News

Students now compete with high-earning professionals for rooms to rent in London

With 10 people seeking every bedroom available to rent in London, UK, students are now in direct competition with high-earning professionals in finding a place to sleep, new research suggests.

As home prices soar amid an acute housing shortage in London, by 2025, over 50% of 20-39 years olds will be privately renting.

That spells bad news for students because it puts them in direct competition with professionals, who now account 72% of renters, according to research by homeshare website, EasyRoommate.

30% of landlords wouldn’t want to rent their bedroom to a student, with more than a half of the negative responses stating that the reason is that students are messy

The research found that the average rent for a double bedroom in London is £692 per calendar month ($1,080).

Professionals and retirees are, on average, willing to pay £636 and £616 respectively, while students can only afford to pay £580.

And competition from professionals is intensifying fast. From the second quarter of 2014 to the same period this year, the number of professionals renting a room grew by 5.4% to the present rate 72% of the renting population, EasyRoommate found.

"In contrast to the UK, we see that in France and Spain there is far less competition from professionals: they account for around 46% while students account for 53%," the firm said, adding that London room supply is so scarce that there are now 10 seekers to every single bedroom available.

To make matters worse, the research found that 30% of landlords wouldn’t want to rent their bedroom to a student, with more than a half of the negative responses stating that the reason is that students are messy.

EasyRoommate says the research was undertaken through analysis of its own website-driven datasets looking at flatsharing trends between 2012 and 2015, and included a consumer poll with 418 EasyRoommate flatsharers and 677 EasyRoommate landlords.

Story for GCR? Get in touch via email: [email protected]

Comments

  1. The town planning authorities and the universities and suitably accomplished developers need to urgently collaborate to build such highly necessary student accommodation easily accessible to their respective
    lecture and study venues – especially where accommodation rentals have become unaffordable to so many of them!

Comments are closed.

Latest articles in News