Savills says around £250bn of investment is needed to boost the UK’s housing industry within the next seven years if the nation is to fix the growing rental crisis.

The estate agency says an additional one million rental homes are needed between now and 2031 to keep up with demand.

In terms of property type, Savills says most of the new homes needed will be be single-family homes rather than blocks of rental flats.

Proposals to fix the broader housing crisis focus on increasing the number of homes built for sale, but rentals will also play a part.

“We need to adopt a positive response to the housing crisis, across all tenures,” Jacqui Daly, director of residential research at Savills, said. “Build-to-rent can help to deliver many more homes, more quickly, and secure investment that improves the energy efficiency of the private rented sector, while meeting the needs of young, middle-income households.”

So far, £3.5bn has been spent building just over 10,000 homes specifically made to be let out; to build another million would cost £250bn, Savills says.

Savills estimates that there is about £60bn waiting to be deployed into the UK build-to-rent sector, mostly into houses rather than flats.

The widening supply-demand imbalance in the rental market is likely to push up rents unless a surge of more new homes are built.

David Reid, managing director of suburban build-to-rent at Legal & General, said “Now more than ever, we must deliver diverse residential offerings to better accommodate the broad range of different households that exist in the market.

More than 50,000 buy-to-let companies were set up in 2023, says Hamptons