Crazy cost of London living: you pay TWICE as much rent as rest of UK

The London property market has escalated to new heights of ridiculousness, as new research reveals that residential rent in the capital is twice as expensive as in the rest of the UK.

It costs on average £1,412 a month to rent a property in Greater London, but only £642 a month elsewhere in the UK, according to the HomeLet Rental Index.

London rental prices have risen more than 11% in the year to May 2014, according to the research.

The worry is that Londoners on relatively normal salaries will be priced out of living in the capital.

“As a rule of thumb, for a rental property to be affordable, a tenant’s gross income must be at least two and a half times their annual rent,” said Martin Totty, CEO of HomeLet’s parent company the Barbon Insurance Group.

“Rents in London have pushed beyond that boundary, with the south-east and south-west of England close behind.”

The crazy rental prices of London are in line with the vertiginous prices of buying property.

London house prices have increased by more than 25% in the past year, according to Nationwide research from July, and the average London home now costs more than £400,000.

You can, in fact, buy an entire Alpine village for less than the price of a typical London home.

>> Five reasons why the London property bubble will burst