according to new figures<\/a> from the Office of National Statistics (ONS).<\/p>\nTypical private tenants in the city spent 44.6 percent of their income on rent in 2024, which is well above the 30 per cent deemed “affordable” by the ONS.<\/p>\n
Bristol and Bath are now both among the top 20 least affordable local authorities in the country, according to the latest figures.<\/p>\n
To show the affordability of private renting the ONS calculated what proportion of monthly income the monthly rent was equivalent to. <\/p>\n
Affordability was then based on whether an area with private renting was equivalent to 30% or less of the median income of private renting households.<\/p>\n
According to the figures, 2018 saw the highest costs to renters in Bristol at 46.9% of household income.<\/p>\n
The number has consistently remained above 30% since 2016.<\/p>\n
The ONS said factors such as having a university – Bristol has two – or commuter routes to a larger city can help drive up rent prices.<\/p>\n
Sarah Coles, head of personal finance for Bristol-based Hargreaves Lansdown, said landlords are continuing to sell up as they are “concerned about higher costs from more regulation and more tax”.<\/p>\n
“It means more tenants chasing dwindling numbers of properties, so rents are continuing to rise,” she said.<\/p>\n
“At the same time, although wages have risen impressively, they have been consistently outpaced by private rental increases.”<\/p>\n
The ONS said Bath and North East Somerset also had some of the least “affordable” rents outside London, with average rent costs in 2024 at 42.7% of household incomes.<\/p>\n
This is a rise since 2023, where the figure stood at 37.8%, but the figure has generally been above 40% since 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"“Unaffordable” rent prices in Bristol are now costing people well over a third of their household income, new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355420,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8818],"tags":[381,748,393,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-355419","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-bristol","8":"tag-bristol","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-england","11":"tag-great-britain","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115052516753514018","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355419"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355419\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}