Flat broke: What it's really like for young London renters

Can you truly claim to be a Londoner if you didn’t spend your early adulthood in the capital living in grotty digs with an evolving cast of oddballs and dishwashing shirkers? Immortalised in everything from The Young Ones to This Life, Spaced, Peep Show and Crashing, it’s a lifestyle approved by none other than Margot Robbie, who often speaks of her time in a Clapham house share as one of the happiest in her life. At best this scenario fixed you up with a crowd of like-minded friends for life. At worst, you would line up a series of hilarious anecdotes to make you seem edgy during a staid middle age.

Margot Robbie once shared a house in Clapham

Getty

But is any of this horror and hilarity even an option for today’s graduates and first-jobbers, even those lucky ones with a wage? There has always been a financial motivation for living in “bohemian” squalor, but rents have risen steadily in a way that starter salaries have not, putting even the crummiest rooms out of bounds for some.

The average cost of renting a room in inner London currently stands at £979 per month, according to flatshare site SpareRoom. To be classed as “affordable”, housing should take up no more than 30 per cent of your take-home pay, but as many as 40 per cent of London renters now shell out more than half of their incomes on rent.

And that’s if they can even find a room. Rental supply has dwindled in the capital thanks to increased taxes on landlords and now the Renters’ Rights Act, which came into force earlier this year and precipitated a five per cent drop in flat share supply. “Graduates entering the post-summer rent rush will find competition in London is high,” says Matt Hutchinson, communications director of SpareRoom. “Rental supply in the capital is now in decline and, because of the high cost of living, graduates are battling for rooms in flatshares with a growing number of young and middle-aged workers who’ve been priced out of renting solo or buying.”

The flatmates in Channel 4 show Fresh Meat

Channel 4/Ray Burmiston

Unsurprisingly, the number of young renters in London is falling. Hamptons research shows that renters aged under 25 make up just 12 per cent of tenants in London, down from a peak of one in five in 2011/12. In the past year alone the number of renters aged 16-24 fell by 11 per cent as more young people opt to stay living at home for longer.

While there are clear financial incentives to do this, the arrangement has its downsides. “When you live at home, you pay with other things than money,” says 25-year-old Gargi, who moved from Copenhagen to London a year ago. “There’s a growth element in moving out.”

Gargi, who works in consulting, took a pay cut to move to a more senior role in London. Whereas in Copenhagen she was paying 23 per cent of her income to rent a room in a shared home, now she pays closer to 37 per cent of her salary for the Hammersmith home she shares with three other similar-aged women.

The cast of Crashing

Channel 4

But she says the pull factors of the London lifestyle outweighed the financial negatives. “I really wanted to move to London for everything the city has to offer. I needed to expand my horizons. I’m connecting with new kinds of people and the work I do is on a wider, more global scale.

“There’s always something to do, going out to eat, attending different events. I just went to The Weeknd concert and I had a friend who flew in from Copenhagen, whereas I just took the Metropolitan line, which is super cool because I used to fly in for those concerts before.” As Gargi acknowledges, though, the cost of renting combined with relatively low salaries does make it hard to enjoy everything the city has to offer.

As Hamptons data found, in 2026 the average 22 to 29-year-old Londoner earns around £39,500 — although this can vary wildly depending on which sector they are employed in. This salary would allow them to spend approximately £1,086 per month on rent. On this basis, 38 per cent of newly let two-bedroom homes in London would be affordable to a couple, compared with 41 per cent in 2016, and down from a high of 49 per cent in 2018.

The estate agents in sitcom Stath Lets Flats

Stath Lets Flats

Encouragingly, perhaps, the data did pinpoint 13 London boroughs where at least half of newly let two-bedroom homes would be affordable to two average young earners. If budget is key look to Sutton, Barking and Dagenham, Havering, Bromley, Croydon, Enfield, Redbridge, Waltham Forest, Lewisham, Hounslow, Barnet, Newham and Kingston upon Thames.

Meanwhile, SpareRoom suggests renters who want to focus their search on the areas with the most homes to choose from should look east, to Docklands, Shoreditch and Bow, Stratford, West Ham and Bethnal Green.

“Right now, east London offers both the highest supply and the cheapest rents in the capital, so it could be worth starting your search there,” says Hutchinson. “The faster you can move on viewings and paperwork, the better your chances of securing a great place to live.”

The horror... the squalor... the joy! The Standard team remember their first flats in London

Earlsfield

Rent: £450

“We never used the downstairs loo again...”

