Renters despair over cut-throat London market

With soaring rent prices and cut-throat competition, Cyndi Cheng, 34, thought she would never find a place to rent in London after moving from Hong Kong earlier this year.

Her disillusionment is shared by many who have had to act fast and bid high to secure a home in a competitive rental market fuelled by high tenant demand and a dwindling supply.

Stories abound of prospective tenants being asked to pay 12 months' rent up front to secure a property, offering more than the asking price and detailed background checks.

Cheng says she was regularly "ghosted" during her search.

One landlord refused to let her view a property because she did not have a full-time employment reference, having just moved from Hong Kong on a UK special visa granted to residents after the imposition of China's security law.

"It's just hard for all these boxes and criteria to be out there in a rental market like this," she told AFP. "The competition is keen and real."

Housing body Propertymark found that for every 10 new prospective tenants registering in its member branches in February, there was only one property available for rent.

Matt Hutchinson, director of SpareRoom, a popular flat-sharing platform, said the hardest part for renters is "getting the attention of the landlord".

"Most people aren't even getting a viewing," he added.

Cheng eventually secured a "tiny" property, relieved that the stress of endlessly checking her messages to see if she had been successful is over.

London rents have historically been higher than the rest of the UK but in the first quarter of this year they have sky-rocketed, a SpareRoom study said.

Now, the average room rent in London is at a record high of £952 (nearly $1,200) per month.

As mortgage rates and other cost-of-living pressures jumped last year, landlords passed on costs to tenants or simply chose to sell, pushing up rents and squeezing already hard-pressed supply.

This is the "hardest time we've ever seen for renters, and we've been running the site for 20 years now," says Hutchinson.

Joey Mazars, 28, has been on the other end of the letting ad.

Last November, he and his flatmate put out a call on SpareRoom to find a third flatmate. Within 48 hours of posting, they received around 120 messages.

Unable to sift through all, Mazars had to eventually use random criteria to filter out applicants, from how their SpareRoom profiles looked to discounting those with "weird hobbies".

"We had to find any reason eventually to not choose them," he said.