London Rents Continue to Rise: March Update

In London, many people share home rental costs as they cannot afford to rent on their own. The new research shows that the average cost of a room to rent in London is £902 per month, up 2% year on year.

Westminster is the most expensive borough in London to rent a room, followed by Camden and Kensington and Chelsea, with Nine Elms and Covent Garden the places with the highest room rates.

According to room share platform Ideal Flatmate, it currently costs £1,045 a month to rent a room in Westminster, £999 in Camden, £997 in Kensington and Chelsea, £959 in Hammersmith and Fulham, £910 in Islington and £900 in the City of London. It costs £898 per month to rent a room in Hackney, £810 in Wandsworth, £809 in Tower Hamlets and £807 in Southwark.

In terms of location, the most expensive place in London is Nine Elms with an average monthly room rent of £2,123, followed by £1,350 in Covent Garden and in Upper Clapton, and £1,333 in South Kensington.

Next most costly is Knightsbridge at £1,300, followed by Church End at £1,273, Bayswater at £1,248, St James’s at £1,238, North Finchley at £1,220, Millbank at £1,200, Earls Court at £1,177 and Swiss Cottage at £1,150.

Other locations where it costs more than £1,000 a month to rent a room include Mayfair, Marylebone, Chalk Farm, Islington, Hammersmith, De Beauvoir Town, Stamford Hill and Maida Vale.

The cheapest place to rent a room in London is North Woolwich at £350, with Abbey Wood, Manor Park, Hither Green and West Norwood also some of the lowest.

Despite room sharing remaining the most affordable way of finding a place to live in London, it too is seeing prices increase as the capital’s rental market continues to strain under the pressure of a supply and demand imbalance, the real estate industry experts say. They envisage the price of room rentals in London increase at a rate of at least 1% a month on average, explaining that this cost increase has largely been driven by many factors. Among these are: a reduction in the number of landlords and letting agents with rooms to rent as a result of the stamp duty shake-up, changes to tax thresholds and the impending ban on letting fees.

“Unless more is done to address this, we will continue to see the cost of renting lift across the board with the capital’s tenants ultimately the ones paying the price,” property experts warn.

Based on https://www.propertywire.com