"Across the country, rental supply in the flatshare market is still rising, but that doesn’t do justice to the picture in suburbia, which is groaning under the weight of demand from renters priced out of city living"
- Matt Hutchinson - SpareRoom
The UK’s rental supply crisis is currently most severe in towns such as Sale, Oldbury, and Bootle, where almost nine renters are now competing for every available room.
Data from flatshare site SpareRoom for Q2 2025 shows that city living is becoming increasingly unaffordable, pushing renters into suburban towns with limited supply and rents that have risen sharply since 2019.
Suburban Sale, near Manchester, leads the country in competition among flatsharers, with 8.9 people searching for each available room. Average room rent in Sale is £637 per month, compared with £689 per month in Manchester, representing a saving of £624 a year.
Oldbury, a West Midlands town 12 minutes by train from Birmingham, ranks second in demand. Average rent in Oldbury is £531 per month, £984 less per year than Birmingham’s £631 per month.
Bootle, in Merseyside, is the cheapest place to rent in the UK at £456 per month and sees 8.6 people searching per room available.
High demand is also being driven by those priced out of inner London, pushing competition in towns such as Twickenham and Aldershot in Surrey, where around eight people search for every room available.
Only two cities, Salford and Inverness, appear among the areas with the highest renter demand, highlighting the growing unaffordability of urban living. Demand has more than doubled since 2019 in towns including Oldbury, Aldershot, Paisley, Sutton Coldfield, and Solihull.
However, rising rents may soon make these towns unaffordable as well. Since 2019, rent increases in the highest-demand towns have exceeded the UK average of 30%, with Cannock up 69%, St. Helens 65%, and Salford 60%, more than double the national average.
Across the UK, rental supply is growing, largely through ads from landlords, agents, and lodger landlords, particularly outside Greater London. However, the introduction of the Renters’ Rights Bill, entering its final stage in the House of Lords on 8 September, could influence landlord behaviour.
Matt Hutchinson, director of SpareRoom, comments, "Across the country, rental supply in the flatshare market is still rising, but that doesn’t do justice to the picture in suburbia, which is groaning under the weight of demand from renters priced out of city living," he said. "When renters reach their ceiling of affordability, there isn’t really a choice; they have to move somewhere cheaper."
"The worry is that demand in these areas is now so high it’s inevitable prices will rise, until average rents are similar to those in the city they originally moved out of. And then where do renters go?”
