Tenants in North London spending over half their salary on rent

[Mark Brown]

Tenants in this London borough are spending more than half their salary on rent
 by Natalie Cornish, House Beautiful (UK)  
Ref: http://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/homeandproperty/tenants-in-this-london-borough-are-spending-more-than-half-their-salary-on-rent/ar-BBQ6BSb?li=AA64tF

Tenants in the London borough of Camden are spending the highest proportion of their salary on rent, handing up to 61 per cent of their wage to their landlord every month..

Property website OnTheMarket.com found the average one-bedroom flat in Camden costs renters £1,944.28 a month. That's more than half the borough's average salary of £3,181.17. 

On the flip side, a one-bedroom apartment in Kingston upon Thames in south London costs renters just a quarter of the borough's average £4,352.78 salary. 

Tenants there spend £1,099.15 a month on rent, or 25 per cent of their wage. This drops to 17 per cent (£740.65) if they rent a two-bedroom property with a friend or partner.

OnTheMarket.com says the data does not show that Camden is the most expensive place to rent in London, just that tenants there are spending the largest percentage of their salary on rent out of all the London boroughs, in relation to the amount they earn.

The property site commissioned the research to find out if tenants in the capital could save money just by moving a few miles down the road. The discrepancy in cost between the different boroughs proved their hypothesis right.

The highest London salary is around £6,000 per month in Westminster. Renters there spend around 34 per cent of that on a property. While the lowest wage is in Barking and Dagenham in East London. Tenants there spend around 27 per cent of their £2,200 a month pay packet on rent.

Vikki Bennett, spokesperson for OnTheMarket.com, says: 'Costs within the London rental market have been driven-up in recent years as first-time buyers have battled to enter the housing market and second-steppers have struggled to trade-up while prices have risen.

'While it’s no surprise that cost remains the most likely primary factor when considering a new home, our analysis shows some stark variations across each borough of salary percentages being spent on rent.. So while London rents remain high across the board, considering all available options, such as moving to a nearby borough just a few miles away, can prove to have significant cost savings.

'Hampstead, within the borough of Camden, is likely to be of high significance as to why Camden comes out with the highest percentage, due to the exceptionally high rental prices within this particular area.'