the Common at a fair rent is gone in days, and the person who gets it is usually the one who could say yes on the spot. Stretching your budget by £100 a month to widen your search into Tooting or Balham will often get you far more than holding out for a bargain that isn't coming.

If you're a landlord, this is the moment to be careful, not cocky. A record asking rent means nothing if the flat sits empty for three weeks or the tenant leaves in six months because the price never stacked up. Voids are the quiet killer here - four in ten portfolios nationally are carrying them - and an empty month wipes out most of the gain from a punchy headline rent. Price it to let quickly to a good tenant who stays, and you'll almost always beat the landlord chasing the top of the market.

My take: this is a supply problem wearing a price-rise costume. Rents aren't high because tenants suddenly have more money - they're high because there isn't enough to go round. Until we get more homes into the SW London rental market, not fewer, this pressure isn't easing. And every well-intentioned rule that nudges another landlord towards selling makes it a little worse for the renters it was meant to help.

Are you feeling the squeeze on the rental market in Clapham - as a tenant or a landlord? I'd genuinely like to hear how it's playing out on your street. Drop me a line at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.

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Another tax on landlords: the new £65-a-year landlord database explained

The government has confirmed it. The new Private Rented Sector Database, the "landlord register" everyone has been talking about since the Renters' Rights Act, goes live on 15 December 2026.

Here is what it actually means for you if you own a rental property:

£65 per property. Per year. Not a one-off. You pay it on registration and you pay it again every year to renew. Five flats? That is £325 a year, every year, just to have your name on a list.

You cannot delegate it. Your agent cannot register the property for you. You have to log in and do it yourself, property by property, uploading the address, the rent, the number of bedrooms, who lives there, gas safety, EICR and EPC certificates.

Miss it and the fine is up to £7,000. Get it wrong, or keep getting it wrong, and it is up to £40,000.

No registration number, no advert. Agents will be banned from marketing a property that has not been registered. So if you are late, your property sits empty while you sort the paperwork.

It rolls out region by region. West Midlands first in December, London from 15 July 2027 with a deadline of 14 October 2027.

Now let's be honest about what this is

This is not about rogue landlords. Rogue landlords do not register for things. They never have. The people who will dutifully log in, pay their £65 and upload their certificates are the same landlords who were already doing everything right.

Let's stack it up. In the last decade the private landlord has lost mortgage interest relief (Section 24), paid a 3% then 5% stamp duty surcharge on every purchase, watched the capital gains allowance cut from £12,300 to £3,000, faced the end of Section 21, seen selective licensing spread borough by borough at several hundred pounds a go, and now has to fund a database on top. Each one on its own is "only" a small charge. Together they are the reason so many good landlords have sold up.

And here is the bit the politicians never say out loud: landlords do not absorb costs. They pass them on. Every one of these charges ends up in the rent. Fewer landlords means fewer rental homes, which means higher rents. The person paying for this database is the tenant it claims to protect.

I have been an agent in South London for over 20 years. I speak to landlords every week who are tired. Not of tenants, not of the work, but of being treated as the problem to be solved rather than the people providing 4.6 million homes the state has no way of replacing.

If you are a landlord, here is my advice

1. Do not panic, London is not until July 2027. But diarise it now.
2. Get your certificates in order this year. Gas, EICR, EPC. If any of them are missing you will not be able to register.
3. Budget £65 per property into your annual numbers and, frankly, into your rent review.
4. If you have been thinking about selling, know that the market is still moving and good stock is still selling. Do it on your terms, not because a fine forced you.

If you want a straight conversation about what your property is worth today, either to let or to sell, get in touch. No sales pitch, just 20 years of knowing this market.

Sources: NRLA, Property118, Landlord Today, The Independent Landlord (September 2026).

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The Renters' Rights Act is here - the Clapham landlord's real to-do list

There's a particular look I've seen a lot lately across the desk from Clapham landlords: part resignation, part "just tell me what I actually have to do." The Renters' Rights Act has been talked about for so long that some owners have switched off entirely. That's the mistake. As one industry voice put it bluntly this week, this is a storm agents and landlords cannot simply wait out. So instead of another doom-laden overview, here's the practical version for anyone letting a flat round here.

First, understand what's genuinely changed. The Act ends the old no-fault route landlords relied on and moves everything onto a system where you need a proper legal ground to seek possession. To cope with the extra disputes, the government has been recruiting around 1,000 new judges for the courts that will handle these cases - a detail that tells you how much more of this will end up formally contested rather than settled with a quiet notice. There are new specific grounds too, including a student-possession ground (Ground 4A) that matters if you let to sharers on academic-year cycles, as plenty of landlords near the commons and around Battersea do.

Second, get your compliance genuinely in order, not "mostly". The days of a relaxed attitude to paperwork are over, because when possession has to go through a ground, your evidence trail is everything. That means a current, valid EPC, gas and electrical safety certificates in date, deposit protected and prescribed information served, and a tenancy agreement that reflects the new rules rather than a template from three years ago. If any of that is shaky, sort it before you need it, not after a dispute has started.

Third, think carefully about rent. Tribunals are already pushing back hard on increases - one analysis of around 200 determinations found roughly 73% of proposed rises were cut. The lesson for a Clapham landlord isn't to give up on fair increases, it's to make them evidence-based and defensible: know your comparable rents on your own street, document them, and price a review where you'd be comfortable justifying it, rather than reaching for a number and hoping it sticks.

