Brits are now having to splash more than half of their pay cheques just on rent as wages fail to keep up with soaring prices.
On average, it costs £1,246 a month to rent a home in the UK in the year to March 2024, which is a 9.1 per cent increase compared to the same time period last year. In fact, it's more than a third higher to rent today than it was nearly a decade ago with a whopping 34.8 per cent rise since March 2015, when the average rental fee was just £924 a month.
You can see how rent affordability has changed over time in your region as well as in other parts of the country by using our interactive map:
While rent continues to creep up, the average full-time employee earned an estimated £27,825 last year after tax and national insurance were deducted. While that's up by 23.1 per cent from 2014, when the average full-time take-home pay was £22,597, that’s almost 12 percentage points less than rents have increased by in the same time period.
This means that renting the average home in this country now costs over half of the typical take-home pay for a full-time working Brit (53.7 per cent), up from 49.1 per cent back in 2015.
These figures come from exclusive analysis of official earnings and rent price data by the Reach Data Unit. Take-home pay has been calculated by deducting income tax and national insurance from the median salary in each local authority, for each year from 2014 to 2023.
Overall, Bristol has seen the biggest increase of rent unaffordability in the country with the cost of renting in the city increasing at more than twice the rate of full-time salaries. It cost £1,748 a month to rent the average home in Bristol in the 12 months to March 2024. That’s 64.6 percent more than in March 2015.
Take-home pay, meanwhile, has increased by only 28.2 per cent to an average of £28,288. It means that renting the average home costs 74.2 per cent of the typical take-home wage, making Bristol one of the least affordable places to rent in the country.
But predictably, the most unaffordable places to rent are all in London. The average cost of renting a home in Westminster works out as a eye-watering 91.6 per cent of the average take-home pay. Average rents in Camden account for 85.9 per cent of the average take-home pay. In Hammersmith and Fulham the ratio is 85.3 per cent, in Islington it’s 84.2 per cent, and in Hackney it’s 82.0 per cent%.
