Latest figures have revealed that only one in three tenants can afford to rent a home with a spare room, the lowest level on record.
Extra space has become an unaffordable luxury for most renters in the UK as the average rental property now costs £947 a month.
If a spare room is extremely high up on the list of priorities when hunting for a new rental home, tenants have to be willing to add an additional £295 to their monthly rental costs budget, the latest Countrywide Lettings Index revealed.
In London these numbers shoot up even more. Whilst rental costs average at £2,475 a month, adding an extra room to the lost will bump a Londoner’s rental costs up by about £845.
Only 25% of London’s renters lash out and pay the extra bit for an additional room. And the story continues similarly across other cities in England’s South with Bristol at 24%, Oxford at 28% and Cambridge at 27%.
Moving further up north, an additional room will only set you back £188 extra a month. Which is the main reason why tenants in Manchester, Newcastle and Liverpool are twice as likely to get some extra luxury and an additional room.
Rents increasing by 13% since 2013 put additional pressure on tenants.
“Sacrificing extra bedrooms and sharing has helped renters to absorb higher prices,” says Johnny Morris, Director of Research at Countrywide.
But those living in the South are close to a point where there’s not much more room to squeeze, meaning rental growth is likely to be capped by tenants incomes for some time.”
