Tenants in England spending ‘unaffordable’ 36% of income on rent, shows survey

When wages rise rents go up. If goods get cheaper rent goes up. If taxes are cut rents go up. When businesses’ profits go up their rent goes up. Our economy is set up to benefit landowners while those who don’t own land are screwed at every turn.

Wages are kept low and prices are kept high because any improvement in the economy is immediately appropriated by the landowning class. Only ten percent of bank lending is in productive assets, most of the rest is in land.

We need a land value tax to redress the balance of power between landowners and the rest of the country. No-one created the land yet over half of the county is owned by less than 1% of the population. The value of land is created by the entire national community and the rent extracted should belong to the public, not the oligarchs, aristocrats and banks

A third of your income on rent seems like a sensible amount.
That’s the ratio I was always taught was reasonable.

Amateurs, in Poland it’s one full income for rent, even more sometimes

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that’s considered relatively affordable and is nowhere near as bad as it can, or will get.

> The percentage of income spent on rent varies significantly by country and even within regions of a country. Generally, a rent-to-income ratio between 25% and 40% is considered relatively affordable

If you want to look at actual unaffordable rents then look at somewhere like HK where it’s 65% of income. Hell look at London in isolation and you’re likely going to break that 40%.

A third wow this is very reasonable if that was true, if I was not married mine would be way more then just a third.

This article gets hauled out every few months.

You can pretty much stop reading the article when it suggests residents of Kensington and Chelsea spend 73.4% of their gross median income on rent.

Most people don’t work in the same borough they live in so comparing earning and rents like that is meaningless.

In places like London most properties are have couples or friends so that cost is split and most single people live in shared houses or HMOs. There are so very high earning individuals who are earning enough to have their own place.

I earn just under £36k, and I spend 26% of my monthly income on rent. Plus another £140 on council tax, which boots it to 33%. This doesn’t include electricity, that’d be probably another £200/month depending on the time of year. Which goes up to almost 42%.

So just to keep a roof over my head, water running, pay taxes to the council, and keep the lights on, that’s almost half of my pay a month. Then we have food, bills, internet, etc.

And £36k is a good amount of money to make! I’m not complaining about that. But the cost of everything else.

I couldn’t survive if I was still at the same job I was at less than 5 years ago, when I was under £20k.

As a teenager back in the 80s.

Flat hunting was a breeze. You just looked through the local newspaper or at the local newsagents window for accommodation. Ring the number, go see the flat, pay the deposit, sign some sort of contract (sometimes there wasn’t one) and move in.

Times have changed.

really can’t figure out why that is. our estate agents just asked if we wanted to counter-offer a £400 pm rent increase. weird. real mystery.

In 2019 I was paying £575 and my monthly wage was £1200. 47.9% of my income.

Part of the problem is that for decades the UK mostly built 3-4 bedroom houses. A sizeable number of those are now split into HMOs, so theres people spending £500+ for a room. We are never going to fix the housing crisis as long as the country just builds houses. Every single new housing development is nothing but houses, but they’re now smaller than they use to be built. We really need to be building blocks of flats.

36% – *forgive me* – doesn’t seem that crazy. I would have thought it would at least be 50% in the current climate with landlords gouging people.

Almost 2/5 of your salary/wage seems okay, it actually seems rather reasonable. The issue I’ve got is that this statistics doesn’t actually seem to reflect reality given every place I’ve looked at wants at least half my wages each month.

Then again, I live in Greater London, so just to clarify, not central but the outer boroughs and 36% is NOT the case here. Even in the working class areas (to which I’m from), rent is usually around £1300 minimum.