Rental prices in Liverpool

The average home advertised to rent in Liverpool asks £960 a month. That single figure hides a wide spread, because a one bedroom flat near the waterfront and a four bedroom house in the southern suburbs are two different markets sharing a city name. The table below breaks the market down by bedroom count. The range column is the middle spread of what is currently advertised, so it tells you the room you have to move on price rather than a single guess.

A two bedroom home is the workhorse of the Liverpool rental market and the size most landlords buy. It advertises at about £1,210 a month, and the spread between £1,000 and £1,400 is almost entirely down to condition, parking and how close the home sits to a station or a hospital.

Liverpool is a city of about half a million people on the Mersey, with two universities in the centre, a large teaching hospital and one of the biggest student and young professional rental markets outside London. Letting demand is spread across the Georgian streets around the centre, the family suburbs to the south and the terraces to the north, so rents and yields differ sharply from one postcode district to the next.

We publish the twelve month movement only where enough homes are advertised to make the comparison fair. Where the comparison is thin we leave the sentence out rather than print a number you could not rely on.

A rent review is the one moment in a tenancy where a landlord can lose a year of income by guessing. If the asking rents around you have moved and yours has not, you are paying for that quietly every month. If they have not moved and you push, you risk a void that costs more than the rise. Caso reads the live comparables at every renewal so the decision is made on this month's evidence.

Our data supplier currently reads rental demand around the centre of Liverpool as landlord's market. Demand ratings move with the season, so the figure is worth reading beside the days to let below rather than on its own.

Liverpool is a city of postcode districts with their own characters and their own price levels. The districts below are the ones with enough homes advertised right now to give a fair average. A district missing from the table is not a comment on the area, only on how many homes happen to be on the market this week.

If your property sits in one of these districts, the district average is still a wide net. The report on your own address narrows it to the homes closest to yours at your bedroom count, which is the only comparison a tenant actually makes when they are choosing between two listings.

Homes advertised around the centre of Liverpool spend about 68 days on the market. Read that as a working benchmark: a well presented home with honest photographs and a sensible asking rent usually goes faster, and a tired home at an optimistic rent takes longer and often lets at less in the end.

There are roughly 194 homes advertised to rent in the area we sample around the centre. Supply is the other half of the story: the fewer homes competing with yours at your size, the more room you have on rent and the shorter your empty period.

Two weeks empty on a £960 home is the same money as a fortnight of your own time, gone. That is why Caso starts viewings before a tenancy ends wherever the current tenant agrees to it.

Around 65% of homes in the area we sample are rented privately, alongside a share owned outright or on a mortgage and 26% rented from a social landlord. A high private rented share means a settled market with agents, tenants and tradespeople who all know how it works. It also means competition, which is why presentation and speed matter.

Liverpool holds University of Liverpool, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool Hope University, and student and graduate demand shapes the market in the districts closest to them. Graduates who stay after their course are the group that turns a one year tenancy into a three year one, and they tend to choose homes that are already in good order.

The city's hospitals, including Royal Liverpool University Hospital, Aintree University Hospital, Liverpool Women's Hospital, are large employers whose staff rent nearby on long, quiet tenancies. If your property is within a short commute of one of them, say so in the listing.

The rules are the same across England, but the licensing sits with the council, so it is worth naming. In Liverpool that is Liverpool City Council.

• Council licence: Liverpool City Council licenses houses in multiple occupation, and selective licensing can apply in named streets. Caso checks the register against your exact address.
• Gas safety certificate (CP12): renewed every year where there is a gas appliance, and given to the tenant.
• Electrical safety report (EICR): renewed at least every five years, with any urgent work done within 28 days.
• Energy certificate (EPC): a rented home needs at least an E today, and the government plans to raise the minimum for new tenancies to C from 2028.
• Deposit protection scheme: the deposit goes into a government approved scheme within 30 days, with the prescribed information sent to the tenant.
• Right to Rent check: carried out on every adult before they move in, with the evidence kept.
• Smoke and carbon monoxide alarms: tested on the first day of the tenancy and recorded.

Where a property sits in a conservation area or an Article 4 area, planning permission can be needed for changes an owner would otherwise take for granted, including turning a family house into a shared house. Your free report flags the constraints our data holds for your exact address.