Room rents in inner London just hit £1,002: what it means for sharers in Clapham

Spend ten minutes on the Common on a Saturday and you'll spot them: two or three mates, coffees in hand, walking back from a viewing they've just queued for. Flatshares are the engine room of Clapham. They always have been. And this week the numbers caught up with what I've been seeing on the ground all autumn.

Room rents in inner London have reached an average of £1,002 a month. That's up 2.3% on the quarter and 1.1% on a year ago, and it's within a pound of the all-time record of £1,003 set at the end of 2023 (figures reported this week via SpareRoom). Nationally, the average UK room now costs £769 a month, itself a fresh record, up 1% on the year. So renting a single room in a shared flat down here now costs more than renting a whole one-bed does in large parts of the country.

It isn't a blip either. Surveyors expect more of the same: a net 37% of them told RICS they think rents will keep rising over the next three months. Demand is up, supply is down, and nothing in the pipeline suggests that flips soon.

For a young professional moving to Clapham, Balham or Stockwell, the sum is sobering. A £1,002 room is roughly £12,000 a year before a single bill, before council tax, before the Northern line. Share a three-bed off Abbeville Road or near Clapham Common and the landlord is collecting around £3,000 a month for the flat. That's why so many sharers I speak to are staying put rather than moving in the autumn. The devil you know is cheaper than the devil advertised on the portal.

For landlords, it looks like a win, and in cash terms it is. But I'd read it with a cool head. Rents at or near record highs are not a sign of a healthy market. They're a sign of a market that has run out of homes. Tenant demand keeps climbing while rental stock keeps shrinking, and squeezing more out of a smaller pool is not a strategy, it's a symptom. When affordability stretches this far, you get more arrears, more churn and more tenants who simply can't take the next increase.

Here's my take. If you're a sharer in SW London, the smart move right now is to lock in. A good flat with decent flatmates at a fair rent is worth holding through the winter rather than rolling the dice in a market where every viewing has a queue behind you. Talk to your landlord about a longer term before your renewal lands, because stability cuts both ways and most will take a reliable tenant over a void. And if you're a landlord sitting on a flat that works, resist the temptation to chase the headline number to the last pound. The best tenants are the ones who stay, and in this market keeping a good one is worth more than a £50 bump that pushes them out the door.

Are you sharing in Clapham and feeling the squeeze, or a landlord weighing up a renewal this winter? I'd genuinely like to hear how it's playing out on your street. Drop me a line at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.

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The £65 landlord register is here - what every Clapham landlord needs to do now

I had a call this week from a landlord who owns one flat near Clapham Common - a flat she used to live in, now let to a lovely couple. She isn't a property mogul. She's an accidental landlord with a single tenancy and a full-time job. And she wanted to know if "this new register thing" applied to her. It does. So if that sounds like you, read on.

The government has now launched the private rental registration service and confirmed the timetable for the mandatory database of landlords and rented properties in England. The headline figure is a £65 annual fee - per property, not per landlord - to register. Alongside it, HMRC is being lined up to handle rent-increase disputes, which is a real shift: the argument about whether your rent rise is fair moves into a formal channel rather than a conversation on the doorstep. This is all part of the machinery of the Renters' Rights Act finally being switched on.

Here is what the register actually is, in plain English. It's a national record of who lets property and which properties are let, tied to your compliance paperwork. Think of it as an MOT logbook for the rental sector. You register the landlord, you register each property, you pay the fee, and you keep the details current. It is not optional and it is not something you can quietly ignore, because it plugs into the wider enforcement regime - the same one where licensing breaches under the Act can now carry fines of up to £40,000.

For a Clapham or Balham landlord, the practical to-do list is short but real. First, get your compliance file in order before you register, not after - gas safety certificate, EPC, electrical safety report and deposit protection details. Registering with gaps in that paperwork just paints a target on your back. Second, budget for the fee across your portfolio: £65 on one flat is nothing, but if you hold four or five conversions around Abbeville Road or Stockwell it adds up and it recurs every year. Third, get your head around the rent-review process now, because with HMRC in the mix the days of an informal "I'm putting it up £150" are over. Do it properly, in writing, on the right form, at the right time.

