30% of UK tenants choose to rent rather than buy according to the latest data from leading online lettings agent, Upad.

Indeed it may well be officially £120 cheaper to own your home today then rent (Halifax, Jan 2012) but bricks and mortar is never a simple numbers game and now nearly a third of UK renters actively choose this path because they don’t want the commitment of buying a property.

A case in point is Charlotte Ashton, 31 from London, who has lived rented accommodation for over 10 years now.

She explains,

“Whilst it is my ultimate aspiration to get on the property ladder at some point, I have actively chosen to live in rented accommodation for all of my adult life. The freedom, flexibility and being able to rely on the landlord to repair any problems has been a real draw for me and with house prices in London skyrocketing there is no way I could ever live where I do unless I rented.”

Charlotte has lived happily in her current 5 bedroom property in Shepherd’s Bush, West London since 2009, a trend also seen in the Upad Tenant Survey (Jan 2013) which revealed that 39% of UK tenants expect to rent for 3 years or more.

With the Upad survey also showing that nearly half of all UK tenants lose more than 30% of their salaries to rent, finding the perfect property is essential. 47% of tenants start looking for their next new home 2 months or more before they have to move and expect to see on average 16 properties during their search.

As James Davis, CEO of Upad and hands on landlord for 14 years, comments,

“With rents escalating across the country, tenants are becoming increasingly fussy about the properties they rent and rightly so, living standards should be the same for owners and tenants alike. ”

As a landlord I am always asked to provide prospective tenants with photos of the property and indeed this and other advertisement features rank highly in our survey with 93% of UK tenants believing photos to be either very important or essential, 72% stating distance to transport links and 58% a broadband connection.”