Beauchamp Estates has found that average achieved rents for luxury houses in prime central London reached £4,177 a week in the first half of 2026, up 67.15 percent on the same period last year.
The agency’s Millionaires Letting in London Survey puts the annual equivalent at £217,204. It also reports average rents of £1,957 a week for luxury apartments and penthouses, a 15.12 percent annual increase.
Owners at the very top of the London market have a current pricing signal, but it comes with a clear limit: the survey covers lettings above £1,000 a week between January and June, not the whole capital’s rental market. A renewal or new instruction still needs to be tested against comparable homes available today.
Prime London lettings data shows a split
Beauchamp says 1,911 homes were rented at more than £1,000 a week in the first six months of 2026, down from 3,442 in H1 2025. That is a 44.48 percent fall in the number of recorded high-value lettings while average rents for the homes that did let moved sharply higher.
The figures do not measure the total number of homes advertised for rent across prime central London, so they should not be treated as a complete supply index. They do show a narrower, higher-value segment where fewer completed lets coincided with much stronger achieved values for houses.
Premium homes set the pricing boundary
The report identifies turn-key houses with five or more bedrooms, air conditioning, leisure facilities and private outside space as the most sought-after stock. For apartments and penthouses, it highlights three or more bedrooms, air conditioning, concierge services and building amenities such as gyms or pools.
Beauchamp also recorded a 125 percent annual rise in its own Mayfair office lettings agreed above £4,000 a week. That is an agency-level measure rather than a London-wide result, but it reinforces the report’s central distinction: well-presented homes with particular features can behave differently from the rest of the prime market.
This follows Landlord Knowledge’s July report on Savills’ prime-rents index, which recorded 0.4 percent quarterly growth in prime central London in Q2. Landlord Knowledge’s earlier coverage of LonRes data also found rental growth returning while prime sales remained weaker. Beauchamp’s survey adds a much sharper result from the luxury end, where the sample and price point are very different.
The survey is not a market-wide rent index
The survey reports a 30 percent rise in applicants from the Middle East, a 20 percent rise from the United States and a five percent rise from China during 2026. It says seven in 10 households in this ultra-prime group are choosing to rent rather than buy, but that finding describes the agency’s target market and cannot be applied to ordinary London lets.
That qualification is useful for landlords weighing a rent review. A £4,177 weekly average does not justify a broad increase across prime London, and the fall in completed £1,000-plus lets could reflect changes in stock, tenant choice or the mix of homes agreed. The better test is current competing stock, condition, specification and the likely tenant pool for the individual property. The full methodology and figures are set out in Beauchamp Estates’ Millionaires Letting in London Survey.
What this means for landlords
- If you own a high-specification central London home: compare a proposed rent with current like-for-like listings, especially homes with the features cited in the survey.
- Watch for: whether the smaller number of completed £1,000-plus lets persists into the second half of 2026 before treating the rent rise as a broad market trend.
- Bottom line: the strongest gains are being reported in a narrow luxury segment, where presentation and specification are central to pricing.
Editor’s view
These figures are striking, but their value lies in their narrowness. Prime central London landlords should take the report as evidence that exceptional homes can still command a premium, not as a licence to ignore the competition on the market now.
Author: Editorial Team – UK landlord & buy-to-let news, policy, and finance
Published: 23 September 2026
Sources: Beauchamp Estates Millionaires Letting in London Survey
Related reading: Savills: RRA costs lift prime rents again in Q2