It was a drizzly November evening. The events of which are seared into my memory, but mostly my nostrils. I hadn’t long moved into a three-bedroom flat opposite the famous Henry Prince Estate with two friends when they suddenly acquired boyfriends. I was therefore largely abandoned and quite miserable. For £450 a month I resided in a dark, dank basement room next to the main bathroom. The loo being underground meant that it required a noisy pump to remove the waste and usher it to wherever yucky stuff like that is taken and converted into our drinking water.

This particular night the pump failed — quite spectacularly. I also happened to be suffering from a stomach bug. Imagine my horror as I yanked the flush and the unpleasant deposit was violently churned up out of the bowl and onto the floor. Feeling poorly and sloshing around in sewage water, I had a little cry and then slid plastic bags onto my feet and spent the rest of the night cleaning it up. We never used the downstairs loo again. Suzannah Ramsdale

Bethnal Green

Rent: £349

“Once I pulled back the sofa to discover a pile of feathers — no bird body left, only feathers, which still disturbs me to this day.”

I’ve lived in some horrible places in London. The Camden flat behind the Belgo kitchen with the “vat of fat” outside the front door. The Chalk Farm council house with a mouse problem only rivalled by its cockroach and ant issues; once I pulled back the sofa in this zoo from hell to discover a pile of feathers — no bird body left, only feathers, which still disturbs me to this day.

But my very first house-share was on Paradise Row in Bethnal Green, and was quite marvellous. A five-storey townhouse with a bedroom on each floor, it was a lucky find providing a false idea of London living.

Such things can’t last long, and hastened to an end after we decided to burn our Christmas tree on the gas fire. A midnight visit from big scary firemen slowly helped us comprehend that smoke was pouring into our neighbour’s house. A sobering moment: we weren’t ready for such a fine property. To the hovels! Martin Robinson

Brixton

Rent: £360

“It was like residing in Notting Hill but with a 365-day carnival in full force.”

Stepping past the dodgy jerk chicken stall and through the unlit stock room of an old sports shop on Ferndale Road in Brixton to reach the door of the flat above should have been the red flag for us to look elsewhere. And as my friend Gary and I looked for new digs at the turn of the millennium, the letting agent’s embarrassed face became the second red flag.

Having lived in Hackney in the 1990s, even that didn’t prepare me for the constant hive of activity in the heart of Brixton. It was like residing in Notting Hill but with a 365-day carnival in full force.

The flat itself felt more like a rickety boat with its badly constructed wood-panelled walls, uneven floors and a toilet window (with no blinds) that faced on to the train track 15 feet away so we could wave at the passengers, while the smell of the jerk chicken and other local “herb” aromas filled our living space. But we loved it and it was cheap. Minutes from Brixton Academy and one of London’s best pubs (the Duke of Edinburgh, where I met my wife playing pool), with Jamaican patties on tap on most street corners (as well as retro dart boards in the store room) it soon became our haven. Ped Millichamp

Clapham

Rent: £530

“Googling ‘cheap rent for young woman in London’ remarkably led me to a normal house viewing instead of being murdered.”

I didn’t find my absolute steal of a first London flat, my aunt did. In the summer of 2019, seeking to help me out ahead of my move, she punched “cheap rent for young woman in London” into Google, which remarkably led me to a normal house viewing instead of being murdered.

Well, I say normal. The flat was located inside a disused military training building in between Clapham and Brixton, and it was the flatmates’ responsibility to live inside it to ward off potential squatters. Officially, we only had access to a 10th of the building, which comprised about seven bedrooms, two wonky bathrooms and a poky kitchen. Unofficially, we broke into the rest of the building regularly, hosting our house parties inside the haunted classrooms and full-scale basketball court (nary a ball was ever thrown, save for beer-pong).

Occasionally I would return home after a night out with a friend or conquest and tour them around the spooky, cavernous halls, Second World War-style showers and sleeping quarters, complete with various abandoned bunk beds. It was a real aphrodisiac.

Sadly it was bulldozed six months into me living there and is now a further education college. RIP. Maddy Mussen

Crystal Palace

Rent: £200

“My flatmate started asking that I keep my bedroom door open at night. Something to do with his cat, apparently. I moved out shortly after.”

Even all those years ago, £200 a month was cheap. Remarkably so. What did I have to do for the landlord in return? Look after his beloved cat, mostly, while he went to Finland or Pakistan for work, which he did quite a lot. He seemed like an OK bloke, if a little timid and quiet. Enjoyed computer games. Often went to Tooting for curry.

I was working in Shoreditch at the time, mostly for Business Insider and Vice, so wasn’t at the flat much. I’d leave fairly early — quite a long walk to Crystal Palace overground — and then go to the pub or one of the then en vogue Shoreditch cocktail bars after work. I probably wouldn’t have been able to go out much at all had my rent been a normal rate. Balance; pay-offs.

