Rental crisis: Which are the six London postcodes where you can still find a room for under £800?

In 2023 there were still pockets of London where you could find a room to rent for under £700 a month.

That window has now closed, reports SpareRoom.

“The final few areas of the capital with average rents under £700 have gone,” Matt Hutchinson, Director at SpareRoom told Homes & Property. “There are now just six postcodes with average rents under £800, and most of those only just sneak under.”

Rents in London have broken all records in the past year, with an entire home now costing £2,633 a month on average to rent according to the latest data from Rightmove.

London renters are having to look at new areas to try and find a place they can afford to live, with a focus on East and South East London.

Manor Park, E12, is currently the cheapest place to find a room with the average monthly cost of £780. Now that it’s on the Elizabeth Line, E12 is drawing a new crowd of East Londoners priced out of places such as Walthamstow.

You could still find room for £791 in Penge, SE12, or for £793 in Upper Edmonton, N18.

Abbey Wood, SE2, has rooms to rent for £796. The area has seen a boom in tenants searching for rooms, reports SpareRoom, with searches for properties there up 210 per cent. The combination of cheap rooms and greater connectivity to Central London via the Elizabeth Line has made the SE2 postcode an increasingly attractive option.

Both Chingford, E4 and Norwood, SE25, have an average monthly rent of £798 for a room, squeaking in under the £800 ceiling.

And bang on the dot of £800 a month for a room is Forest Hill, SE23. It’s another newly popular postcode, with searches for homes in Forest Gate up 157 per cent on SpareRoom.

While it’s over the £800 mark, Crystal Palace is another place that’s racing up SpareRoom’s search rankings. Rooms are advertised here with an average price of £833 a month.

“Easy links into London Bridge and London Victoria are a big plus,” said Jake Woolford of Winkworth‘s Crystal Palace, who noted the majority of renters he sees in the area are aged between 25 and 40.

“There are lots of interesting shops, cafes and restaurants opening up. We are surrounded by parks, with summer festivals and great areas for walking and running — definitely a priority for a lot of renters over the last few years.”

While demand for rooms is down from the highs of the end of lockdown and the return to office working, rents have not come down with them.

“The massive bottleneck in supply and demand we saw at the end of 2022 has started to ease significantly but, so far, that hasn't led to average rents falling, as interest rates have gone up over the same period, wiping out any hope that rents would dip in line with demand,” said Hutchinson

Leaving London entirely is not necessarily a solution either, he added.

“Even those looking outside the capital in search of affordability are coming up against record high rents across the rest of the UK, so it may be some time before things start to settle in any meaningful way."