An online room-letting platform claims rents have risen up to eight per cent in wake of the Tenant Fee Act.

ideal flatmate says it has analysed 29,000 room share listings on its site added between April and June and found that in the second quarter of this year, the average cost of renting a room in the UK has increased by eight per cent to £577 per month.

London remains the most expensive at £783, up five per cent since the previous quarter. Cambridge and Oxford are also amongst some of the most expensive at £613 and £588 respectively, both seeing some of the largest quarter to quarter increases at eight to nine per cent. 

Liverpool has also seen prices increase eight per cent on the previous quarter, although at £473 per month, it remains far more affordable.

There has also been notable growth across Sheffield, Newcastle, Leicester, Birmingham and Nottingham since Q1.

However, both Bournemouth and Portsmouth have seen double-digit decline, with smaller falls also seen in Glasgow, Southampton, Leeds, Bristol and Plymouth.

“A large degree of rental price growth in the second quarter of this year is almost certainly attributed to the introduction of the tenant fee ban. While a positive step towards safeguarding tenants, its implementation has seen many landlords and letting agents opt to increase rents from June onwards which seems to have had a notable impact on rental costs in a short period of time” claims the platform’s co-founder, Tom Gatzen.

“The highest demand for room rentals tends to come at the start of the year or the start of the summer and traditionally this brings a lull in demand during the second quarter of the year. As a result, we often see prices drop along with demand and this is generally most prominent in coastal and university towns” he adds.