"When pay rises aren’t in line with rent increases, keeping within the threshold of affordability – i.e., spending no more than 30% of your income on rent – quickly becomes impossible"
- Matt Hutchinson - SpareRoom
The average cost of renting a room in the UK has reached a record high of £753 per month, according to Q3 2025 data from flatshare platform SpareRoom.
Over the past five years, rents across the UK have risen 28%, with London seeing a sharper increase of 37%. London’s average room rent now stands at £995 per month, unchanged year on year but up from £980 per month in the previous quarter.
Regionally, Wales experienced the largest year-on-year rise, up 2.3% to £586 per month, while Scotland’s average room rent reached a record £723 per month. Outside of London, Edinburgh, St Albans, and Oxford are the most expensive cities for room rentals, while Bradford and Hull remain the cheapest.
Despite rising rents, SpareRoom reports that supply in the flatshare market in Q3 has increased 15% year on year, both across the UK and in London, although landlords remain cautious ahead of the anticipated Renters’ Rights Bill.
Rising costs are driving demand for rooms in commuter towns and suburban areas. Popular commuter hubs for London, including St Albans, Brentwood, Redhill, and Basingstoke, have seen particularly steep increases. Keighley, a half-hour train ride from Leeds, recorded a 10% year-on-year rise, bringing its average rent to £574 per month, nearly matching Leeds at £578 per month.
Other commuter areas such as Wolverhampton, Telford, and Warrington have also seen rent increases of 6% in Q3. Renting a room in Warrington now costs £589 per month, compared with £701 in nearby Manchester, just 22 minutes away by train. Birmingham’s average rent is £623 per month, while Wolverhampton and Telford remain more affordable at £534 and £560 per month, respectively.
In Scotland, the market town of Dumfries recorded the highest year-on-year rent increase at 12%, although the average room rent of £591 per month remains below the Scottish average of £723 per month. Areas with strong tourism also face higher rents due to limited supply, as more properties are let as short-term holiday accommodations.
Matt Hutchinson, director at SpareRoom, said, “There aren’t many people who can say their wages have risen 28% over the past five years. And when pay rises aren’t in line with rent increases, keeping within the threshold of affordability – i.e., spending no more than 30% of your income on rent – quickly becomes impossible."
"We need to address the huge problem of chronic undersupply in the rental market creatively. Encouraging more people to rent out unused rooms in their homes to lodgers would offer a desperately needed supply injection. There are around 28M empty bedrooms in England, Wales, and Scotland. Freeing up just 5% of them would provide affordable accommodation for 1.4M people.”