My take? This is more admin, and no landlord enjoys more admin. But I'd resist the urge to see it purely as a burden. A register that pushes the worst operators out - the ones letting damp, unsafe flats and dragging the whole sector's reputation down - is no bad thing for the good landlords who already do it right. If you keep a decent flat, look after your tenants and hold your paperwork properly, this changes very little about how you operate. It just writes down what you were already doing. The landlords who should be nervous are the ones who've been cutting corners, and frankly, in a market as scrutinised as SW London, those days were numbered anyway.

The one thing I'd say clearly: don't leave it. Registration and the new rules are being rolled out on a fixed timetable, and the landlords who scramble at the deadline are the ones who make expensive mistakes.

Are you a landlord in Clapham or the surrounding area wondering how the register affects your flat? I'm happy to talk it through - drop me a line at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.

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London rents just jumped 9.8% in a month. Here's what's really going on in Clapham

Stand outside any letting board on Clapham High Street for ten minutes and you'll see it: a viewing, then another, then a couple already filling in a holding form on their phone before they've left the pavement. The queue is real. And this week the numbers caught up with what we've been living down here all summer.

Advertised rents across London rose 9.8% in August. That is not a typo, and it is not annual growth dressed up as a monthly figure - that is where asking rents landed last month as landlords listed higher. At the same time, flatshare supply fell 3.2% and room rents hit a fresh record high. Fewer rooms, fewer flats, more people chasing them. Nationally, gross rent on the average landlord's portfolio has climbed to somewhere between £88,454 and £90,000 a year, and rental growth is now accelerating across five English regions since the Renters' Rights Act landed.

So what is actually driving it? Part of it is the Act itself. With Section 21 gone and rent reviews tightened, a lot of landlords are front-loading: if you can only realistically move the rent once a year through a formal process, you set it higher at the start. That is not greed, it is arithmetic, and it is showing up in the asking prices from Stockwell to Streatham. The other part is plain supply. Every landlord who has sold up over the last two years, spooked by tax and regulation, is a flat that has left the rental pool for good. Down here, where two-bed conversions off Abbeville Road and around Clapham Common are the backbone of the market, that thinning stock bites hard.

If you're renting in SW London right now, the honest advice is to move fast and come prepared. Have your references, deposit and proof of income ready before you view, not after. A well-presented flat near the Common at a fair rent is gone in days, and the person who gets it is usually the one who could say yes on the spot. Stretching your budget by £100 a month to widen your search into Tooting or Balham will often get you far more than holding out for a bargain that isn't coming.

If you're a landlord, this is the moment to be careful, not cocky. A record asking rent means nothing if the flat sits empty for three weeks or the tenant leaves in six months because the price never stacked up. Voids are the quiet killer here - four in ten portfolios nationally are carrying them - and an empty month wipes out most of the gain from a punchy headline rent. Price it to let quickly to a good tenant who stays, and you'll almost always beat the landlord chasing the top of the market.

My take: this is a supply problem wearing a price-rise costume. Rents aren't high because tenants suddenly have more money - they're high because there isn't enough to go round. Until we get more homes into the SW London rental market, not fewer, this pressure isn't easing. And every well-intentioned rule that nudges another landlord towards selling makes it a little worse for the renters it was meant to help.

Are you feeling the squeeze on the rental market in Clapham - as a tenant or a landlord? I'd genuinely like to hear how it's playing out on your street. Drop me a line at jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.

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Another tax on landlords: the new £65-a-year landlord database explained

The government has confirmed it. The new Private Rented Sector Database, the "landlord register" everyone has been talking about since the Renters' Rights Act, goes live on 15 December 2026.

Here is what it actually means for you if you own a rental property:

£65 per property. Per year. Not a one-off. You pay it on registration and you pay it again every year to renew. Five flats? That is £325 a year, every year, just to have your name on a list.

You cannot delegate it. Your agent cannot register the property for you. You have to log in and do it yourself, property by property, uploading the address, the rent, the number of bedrooms, who lives there, gas safety, EICR and EPC certificates.

Miss it and the fine is up to £7,000. Get it wrong, or keep getting it wrong, and it is up to £40,000.

No registration number, no advert. Agents will be banned from marketing a property that has not been registered. So if you are late, your property sits empty while you sort the paperwork.

