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.
