By now, especially if you’re a city-dweller in your 20s and 30s, you’ve probably noticed one of these posts going around social media. You’ve probably, in fact, seen at least three this week. You may have even posted one yourself. “Looking for someone to take over my room in Dalston for two weeks in late September!” they might begin, before reading something like “£850, bills not included!” The text usually overlays an image of the room in question, someone’s stuff stacked neatly around it. “Going to Ibiza/New York/Italy and looking for someone ASAP! No time wasters, plz! DM for more deets!”
Over the past couple of years, such posts have become more common and increasingly a subject of ridicule. As one meme on popular Instagram account @real_housewives_of_clapton reads: “Hi am looking for someone to rent my room for 8 hours while I go out for a bit of lunch and see an exhibition. Lovely house. All bills included.” The length of a “sublet” – a term that used to evoke a multiple-month stay, or someone taking over a room before the original tenant could escape the lease – appears to be getting shorter and shorter. In one recent post, someone was advertising a sublet on their student halls for nine days, presumably because they didn’t need to start university yet.
While these sublet posts are obviously funny (just popping to the shop for some ciggies, anyone looking for a room?), it’s worth considering why sublets across the UK appear to be spiralling so wildly out of control. Private rent prices have risen by 5% in the past 12 months. According to property website Rightmove, in the first quarter of the year, average monthly rents outside London soared to a record high of £1,190, with renters in London paying about £2,500 for the first time. Meanwhile, a third of renters in England lack savings to pay the rent if they were to lose their jobs. For students, the average price of student housing far outstrips the maximum government-offered maintenance loan. And for those on housing benefit, only 5% of private rented homes are now affordable.
With the above in mind, it’s no wonder renters are no longer able to afford holidays or brief stints abroad without making sure everything at home is covered financially. With rents so high, people have precious little to spare for a holiday, meaning that covering the rent while they’re gone can be the key factor in being able to afford it. The fact that despite the risks, people are still willing to do it – subletting is almost always against the terms of a rental contract – proves how tight things are for renters. There is definitely not a lack of demand, however. With the country’s housing shortage as it is, there very well may be a subletter who will pay your rent for a couple of weeks when you go away.
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It’s worth considering, too, just how tricky and arduous it is to secure a flat in the UK to begin with. It has long been normal for renters to outbid each other, often offering way above the asking price to secure a home. Plenty of people – myself included – are also agreeing to longer-term contracts of two or three years just to protect ourselves against annual rent increases and being forced to endure the whole process all over again. In the past, a person might have given up their room to go travelling. Now, it’s probably not worth the risk. What if you can’t find a new room once you’re back? Which brings us full circle: when it’s such a struggle to find a long-term flat, why not sublet for a while instead?
As ever, the solution to this conundrum doesn’t lie with renters themselves; neither would it be helpful for landlords to start furiously cracking down on illegitimate subletters (maybe you should have thought about that before you raised the rent on a cramped attic conversion with no oven by £300 a month). The housing system in the UK needs a dramatic overhaul, with better protections put in place for tenants such as rent freezes and longer, secure tenancies. Until then, all those Instagram posts from mates of mates advertising their boxy room in Stoke Newington for £1,000 while they go to Wales for the weekend are probably here to stay.