Santander Mortgages found that 15% of new home owners had been renting for 11 years.
They found that the costs of renting long term are astonishing with tenants who rent without managing to buy a property having to fork out £296,000 by doing so.
Average rental figures for tenants
The firm used an average monthly rental figure of £474 and calculated that from a security deposit of £657 per tenant, only 20% of that figure - about £130 on average - is returned at the end of a tenancy.
Santander also found that with most tenancies lasting three years, the average tenant will lose £3,113 of their home deposit savings.
Meanwhile, another piece of research is pointing to a probability that the average rent being paid each month in the UK might top £1,000 this year.
UK rents to break £1,000 barrier
The prediction is being made by property management firm Move With Us who say that rents advertised in the UK rose by .77% in January and by 1.63% over the previous 12 months.
This means that the average rent has now increased by £7 a month and stands at £987.
Landlords in Scotland saw the best performance with the average rent rising there by 3.57% to reach £676 a month.
Rents in Greater London have now reached £2,221 a month, a rise of 0.61%.
The figure for Greater London is now running at almost twice the average amount being demanded in the next highest performing part of the UK, the south-east where average rents are now £1,138 per month.
East Anglia also saw a good performance with rents rising by more than £30 a month, or 3.45%.
However, rents in Wales and the North East both saw falls, £6 and £11 respectively, despite a sharp increase in the same areas at the end of 2013.
The average rent being paid in the north-east is now £695, and the average for Wales is £679 a month.
Move With Us director robin King said that landlords in Scotland were boosted because rental yields in places like Aberdeen are on the up following an increase in wages and the number of short term employment contracts in the oil and gas industries.
He added: “The increase in average rents is a sign of more increases to come especially with population growth in Greater London though London itself is operating in its own bubble and rents are rising again following declines.”
