Flatshare site SpareRoom surveyed 5,607 UK renters in July 2026, including 2,126 in London, to gauge attitudes towards rent controls and the impact of high rents on their lives. The findings point to a rental market where affordability is stretched thin and support for intervention is running high.
Two thirds (67%) of UK renters said their rent had increased in the past 12 months, with 42% seeing rises within their current tenancy and 25% facing higher rent when they moved into a new property.
The figure was higher still in London, where 70% of renters had seen rent increase, made up of 44% within their current rental and 27% on moving. Across the UK as a whole, 32% of renters said they'd been forced to move in the past year because their rent had become unaffordable, rising to 35% among London renters.
Affordability pressures show up clearly in how much of their income renters are handing over each month. Just 15.3% of UK renters spend less than 30% of their take-home pay on rent, while nearly four in 10 (37.8%) spend over half their after-tax income on housing costs alone:
- 23.2% of UK renters spend between 30% and 39% of their take-home pay on rent, compared with 22.2% of London renters.
- 23.7% spend between 40% and 49%, versus 24.7% in London.
- 18.1% spend between 50% and 59%, against 18.9% in London.
- 9% spend 70% or more of their income on rent, almost matched by London's 9.2%.
Affordability is worse in the capital overall, with 86.8% of London renters spending 30% or more of their take-home pay on rent, compared with 83.3% of renters elsewhere in the UK.
The knock-on effects extend well beyond people's bank balances. 57% of renters said rising rents had affected their mental wellbeing, while 54% said the quality of the housing they live in has been shaped by what they can afford.
Rising rents have also delayed major life decisions, with 24% saying the cost has affected their ability to date, 22% saying it has delayed moving in with a partner, and 23% saying it has pushed back plans to have children.
On the financial side, 84% said their ability to save money had been affected, and 28% said rent had influenced their ability to change jobs. Only 7% of renters said rising rents had not affected their lives in any way.
Given the scale of the squeeze, it's perhaps unsurprising that rent controls have strong backing among tenants. 85% of renters said they strongly or somewhat supported rent controls or caps, with 77.6% strongly in favour and a further 7% somewhat supportive. Just 8.2% were opposed, split between 5.7% strongly against and 2.5% somewhat against.
Among the minority who opposed rent controls, the most common objection was that caps fail to tackle the underlying shortage of housing, cited by 70.4% of opponents. 60.4% pointed to the risk of landlords leaving the market and reducing supply further, while 52.2% said controls would discourage landlords from maintaining their properties.
Just under half (49.1%) felt caps would reduce incentives to build new rental homes, and 48% pointed to other countries where similar policies had failed to keep rents affordable.
Support was even stronger for the idea of temporary rent freezes during emergencies, which 75.7% of renters strongly supported and a further 11.1% somewhat supported. Only 6.1% were opposed.
Matt Hutchinson, director at flatshare site SpareRoom, said the pressure on renters extends beyond affordability alone. "Rents just hit record highs in six of the UK's nine regions, and supply across the country has taken a battering as the Renters' Rights Act came into effect," he said.
"Although tenants are now better protected in the market, they are certainly not better off. Renters have been struggling with housing costs since the pandemic forced up prices steeply, and now supply is being squeezed; rents will only go up again unless action is taken."
He added that while rent controls are popular, they may not fix the market's deeper problems. "It's easy to see why the majority of renters support rent controls; they'll bring some much-needed relief from rent rises," he said.
"But they won't solve the underlying supply issue. The real question is whether Andy Burnham's Labour government will manage to do what successive governments have failed to for decades and meaningfully increase the UK's supply of affordable homes."
