Yahoo Finance How much space will £100 a month rent get you in London?
What does £100 a month in rent get you? About as much space as a double bed if you’re looking in London.
Research shows that in London, one-bed properties cost £100 per month for 3.9 square metres – about the same size as a garden shed.
Meanwhile, for the same outlay, in Northumberland, renters would get 16 square metres.
MORE: House price growth dips as it is pulled down by sluggish London market
According to property advice portal OpenRent:
Bradford is the city where £100 rents the biggest floor area in a two-bed home – 14.83 sq m
Outside London, Oxford (5.03 sq m per £100 a month) and Bristol (6.98 sq m per £100 a month) were the most expensive places in the sample
The average two-bed home in rural Lincolnshire is £200 a month, compared with £1,691 a month in London
“The key message from the data is that despite cities like Oxford, Bristol and London being hugely expensive in terms of monthly rents, the properties afforded by those high rents are by no means luxury,” said a spokesperson for OpenRent.
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“Having enough room in our homes is very important to our wellbeing, but renters in the south of England are paying a huge premium.
“Simply looking for smaller properties isn’t a solution for renters in the South, either; those properties simply don’t exist.”
All Properties in Sample | |||
City | Average Floor Area (m) | Average Rental Amount (£ per Calendar Month) | Floor Area per £100 |
Northumberland (Rural) | 78.09 | 484.42 | 16.12 |
Shropshire & Mid Wales (Rural) | 96.19 | 611.78 | 15.72 |
Bradford | 75.82 | 483.33 | 15.69 |
Lincolnshire (Rural) | 89.37 | 576.22 | 15.51 |
Newcastle | 91.28 | 601.89 | 15.16 |
Sunderland | 78.54 | 525.35 | 14.95 |
All Rural | 86.18 | 653.47 | 13.19 |
Liverpool | 78.34 | 624.71 | 12.54 |
Norfolk (Rural) | 91.94 | 748.42 | 12.28 |
Devon (Rural) | 83.34 | 719.22 | 11.59 |
Leicester | 80.30 | 709.73 | 11.31 |
Sheffield | 75.06 | 676.35 | 11.10 |
Leeds | 72.87 | 687.07 | 10.61 |
Nottingham | 73.19 | 690.71 | 10.60 |
Birmingham | 71.25 | 695.73 | 10.24 |
Manchester | 74.23 | 728.32 | 10.19 |
Cardiff | 73.97 | 796.66 | 9.28 |
Portsmouth | 75.31 | 941.11 | 8.00 |
Southampton | 72.97 | 954.08 | 7.65 |
Bristol | 72.29 | 1020.39 | 7.08 |
Oxford | 77.32 | 1407.77 | 5.49 |
London | 68.50 | 1659.81 | 4.13 |
Central London | 67.51 | 1752.56 | 3.85 |
As a result of the squeeze on finances and the high price of renting – let alone trying to save to get on to the property ladder – singletons and couples were having to make sacrifices and tough choices about where they live and with whom.
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OpenRent said young couples are pressured to move in together sooner to make rent cheaper and people who would previously have lived alone are now forced into flat shares.
The spokesperson added: “Young families who can’t afford to buy are in a tough position, since to find the space they need for their growing families, they are forced to move cities.
“An exodus of young families to the peripheries of our urban areas will have big effects on what life is like in the UK’s cities.”
For comparison, the average UK one-bedroom home is 46 sq m (495 sq ft), according to Riba.
Chancellor Philip Hammond put affordable housing at the centre of his recent Budget, pledging to build 300,000 homes a year and also slashing stamp duty for properties under under £300,000 for first-time buyers, to help a million people get on the housing ladder.
