With soaring mortgage rates, homeowners are feeling the strain. And for landlords, the increased cost might be passed on to tenants who are already pushed to the limit.
In fact, according to a new study by Admiral Landlord Insurance, 86% of renters in London can’t afford the average room rental and for every 1 room available almost 3 people are looking to rent.
Admiral analysed popular room rental websites to reveal where UK renters are priced out of the rental market and the areas where demand exceeds supply the most.
Admiral discovered that 65.7% of people’s budgets are too low to afford the average rental in the UK.
Whilst 86.2% of people in London can’t afford the average rental. The average rental price in London is £1,107 vs. an average budget of £885.
Per 100 rentals in London, there are 276 people looking for a place to rent.
Admiral also looked at different demographics and London has 64.3 rooms per 100 rentals that are student-friendly while only 6.5 per 100 are pet-friendly and just 6.7 per 100 have disabled access.
Based on their analysis, the average rent for a single room in the UK is £40 more than the average person’s budget, which is £634 average rent vs £594 average budget.
In the UK, 65.7% of people’s budgets are too low to afford the average room rental. The most difficult country to find a room in is Wales, where 69.4% of advertisers have budgets below the average.
Admirals analysis of rental ads in the UK found that the demand for rooms to rent is much higher than the available supply. Per 100 rentals in the UK overall, there are 152 people looking for a place to rent.
London ranks 13th in the analysis and has one of the highest demands for rentals in the UK. Our analysis revealed that for every 100 rentals in the city, there are 276.1 people looking to rent.
Salford has the highest demand compared to availability with 1,061 renters per 100 room rentals.
Feeling included in your own home is important. To find out how common different types of advertised rentals are across the UK, we analysed households according to the demographic of the housemates, including student, pet-friendly, LGBTQ+, and vegetarian.
There are a total of 64.3 student-friendly rooms per 100 rentals available to rent in London.
If you have a pet, it might be difficult to find a room in London. Only 6.5 per 100 rentals are pet-friendly.
London doesn’t have a lot of availability for disabled access either with only 6.7 rentals per 100 rentals that said they had disabled access.
There are only 2.9 available rooms in LGBTQ+ households in London for every 100 available rentals.
Admiral’s analysis echoes this trend, with far more people looking to rent a roo
m in each city than what is currently being advertised on sites such as SpareRoom. The rental market is also being impacted by the growing trend of landlords selling their properties.
Propertymark research shows that between March 2019 and March 2022, 84% of landlords who removed their property from the rental market did so to sell it.
In 63% of UK cities analysed, we can see that the majority of single people looking to rent are priced out of the average rental price. On a national level, just over half of renters in England, Scotland and Wales can’t afford the average rental price for a single occupancy room, with London residents most affected by the huge disparity between rent and budget.
Compared to data from 2021, renters are increasingly priced out with the percentage of budgets falling below average rental prices increasing to 65.7% from 52.7%.
As for renters across Britain, they’re facing an uncertain future, with the Office of National Statistics reporting an increase in private rental prices of 3.7% in England, 3.2% in Wales, and 4.2% in Scotland.
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