London’s Tenants increasingly turning to rooms in the hunt for Capital’s High Life

Tenants looking to rent in central London are seeing rents rising to an extent that most of the sought-after postcodes are now out of reach for even high earners.For this reason, increasing numbers of people are looking for rooms to rent, rather than whole flats or houses, in order to maintain a lifestyle in the capitals top hot-spots.

Unsurprisingly, west Mayfair tops the rental stakes, where every square foot of a modest two-bedroom flat earns nearly £80 a year in rent.

Renters must find £1,000 a week to have any hope of being a tenant in Mayfair’s Grosvenor Square hinterland, the W1K postcode.
 It shows that, for those without seven-figure salaries, homes in Zone 1 and much of Zone 2 are now out of bounds, and comes amid mounting calls for the Government to introduce rent caps in the capital.

The second most expensive option would be a property around Belgrave Square Garden in Belgravia — the SW1X postcode — priced at an average £63 per square foot per year, or almost £40,000 for a year’s rent on a typical two-bedroom flat.

Properties in south Mayfair, W1J, cost £58 per square foot, while in Belgravia south of Eaton Square, SW1W, they cost an average of £55 per square foot.

Russian and Japanese tenants are some of the most common newcomers to the city’s top rental properties.

Other places that make the top 20 are a mixture of traditional prime central London locations, including Kensington, Chelsea, Marylebone and Notting Hill, and some more newly fashionable development zones such as Fitzrovia, Soho, Bloomsbury, Paddington and Earl’s Court.

With this in mind, rooms in London are now an increasingly popular option for people longing for the capital’s high life, but without the unaffordable costs involved.