It rolls out region by region. West Midlands first in December, London from 15 July 2027 with a deadline of 14 October 2027.

Now let's be honest about what this is

This is not about rogue landlords. Rogue landlords do not register for things. They never have. The people who will dutifully log in, pay their £65 and upload their certificates are the same landlords who were already doing everything right.

Let's stack it up. In the last decade the private landlord has lost mortgage interest relief (Section 24), paid a 3% then 5% stamp duty surcharge on every purchase, watched the capital gains allowance cut from £12,300 to £3,000, faced the end of Section 21, seen selective licensing spread borough by borough at several hundred pounds a go, and now has to fund a database on top. Each one on its own is "only" a small charge. Together they are the reason so many good landlords have sold up.

And here is the bit the politicians never say out loud: landlords do not absorb costs. They pass them on. Every one of these charges ends up in the rent. Fewer landlords means fewer rental homes, which means higher rents. The person paying for this database is the tenant it claims to protect.

I have been an agent in South London for over 20 years. I speak to landlords every week who are tired. Not of tenants, not of the work, but of being treated as the problem to be solved rather than the people providing 4.6 million homes the state has no way of replacing.

If you are a landlord, here is my advice

1. Do not panic, London is not until July 2027. But diarise it now.
2. Get your certificates in order this year. Gas, EICR, EPC. If any of them are missing you will not be able to register.
3. Budget £65 per property into your annual numbers and, frankly, into your rent review.
4. If you have been thinking about selling, know that the market is still moving and good stock is still selling. Do it on your terms, not because a fine forced you.

If you want a straight conversation about what your property is worth today, either to let or to sell, get in touch. No sales pitch, just 20 years of knowing this market.

Sources: NRLA, Property118, Landlord Today, The Independent Landlord (September 2026).

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The Renters' Rights Act is here - the Clapham landlord's real to-do list

There's a particular look I've seen a lot lately across the desk from Clapham landlords: part resignation, part "just tell me what I actually have to do." The Renters' Rights Act has been talked about for so long that some owners have switched off entirely. That's the mistake. As one industry voice put it bluntly this week, this is a storm agents and landlords cannot simply wait out. So instead of another doom-laden overview, here's the practical version for anyone letting a flat round here.

First, understand what's genuinely changed. The Act ends the old no-fault route landlords relied on and moves everything onto a system where you need a proper legal ground to seek possession. To cope with the extra disputes, the government has been recruiting around 1,000 new judges for the courts that will handle these cases - a detail that tells you how much more of this will end up formally contested rather than settled with a quiet notice. There are new specific grounds too, including a student-possession ground (Ground 4A) that matters if you let to sharers on academic-year cycles, as plenty of landlords near the commons and around Battersea do.

Second, get your compliance genuinely in order, not "mostly". The days of a relaxed attitude to paperwork are over, because when possession has to go through a ground, your evidence trail is everything. That means a current, valid EPC, gas and electrical safety certificates in date, deposit protected and prescribed information served, and a tenancy agreement that reflects the new rules rather than a template from three years ago. If any of that is shaky, sort it before you need it, not after a dispute has started.

Third, think carefully about rent. Tribunals are already pushing back hard on increases - one analysis of around 200 determinations found roughly 73% of proposed rises were cut. The lesson for a Clapham landlord isn't to give up on fair increases, it's to make them evidence-based and defensible: know your comparable rents on your own street, document them, and price a review where you'd be comfortable justifying it, rather than reaching for a number and hoping it sticks.

Here's my take. I understand why some landlords are heading for the exit, and I've written before about the sell-off. But for those staying, panic is not a plan and neither is denial. The landlords who'll do fine under this Act are the organised, professional ones - the people who treat letting like the business it now clearly is, keep their properties in good order, and build genuine relationships with good tenants they want to keep. In a market this short of rental homes, a reliable tenant in a well-run flat is an asset worth protecting, not a liability to manage at arm's length.

Are you a landlord in Clapham or nearby trying to work out what the Renters' Rights Act means for your flat? Send me your situation and I'll give you a straight, practical steer - no scaremongering. Email jeroen@claphampropertyblog.com or call 07837 093554.