Rental prices in London

Across London the advertised rent averages £4,125 a month. A landlord letting one home is never letting the average, so the tables below break the market apart. The table below breaks the market down by bedroom count. The range column is the middle spread of what is currently advertised, so it shows the room you have to move on price rather than a single guess.

A two bedroom home is the size most landlords in London own, and it advertises at about £4,945 a month. The spread between £4,500 and £5,500 comes down to condition, parking and how close the home sits to a station, a hospital or a school.

London is not one rental market but dozens sitting side by side, and a single street can price differently from the next one along. Landlords here tend to hold one or two homes and want the letting handled without a diary of appointments.

Rent in London tracks the district more closely than the city, so the table below holds every district with enough homes advertised to average honestly. A district that is absent from the table is not a comment on the area, only on how many homes happen to be advertised there this week.

Even a district average is 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 makes when they are choosing between two listings.

The typical home advertised in London takes around 55 days to let, measured from the live listings. Read it 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 for less in the end.

There are roughly 288 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 the gap between tenancies.

Two weeks empty on a £4,125 home is a fortnight of income you do not get back. That is why Caso starts viewings before a tenancy ends wherever the current tenant agrees to it.

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 year of income turns on a guess. If the asking rents around you have moved and yours has not, the difference is quietly yours to carry every month. If they have held and you push, an empty month can cost more than the rise was worth. Caso reads the live comparables at every renewal, so the decision rests on this month's evidence.

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

Around 22% of homes in the area we sample are rented privately, alongside a share owned outright or on a mortgage and 51% rented from a social landlord. A large private rented share means a settled market with tenants, agents and tradespeople who all know how it works. It also means competition, which is where presentation and speed earn their keep.

London holds University College London, King's College London, Queen Mary University of London, and student and graduate demand shapes 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 already in good order.

Hospitals nearby, including Guy's and St Thomas', University College Hospital, The Royal London Hospital, employ at scale and their staff rent close by 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, and licensing sits with the council, so it is worth naming. Licensing for houses in multiple occupation is run borough by borough in London, and several boroughs also run additional or selective licensing, so we check the register for the borough your address sits in.

• Selective or HMO licence (council licence): the London boroughs licenses houses in multiple occupation, and 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.