It’s official: There are seven renters for every one room available in London

Just in case you didn’t already know, London’s rental market sucks


SpareRoom, a site that helps people looking for flatmates, has found London’s housing crisis is also affecting renters.

Their data has shown the number of renters looking for rooms tripling while spaces advertised decline over the same period since early 2021.

This means more than seven people are competing for each available space in London, which is almost double the rate compared to the rest of the country.

Data from SpareRoom, visualisation by Bloomberg

Yolande Barnes, chair of UCL’s Bartlett Real Estate Institute, said there is “an element of pent-up demand” from office workers and students contributing to this crisis.

They told Bloomberg: “The archetypal young professional, who worked at home from their parents’ place and saved money on rent, is now going back to living in real places.”

At the same time, universities – whose second- and third-year cohorts may already be inflated by the covid exam debacle – are encouraging students to study on campus rather than remotely. This alone has caused housing shortages across the UK, with some universities housing their students in separate cities entirely.

While the number of prospective tenants is increasing, there are fewer landlords willing to offer them places. SpareRoom’s data has reported that sixteen per cent of landlords are planning on moving away from the rental market as rising house prices and interest rates make it less profitable.

Also, the energy crisis is set to skyrocket heating and electricity bills over winter, with landlords having to pass on the £400 government rebate to tenants. This, coupled with the potential for increased mortgages, landlords are less keen on letting their properties to renters.

These new findings did nothing but emphasised the struggles people are facing in London in terms of housing. Another recent study by the Nationwide Building Society suggested that 20 per cent of students in Greater London fear going homeless in the next six month.

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