Letting our homes

We set the rent for our social rented homes in line with the Government’s policy on target rents and based on the size and value of the property. Our average social rent per week is £122.67. This is the combined average for all our properties across London, Hertfordshire and the South East. See the graph below for the regional average weekly rents by property size.

In 2011, the Government introduced a new policy on rents called Affordable Rents. All of our rents for new homes and some of our rents for existing homes let after this time have been at the Affordable Rent level. Our Affordable rents are set in line with the Government’s guidance. Affordable rents are capped at 80% of the market rent level. Our average affordable rent per week is £198.79. This is the combined average for all our properties across London, Hertfordshire and the South East. See the graph below for the regional average weekly rents by property size.

Average social rent per week in London is

£127.39

Average social rent per week in Hertfordshire is

£113.11

Average affordable rent per week in London is

£221.81

Average affordable rent per week in Hertfordshire is

£166.63

Satisfaction with new home re-lets

92%

against a target of 82%

Rent arrears

3.96%

beating our 4.25% target

Social rents per week

The chart below shows the average rent for our homes per week – this is for all the areas where we have homes which includes London, Hertfordshire and the South East.

Breakdown of social rent per region

Average regional social rent per week 2018/19 by property size

Affordable rents per week

The chart below shows the average affordable rent for our homes per week - this is for all the areas where we have homes which includes London, Hertfordshire and the South East.

*Please note: the average rent of a two bed home is higher because we have more two bed homes in London, where rents are typically higher, than we have in areas outside London.

Breakdown of affordable rent per region

Average regional affordable rent per week 2018/19 by property size

Empty homes

Before new families can move into an empty home, we need to check the property is safe, clean and in a good state of repair.

Our target time to get this done is 28 days from one resident moving out and another moving in. For 2018/19 we took on average 32.8 days to do this.

We lost 0.92% of potential rent money due to homes being empty which is an improvement on last year. Some of this is unavoidable as the homes have to be made safe and in a decent condition for our residents to live in. But the figure could be lower if we were more efficient in our internal processes and met our target. This is something we’re aware of and are learning from so we can make improvements.