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Revealed: The university towns and cities with the cheapest rents

Christina Hoghton
Written By:
Christina Hoghton
Posted:
Updated:
08/08/2019

Students face a huge variation in the cost of renting a home depending on which university they go to

Lancaster is the cheapest university in the UK for students to rent a home, according to Ideal Flatmate.

The flat-sharing website found that the university – which is ranked as the seventh-best in the UK – has an average monthly rent cost of £598.

In second place is the University of Aberdeen, where the average rent per month is £602.

The University of Lincoln (£628), Loughborough (£689) and Durham (£693) complete the best five universities for affordable rental prices for tenants.

Using data from PropertyData, Ideal Flatmate looked at the average monthly rent for the outcode (first half of the postcode) of the top 50 universities to see where provided the best mix of great students, affordable and not so affordable accommodation.

Also in the top 10 most affordable universities to rent a home are Nottingham (£728), Leicester (£737), Swansea (£767), Dundee (£784) and Liverpool (£784).

Most pricey places

At the other end of the list is the UK’s fifth-best university, Imperial College London, where the average monthly rent cost around the main campus is £4,142, proving incredibly expensive for students.

The London School of Economics and King’s College London are tied as two of the worst universities for tenant rental affordability around the respective campuses, with rent working out at £3,159 per month on average around both universities.

University College London and SOAS University of London are also tied with an average rental cost of £2,431, meaning the top five worst universities for tenant rental affordability are all in London.

Cambridge – the UK’s top-ranked university – and second-placed Oxford also neighbour each other in the lists of most expensive average rental prices. Rent costs in the surrounding areas of the two universities are among the worst in the country for tenants, with the average rent price around the University of Cambridge working out at £1,491 per month, barely cheaper than the University of Oxford’s £1,495 per month.

Tom Gatzen, co-founder of Ideal Flatmate, said: “Although some of the country’s best universities are situated in London, they prove somewhat problematic for tenants and landlords alike with high costs making it hard to rent but also minimising the return on investment for landlords.

“For students, living around some of the very best unis in the UK outside of London is fairly affordable, especially when you consider that they are most likely to be sharing with a number of friends.

“Flat sharing is a great way to cut costs for any student tenant without them having to forsake their first-choice university and it’s also a great way to make new friends for life while setting you up for surviving in the ‘real-life’ rental market once you’ve graduated.”