Inner London room rents reach £1,002 a month, £1 below the record

A room in inner London cost an average of £1,002 a month to rent in the third quarter of 2026, according to new figures from flatshare site SpareRoom. That is £1 short of the £1,003 record set in the last quarter of 2023.

Fewer rooms are coming onto the market as well. SpareRoom’s data shows room availability was down 7.3% on a year earlier in inner London and down 1.7% in outer London.

Where room rents in London are rising fastest

The biggest increases were mostly south of the river. SpareRoom names Wandsworth, Richmond, Wimbledon, Greenwich and Dulwich among the areas where rents have climbed most.

For the lowest rents, tenants need to look east. Rooms across the east London postcode region average £958 a month, compared with £1,065 in south-west London. On those averages, a tenant living in the east rather than the south-west would pay £107 less each month, or £1,284 less over a year. Pockets of the east and north-east still have rooms advertised for less than £800 a month.

Renters’ Rights Act and higher asking rents

The Renters’ Rights Act has given tenants new protections, among them a ban on no-fault evictions and an end to rental bidding wars. Letting agency Hello Neighbour says some landlords have reacted to the bidding ban by advertising at a higher rent from the outset, so the extra money is built in before any viewing takes place.

Matt Hutchinson, director at SpareRoom, said that with average rents now in four figures, “to affordably rent an average room in a London flatshare people will need a gross salary of at least £40K”. He said that shuts out many people, among them some essential and service staff and young people at the start of their careers. He also warned that “choked supply increases rents” and said the shrinking stock of rentals, and the lack of any plan to fix it, should worry everyone.