Research from June 2016 carried out by building society, Kent Alliance, has shown that 40% of landlords are planning to increase their rents by an average of 5.6% over the next 6 months.

Three quarters of these have blamed new Government legislation for the increase, while a study by the Residential Landlords Association (RLA) earlier in the month also shows that most landlords plan to raise rents on their tenants. 56% of these intend to do so within the next 12 months and the majority blame new Government legislation and changes to mortgage interest relief.

However, the latest research from property classifieds site, TheHouseShop.com, has discovered that nearly half (42%) of private renters would not be able to afford a rise of up to 5% in their monthly rent costs – which shows quite how precarious the UK rental market has become.

The YouGov survey of more than 1000 renters and mortgage holders asked people to estimate the minimum percentage that their monthly mortgage or rent payments would have to go up by before they became unaffordable.

Shockingly, an increase of just up to 1% would be unaffordable for 16% of private tenants, which demonstrates how many tenants are already paying the upper limit of what they can afford.

In comparison, homeowners (with mortgages only) were much more likely to be able to withstand smaller increases in their monthly payments: with just 3% saying they could not afford an increase of up to 1%, compared to the 16% of private renters who said the same thing.

Mortgage-holders were more able to absorb larger increases in monthly payments, with 24% saying monthly mortgage payments would have to increase by more than 20% before they became unaffordable, compared to just 7% of private tenants who said the same of their monthly rent payments.