UK renters paying £8 per sq ft, £12 in London – ideal flatmate’s Q3, Room Rental Index

The latest Room Rental Index by ideal flatmate has been released for Q3 2019, looking at the cost of renting a room across the UK’s major cities and each London borough. You can find the full index report attached in pdf form, including current average room rentals, the quarter to quarter change, and the cost per square foot, but for any further comment or info, please get in touch.

The latest index shows that: –

  • The average room rental cost across the UK is £584, up 1% quarter to quarter.

 

  • UK room renters are currently paying £8 per square foot.

 

  • The average room rental cost across London is £813 – the highest of all major UK cities.

 

  • Renting a room in the capital costs an average of £12 per square foot, up from £11 at the start of this year.

 

  • At an average cost of £1,025 a room, per month, Westminster is currently the most expensive London borough – a cost of £15 per square foot.

 

  • Aberdeen is the most affordable UK city in which to rent a room costing just £4 per square foot – an average cost of £268 per month.

 

  • London, Nottingham and Bristol have seen the largest quarterly uplifts in room rental prices, while Havering Lewisham and Hillingdon have seen the biggest increases in cost across the capital.

Co-founder of ideal flatmate, Tom Gatzen, commented:

“A mixed bag throughout the third quarter with the cost of renting a room on the up yet again across the majority of UK cities, although some of the more expensive areas of London and the UK have seen the rate of rental growth cool to a degree.

It’s still not clear as to whether the ban on tenant fees has led to a notable increase in rents and if it has, this certainly hasn’t trickled through to the nation’s renters yet.

On the whole, we’re seeing lower rates of rental growth quarter to quarter than we did earlier in the year, but with changes to the tenant fees only impacting new tenancies or renewals, we could be yet to see the widespread surge in rental costs that many are expecting.

While there have been some large uplifts across the nation’s more prominent cities and London’s peripheral boroughs, this increase is more likely to have been driven by tenant demand more than any other factor.”

Properganda PR

National and local media coverage for property businesses. Journo quotes delivered in minutes.

You May Also Enjoy

Breaking News

July’s HMRC Property Transactions Report

Headline statistics Headline statistics from the latest transactions data include: the provisional seasonally adjusted estimate of the number of UK residential transactions in July 2026 is 96,710, 1% lower than July 2025 and 2% lower than June 2026 the provisional non-seasonally adjusted estimate of the number of UK residential transactions in July 2026 is 106,620, 5% higher than July…
Read More
Breaking News

Almost half of homesellers hit by broken chains

The latest research from House Buyer Bureau has revealed that almost half of home sellers who form part of a property chain have seen that chain break during the sales process, with buyers changing their minds and pulling out by far the most common reason why.   House Buyer Bureau commissioned an independent survey of 1,072…
Read More
Social Housing 2019
Breaking News

Only 1 in 10 new-build homebuyers happy

Just 1 in 10 new-build buyers got the home they wanted before moving in   The latest research from UK Property Development (UKPD) has found that just 11% of people who purchased a new-build home in the past two years were able to personalise their property exactly as they wanted before moving in. As a…
Read More
Breaking News

One-third of tenant income in the UK goes on rent

Lomond’s Summer 2026 Quarterly Insights report reveals tenants now spend an average of 32.7% of their yearly income on rent UK average rents rise to £1,369pcm, increasing by +4.3% in the same period last year Average rent in London reaches £2,418pcm, 76% higher than the UK average The average age of renters across the UK is now 31.5   Lomond, the UK’s leading network of lettings and sales agents, has…
Read More
Finance

Six in 10 UK businesses look to adapt operations in response to extreme heat

37 per cent have increased heat-related investment, with 23 per cent considering it Cooling equipment, including air conditioning and ventilation, is the most common investment priority (28 per cent) Barclays anonymised client data shows that air conditioning suppliers saw cash inflows increase by 4.3 per cent year-on-year into Barclays accounts Consumers claim 25.1°C is their…
Read More
Letting Agent Talk

Weathering RRA: It’s Not a Storm, It’s the Climate

Opinion: This Isn’t a Storm Agents Can Wait Out – It’s the New Climate By Sally Lawson    “Agents are heads-down, working their asses off to survive the RRA changes, to the detriment of everything else. But in order to get where they’re thriving too, agents must refocus and rebuild to make back the property…
Read More