Pack up your life into a pile of cardboard boxes, and move on. Unpack it all, dare to relax and buy a few houseplants, and before long you’ll probably only have to pack it up all over again. Moving house is famously up there with divorce and childbirth among life’s most stressful events, but for renters in some English property hotspots it’s now almost a permanent way of life.
New research from the property tax consultancy Cornerstone Tax finds that a staggering 19% of renters have had to move at least five times in five years through no fault of their own, because of rising rents or landlords selling up. You can pay your rent religiously on time, turn a blind eye to all the repairs the landlord hasn’t got around to making, keep the music down and nag the kids about not playing noisily enough to disturb the neighbours. But if the landlord reckons they can make more money on Airbnb, you can still get kicked out with two months’ notice when the contract ends under a so-called section 21 no-fault eviction order. And while the young and insecure are obviously vulnerable – a quarter of gen Zs and millennials have already moved more than 10 times since leaving their family home, according to research for the flat-sharing website SpareRoom last year – so are those still renting as they near retirement. One in four renters over 55 surveyed by Shelter said that worrying about potentially being evicted had negatively affected their mental health.
