Only five London postcodes now have average room rents below \u00a3800 per month, all located in the E and N postcode areas, according to Q1 2026 data from SpareRoom.<\/p>\n
The lowest-cost areas are E6, E12, E4, N18 and E7, highlighting how limited affordability has become in the capital. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis marks a sharp shift from Q1 2020, when average room rents stood at \u00a3773 per month and 81 postcodes had rents below \u00a3800, including 50 below \u00a3700.<\/p>\n
Average room rents in London now stand at \u00a3978 per month, although this represents a 0.5% fall year on year. Demand for rooms has declined by 12% over the same period, while supply has increased by 4.8%, suggesting some renters are being priced out of central areas.<\/p>\n
Despite modest falls in recent periods, rents remain significantly above pre-pandemic levels, having peaked at \u00a31,015 per month at the end of 2023. <\/p>\n
Matt Hutchinson, director at SpareRoom, said: \u201cRents in the capital have been flatlining for a while. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhile this is clearly better than the years of uplifts that came before, it\u2019s hardly a dream scenario.<\/p>\n
\u201cYears of intense demand on London\u2019s limited rental stock has inflated prices and made cheap rents all too scarce. Falling demand and slightly increased supply points to more renters being priced out of inner London, which is why we\u2019re still seeing heightened demand in the suburbs and commuter belt.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cIn reality, there\u2019s no such thing as cheap housing in London now. If you do manage to find a room at \u00a3800 per month \u2013 and these are increasingly endangered \u2013 you\u2019d still need to be earning a salary of \u00a332,000 a year to afford the rent. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is over and above what many people in the capital earn, especially those just starting their careers.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Only five London postcodes now have average room rents below \u00a3800 per month, all located in the E…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[27,6380,6381,1188,6382],"class_list":{"0":"post-13785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-london","9":"tag-rental-market","10":"tag-rents","11":"tag-research","12":"tag-spareroom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@UnitedKingdom\/116402262018065198","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/britain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}