The average single person in the UK who isn’t a homeowner now spends more than a third of their income on rent.

According to a new rental market report by Zoopla, the average rent in the UK is now £995, which is £88 higher than at the beginning of the pandemic. What’s more, rents are currently rising at the fastest rate since 2008.

This means that 37% of the average single person’s salary now goes on rent, though this proportion is even higher in London: a staggering 52%.

In London, rents have increased by 15.7% year-on-year, fuelled by sky-high demand for rooms after the pandemic. At the other end of the spectrum, rent increases are least pronounced in Scotland (where they’re up 6% year-on-year) and the North East of England (up 6.9%).

Gráinne Gilmore of Zoopla said that “rental growth is being driven by high rental demand and limited supply”, adding that this trend is “more pronounced in city centres”. 

Gilmore predicted that rents should stop rising as quickly in the coming months, partly because of “affordability considerations” caused by the cost of living crisis.

However, she added: “Rents are likely to continue rising for longer in areas which have the most constrained stock levels – currently London, Scotland and the South West.”

Zoopla’s report follows recent data from another property website, SpareRoom, which highlighted the fact that the gender rent gap is getting wider.

According to SpareRoom’s data, 19.5% of women spend over 50% of their take-home salary on rent, compared to only 14.4% of their male counterparts. Added to that, over 85% of women spend more than 30% of their income on rent, a whole 10% more than men.

In 2019, Refinery29 asked hundreds of women how much of their salary goes on rent. Not unexpectedly, the results revealed some huge differences, with some women paying around 11% of their salaries on rent, and others forking out more than 50%.

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