Here's my take. I understand why some landlords are heading for the exit, and I've written before about the sell-off. But for those staying, panic is not a plan and neither is denial. The landlords who'll do fine under this Act are the organised, professional ones - the people who treat letting like the business it now clearly is, keep their properties in good order, and build genuine relationships with good tenants they want to keep. In a market this short of rental homes, a reliable tenant in a well-run flat is an asset worth protecting, not a liability to manage at arm's length.

Are you a landlord in Clapham or nearby trying to work out what the Renters' Rights Act means for your flat? Send me your situation and I'll give you a straight, practical steer - no scaremongering. Email jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.

56% of landlords now plan to sell - and Clapham's flats are first in line

Every few weeks another buy-to-let landlord walks into my office with the same opening line: "I think I'm done." Usually it's someone who bought a one or two-bed flat off Clapham Common or near Abbeville Village years ago, has had a decent run, and is now quietly worn down by the paperwork, the mortgage rates and the sense that the rules keep moving against them. This week the numbers caught up with the mood on my sofa.

The Deposit Protection Service's latest review found that 56% of landlords now plan to sell some or all of their portfolio, up from 53% last October. Pair that with Benham and Reeves reporting that just 3.9% of landlords intend to expand, and you have a private rented sector that is shrinking at one end and barely growing at the other. The English Private Landlord Survey adds the detail that matters locally: landlords with five or more properties account for 49% of all private tenancies, despite being only 17% of landlords. In other words, a small number of committed players hold up a big share of the market, and when they start heading for the door, the effect is outsized.

Down here that plays out flat by flat. Clapham, Balham and Stockwell are stuffed with the exact stock these landlords own - period conversions and purpose-built one and two-beds that were the classic first buy-to-let. When one of them sells, the flat often goes to an owner-occupier rather than another investor, so it leaves the rental pool for good. Multiply that across a few streets and you can see why renters near the Common tell me every viewing feels like a scrum. Void periods have actually fallen to around 21 days nationally, which is another way of saying good rental flats are being snapped up almost as fast as they appear.

Here's my honest take, and it cuts both ways. If you're a landlord who has genuinely had enough, selling into today's market is not the disaster some headlines suggest - owner-occupier demand for a well-presented Clapham flat is real, and you may do better selling with vacant possession to a homebuyer than to a nervous investor. But if your numbers still work, think hard before you join the stampede. Fewer rental flats plus steady tenant demand is, bluntly, a supportive backdrop for the landlords who stay. The ones selling in a panic may be handing a stronger position to the ones who hold their nerve.

Either way, the worst move is to drift. If you own a flat round here and you're on the fence, get a proper, current valuation and a straight read on your yield before you decide - not a guess based on what your neighbour got in 2021.

Are you a Clapham landlord weighing up whether to sell or sit tight this year? I talk this through with owners most weeks and I'm happy to give you a straight steer. Email me at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.

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Nine renters for every flat: inside the SW London rent squeeze

Walk past any letting board near Clapham Common on a Saturday and you'll spot it - a small knot of people outside a flat, phones out, all there for the same 20-minute viewing slot. Down here that queue isn't a one-off, it's the market. And this week the national figures finally put a shape to what renters round here already feel in their gut.

The Office for National Statistics reports that average private rents rose 3.7% in the 12 months to July 2026, with the UK average private rent now sitting at 1,393 pounds a month. Separate reporting this week put annual rental growth as high as 4.3% and estimated that tenants are now spending roughly a third of their income on housing. The Institute for Fiscal Studies goes further still, finding renters spent about 28% of household income on housing in 2024-25. And the story behind the queues is supply: with reports of as many as nine renters chasing every available flat, there simply aren't enough homes to go round.

In Clapham, Balham, Brixton and Stockwell those national averages are a soft-focus version of the truth, because London rents start well above 1,393 pounds and the competition is fiercer. When a two-bed conversion off Abbeville Road comes up, it doesn't sit - it's gone in days, often to whoever can move fastest and offer cleanest. That's the bit the percentages don't capture: the couple who've been outbid three times since June, the sharers stretching to a postcode they can just about afford, the tenant who renews at a higher rent simply because moving feels riskier than staying. Rising rents and thin supply don't just cost money, they cost people their options.

My take, and renters won't always want to hear it: in a market this tight, preparation beats hope. If you're flat-hunting in SW London right now, be viewing-ready before you turn up - references lined up, proof of income to hand, a realistic budget that includes the deposit and first month, and a genuine sense of which streets you'll actually accept. The renters who lose out are rarely the ones offering the most; they're the ones who dither while someone more organised says yes. And if you're a good tenant already in a decent flat, think twice before walking away from it in this climate - a rent you can negotiate is often better than a search you can't win.

None of this is a lecture. The squeeze is real and it's structural, and it won't ease until more rental homes come back into the market rather than leaving it. But knowing the numbers - and knowing your patch - is how you stop being the ninth person in the queue and start being the one who gets the keys.

Renting in Clapham or the surrounding area and feeling the crunch? Tell me what you're up against - I know this local market inside out and I'm glad to point you in the right direction. Reach me at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.

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