The UK’s tightest rental markets aren’t necessarily the most affordable, says flatsharing service SpareRoom.
The highest demand for rooms is in the Merseyside town of Bootle – which has some of the cheapest rents in the country and where more than 12 people are now competing for every room available – and affluent Richmond. Richmond’s average room rent is over £1,000 per month, while Bootle’s is under £500.
The service says that a common thread among all the highest-demand locations is that none are cities and all sit within easy commuting distances of major cities, keeping job opportunities for flatsharers wide open.
The UK’s highest-demand areas around London are Richmond, Worcester Park, Teddington, Morden and Ware. Around Manchester it’s Sale, Wilmslow, Alderley Edge and Ashton-under-Lyne. And around Edinburgh it’s Musselburgh five miles east, and three villages clustered to the south west: Balerno, Currie, and Juniper Green.
West Bromwich, just nine minutes by train from Birmingham, has eight renters competing for every room available. And in Hamilton, less than half an hour from Glasgow, demand is at 8.1 enquirers per room.
The table shows the areas of the UK where demand in Q2 2026 was higher than eight enquirers per room available to rent, alongside average rents for the same period:
| Town/City | Demand (no. of enquirers per room available to rent | Average room rent Q2 2026 | |
| 1 | Bootle | 12.5 | £487 |
| 2 | Richmond-Upon-Thames | 11.7 | £1,006 |
| 3 | Musselburgh | 10.2 | £678 |
| 4 | Widnes | 8.7 | £536 |
| 5 | Worcester Park | 8.6 | £536 |
| 6 | Alderley Edge | 8.6 | £698 |
| 7 | Wilmslow | 8.6 | £698 |
| 8 | Teddington | 8.6 | £835* |
| 9 | Ashton-Under-Lyne | 8.5 | £609 |
| 10 | Deeside | 8.4 | £590 |
| 11 | Sale | 8.4 | £692 |
| 12 | Ware | 8.3 | £691 |
| 13 | Hamilton | 8.1 | £615 |
| 14 | Balerno | 8.0 | £710 |
| 15 | Currie | 8.0 | £710 |
| 16 | Juniper Green | 8.0 | £710 |
| 17 | Morden | 8.0 | £824 |
| 18 | West Bromwich | 8.0 | £533 |
*Indicates rent based on small sample size
Matt Hutchinson, director of SpareRoom, comments: “The prolonged high cost of living has split the flatshare market.
“You’ve got hard-up renters being priced out of shared living in major cities; you’ve got affluent young professionals who don’t see renting solo as a sensible stepping stone to buying so they’re sharing for longer to save faster; and you’ve got those flatsharing in their 40s, 50s and beyond who may prefer a suburban lifestyle.
“In suburbia there are typically more under-occupied homes that offer an underused but critical supply source for the rental market. Encourage more homeowners to rent out rooms to lodgers, and take advantage of tax relief on their earnings, and we could ease demand in the tightest spots while curbing rent rises all round.
“The new Chancellor is missing a trick if he doesn’t raise the Rent a Room Scheme threshold to reflect rents today in his upcoming Budget. It hasn’t changed in 10 years.”
