More tenants 'bunking up' to make money go further

High London rents are forcing graduates to “bunk up” and share with more people.

Recent graduates are earning less than their counterparts did before the financial crisis, while also facing steeper rents.

Yet many still feel they have to start their careers in the capital.

According to the Higher Education Statistics Agency, 25% of employed graduates who left university in 2009 were working in London three years later.


A Financial Times analysis of median rents data from Hometrack shows that a new graduate on an average starting salary of £22,400 is spending more than a third of their gross income on rent – a standard definition of unaffordability – for a room in a two-bedroom property in almost three-quarters of inner London postcodes.

More than half those postcodes remain unaffordable on this definition to those renting a room in a shared four-bedroom house. One-bedroom flats are unaffordable for new graduates in every single part of inner and outer London, according to the analysis.


Richard Donnell from Hometrack said: “Young people have been affording rents in London by basically bunking up more.”

A report in the Sunday Times looked at the trend for sets of couples to take two-bedroom rental homes in London as a way of saving on rent.