UK Rents Rose 3.8%. Or 2.4%. Or 4.1%. Why Every Rent Figure You Read Is Different.
RealYield Team
Property Analyst
Three rent indices published figures for the same month, August 2026, within weeks of each other. The Office for National Statistics said UK rents were up 3.8%. Hamptons said 2.4%. HomeLet said 4.1%. None of them made a mistake. They are measuring different things, and once you know what each one actually tracks, the gap stops looking like noise and starts being useful.
This matters more than it sounds like it should, because the rent figure is the single input that moves a yield calculation more than almost anything else. Get the rent wrong by a few percentage points and the yield you think you are getting shifts with it.
The three figures, side by side
| Source | Average rent | Annual growth | What it measures | Coverage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ONS | £1,400 | 3.8% | All tenancies, whole private rented stock | UK |
| Hamptons | £1,419 | 2.4% | Newly agreed lets only | Great Britain |
| HomeLet | £1,382 | 4.1% | Newly agreed lets, achieved rents | UK |
All three cover the 12 months to August 2026. All three are correct for what they measure. None of them is "the" UK rent figure, because there isn't one.
Why they don't match
The biggest difference is what counts as a rent. ONS measures the entire private rented stock, which means it includes tenancies that started two years ago, five years ago, or last month. Most tenancies in that sample have not changed hands recently, so the figure reflects the slow drip of rent reviews and renewals across millions of existing agreements.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do ONS, Hamptons and HomeLet report different UK rent figures?
They measure different things. ONS tracks average rent across the whole private rented stock, including tenancies that have not changed hands for years. Hamptons and HomeLet track only newly agreed tenancies, where a property has just been let or re-let. New-let rents tend to move faster than the stock average, in either direction, because they reset to the current market rather than following an existing tenancy.
Which rent figure should I use for my own property?
None of them directly. National averages blend together property types, regions and tenancy ages that have little to do with your specific flat or house. Use a local achieved rent for a comparable property near yours, ideally from a letting agent or recent local lettings data, and treat the national indices as context for the direction of travel rather than a number to plug straight into a yield calculation.
Are UK rents rising faster or slower than they were?
Both, depending on which measure you look at. Whole-stock rent growth (ONS) has been running at 3.8% to 4%, roughly stable. New-let rent growth (Hamptons) has accelerated for ten straight months and is now at its fastest pace since November 2024, even though it remains below the whole-stock rate. That gap closing is itself the story: the extra premium landlords could once charge on a fresh letting is shrinking.
Do these figures include Northern Ireland and Scotland?
Coverage varies. ONS publishes UK-wide rent figures but reports Northern Ireland rents with a longer lag than the rest of the UK. Hamptons covers Great Britain, which excludes Northern Ireland. HomeLet covers the UK. Always check which nations and regions a figure actually covers before comparing it with another source.
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