I quite liked living that far south, on the Croydon side — it was near much of my family and felt homely and comfortable. Sunday lunch at nonna’s didn’t require a schlep. And I was close to Selhurst Park, home to the mighty Crystal Palace, and Tasty Jerk, which serves one hell of a Jamaican barbecue.

But then my flatmate started asking that I keep my bedroom door open at night. Something to do with his cat, apparently. I moved out shortly after. Josh Barrie

Warwick Avenue

Rent: £0

“No rug, duvet or blanket was safe from the dog. Then there was the freezer, which was inexplicably full of monkey poo…”

I thought I’d struck gold when a friend offered me her parents’ beautiful Maida Vale townhouse, instead of an expensive flatshare I couldn’t afford, while doing work experience. Her parents were former hippies who had squatted there in the 1960s and later bought the house for next to nothing under squatters’ rights. By the time I stayed there, it was worth millions, and they liked to share their good fortune.

In many ways, it was ideal. I only paid the bills, it was central, and the house was incredible. The catch was the dog: a sweet but completely untrained creature who was blind, deaf, and apparently beyond the reach of discipline. At least once a day — usually when I was bleary-eyed and heading for the shower — I’d step in a fresh pile of poo. No rug, duvet or blanket was safe.

The family’s generosity extended well beyond me. The house seemed to operate as an unofficial care-in-the-community scheme. Window cleaners would appear unannounced, splash some dirty water around, and ask for money. Cleaners would sit at the kitchen table smoking for an hour. A gardener once drank several of my beers before asking for money.

Then there was the freezer, which was inexplicably full of monkey poo. My friend’s mother spent much of her time away studying monkeys and, improbably, writing lesbian erotica.

I remain grateful for the place. Still, I was surprisingly pleased when it was time to leave and move into a lodging with no kitchen, no sitting room and a grieving widow. But that’s another story. Harriet Addison

Barons Court

Rent: £400

“There wasn’t any central heating and no shower. I lasted six weeks.”

I moved into my bargain Barons Court flat sometime in the mid 2010s full of postgraduate hope. A friend of a friend had discovered an all-girls’ flatshare inside a handsome Victorian red brick, and a room had just come up. The labyrinthine top-floor flat was owned by a woman we only ever knew as “Granny”. She no longer lived in London but was keen to rent out the rooms in her eccentric flat to give young girls moving to London a chance. It was only £400 a month, cash, and all we had to deal with were several rooms full of dusty portraits and antique curiosities. That, and the fact that there wasn’t any central heating and no shower — just one bath shared between four.

I went to view the flat one evening just before Christmas, and my festive beer jacket and youthful naivety assured me that these were minor issues. The hardy Barons Court girls didn’t need fancy mod cons. We would hide in The Curtains Up pub for warmth, flirt with boys from nearby Queen’s Club Gardens, or use some of the rent money we’d be saving on weekly blow-dries in lieu of showers. And we could be on the Piccadilly line to our unpaid internships in minutes.

Granny’s was a rare gem; it would be like a charming modern dorm for upstart west London millennials trying to make it in the big city. Reader: I lasted six weeks. But I did have great hair for the duration. Jessica Burrell

Stockwell

Rent: £550 each

“Shambling to the shop for Alka-Seltzer felt especially shameful when you passed impeccably dressed churchgoers”

What’s worse than hangover guilt? Hangover guilt soundtracked by the fervent, soaring voices of a gospel congregation, harmonising 10 feet below your pounding head. The first London flat I rented with my now-husband was in the part of Stockwell estate agents like to call the “Clapham North Triangle”, opposite the Landor (excellent beer), down the road from a Cuban bar (excellent mojitos) and above a gospel church (excellent singing). The problem with this combination was that the hymns happened on a Sunday morning, just as we emerged from a mojito- or beer-induced fug. Shambling to the shop for Alka-Seltzer/Berocca/salt and vinegar crisps felt especially shameful when you passed impeccably dressed churchgoers after the service; nothing like encountering a lady in a powder blue hat, skirt suit and matching handbag while you wipe last night’s eyeliner off your face to make you ponder your life choices.

The flat’s other unique selling point was the way you reached it — along a badly lit alleyway and up a rickety metal staircase that finally cracked on the day we moved out. Still, we were lucky: our landlord was a friend who charged us £1,100 a month and was sympathetic to our litany of domestic disasters, which culminated in the shower screen falling off the wall one day when my school friend, over from Paris, was mid hair-wash. The safety glass smashed into a thousand pieces, one of which ended up embedded in her calf. Better a leg than an eye; maybe all that singing had granted us some grace. Fiona Roberts-Moore