I think we can all agree where not to move. Analysis last month by property firm CBRE claimed London residential rents were the highest in the world. Another in April by property investors Landbay reported that renting Londoners spend (wow!) 89% of take-home income on rent; though a survey by the BBC and Hometrack found it to be more like 41% of income.
If you can’t avoid the capital, go east. Money Supermarket proposed Bexley and Barking & Dagenham as the cheapest boroughs, with Havering just a notch up. One positive negative: high as they are, London rents are rising more slowly. Search the London Rents Map (london.gov.uk) for the latest.
Rightmove found the cheapest spots in its regions were Barnsley, Kilmarnock, Burnley, South Shields, Stoke-on-Trent and Swansea. That BBC/Hometrack survey discovered the percentage of wages spent on renting since 2007 had actually decreased across England and Wales as a whole, from 31.1% to 29.4%.
In terms of the ratio between average wages and rent prices – affordability – the best region was the north-east, where 23.6% of wages are spent on rent. The best spot in which to rent, by some stretch, is Na h-Eileanan an Iar (the Western Isles), followed by West Lothian, Blaenau Gwent, then east Northamptonshire.
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