Renters flood suburbs in big city centre exodus
Suburban areas of cities and small towns are seeing an influx of tenants desperately looking for affordable rooms to rent, new analysis shows.
Renters are flooding suburbs and small towns to find affordable homes after being priced out of city centres, new analysis confirms.
Research by flatshare search specialist SpareRoom shows that the most intense searches by tenants are now outside of the traditional central areas.
Tale of two cities
The stark shift in attention is highlighted by the presence of only two cities – Salford and Inverness – on the list of areas where more than five renters are searching per room available.
The trend away from city centres is putting pressure on towns with limited rental supply, where rent rises since 2019 have been well above average.
And the rental supply crisis is at its worst in Sale, Oldbury and Bootle, where almost nine people are now searching for every room available to rent, the Q2 statistics reveal.
Fiercest
Sale, close to Manchester, is seeing the fiercest competition among flatsharers in the whole of the UK, with 8.9 people searching for every room available.
The average room rent here is £637 per month, compared to £689 in Manchester itself, a saving of £624 a year.
Bootle, near Liverpool, is the cheapest place to rent in the UK at £456 per month, and 8.6 people are searching per room available.
Those priced out of inner London are driving demand in Twickenham and Aldershot in Surrey where demand is around eight people searching per room available.
Groaning
Matt Hutchinson, Director at SpareRoom, says suburban areas are “groaning under the weight of demand from renters priced out of city living”.
“When renters reach their ceiling of affordability, there isn’t really a choice, they have to move somewhere cheaper,” he says.
“The worry is that demand in these areas is now so high it’s inevitable prices will rise, until average rents are similar to those in the city they originally moved out of.”
