Landlord online search activity broke records in April based on Google searches, according to Rentround.

Terms related to ‘letting agents’ were searched for 1.015m times in April, 7% higher than the previous record in June 2020, the letting agent comparison service said.

The growth experienced in Google searches is supported by landlord activity on Rentround. The estate and letting agent comparison site experienced an uptick of 13% more searches run by landlords versus the previous all-time monthly high.

Searches in Newcastle, Birmingham and Bristol were particularly buoyant, having experienced the largest increases, all above 18% compared to previous six-month averages.

Overall, the April Google activity, which was 24% up compared with the previous month, is 47% higher than the 2017-2021 average number of monthly letting agent related searches.

The April record numbers in 2021 paint a vastly different picture to the same time 12 months ago.

In April 2020, volumes of letting agent searches on Google dropped to 330,000 searches the lowest on record excluding December months. Of course, the announcement of lockdown in March 2020 brought a halt to the property market which meant landlord & letting activity was severely reduced.

April Google searches related to the estate agent world hit 837,000, this is 35,345 less than the previous record in September 2020.

Rentround founder, Raj Dosanjh, commented: “Statistics on the letting agent search terms will be very encouraging for estate and letting agents.

“We all know the impact pent up lockdown demand and the stamp duty holiday has placed the property market in a strong place.

“These numbers not only back that up but show that the trend is still rising, indicating room for more growth and opportunities for agents to increase revenues.

“May already looks encouraging as the current trend is on track to match, if not beat, the April record volumes.”