The UK’s cheapest places to rent a home in 2024

Looking for a rental home that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg? Here’s your complete guide to the cheapest places to rent in the UK in 2024.

The UK’s average rent is now £1,223, a rise of +7.8% in the last year.

That’s the lowest level of rent rises for 2 years as the heat finally comes out of the rental market. Demand has dropped a fifth in a year and supply has risen by a fifth in the same period.

However, we still expect rents to rise in 2024, although a little more slowly. This is because rental demand is double the rate of before the pandemic, with 15 enquiries for every home to rent. At the same time, supply of rental homes remains 28% below the pre-pandemic average.

So with rents still rising and the cost-of-living squeeze pushing all our purses to the limit, you might be looking for a cheaper home to rent.

The good news is there are places where it’s much cheaper to rent a home than others. Let’s take a look at the regions, cities and local areas with the cheapest rents in the UK.

The cheapest places to rent in 2024: Regions

For the cheapest rents in the country, set your sights on the North East – you could expect to spend an average of £695 per month on rent here. It’s also the only region with no rental markets averaging more than £1,000 per month.

Northern Ireland, Scotland, Yorkshire and the Humber, and the North West all sit at the cheaper end of the scale too, with rents averaging less than £800 per month at the start of 2024.

As you may expect, rents across the South of England are much more expensive.

London’s average rent of £2,121 per month makes it almost twice as pricey as anywhere else. However, London renters will be glad to hear it has recorded the sharpest slowdown in rent rises, now at +5.1% compared to +15.3% a year ago.

The capital’s high rents are followed by the South East (£1,325), where nearly all private rental homes are now in areas with average rents higher than £1,000 per month. In 2020, that figure was less than 50%.

Then you’ve got the East of England (£1,163), where 70% of homes sit in £1,000-rent markets, and the South West (£1,077), with more than half now over that benchmark.

The cheapest places to rent in 2024: Cities

We’ve got rental data for every city in the UK, and you might be surprised when it comes to the cheapest (and most expensive) places.

The cost of rent varies a huge amount across UK cities, with the lowest in Burnley (£566), Grimsby (£608) and Hull (£612) and the highest in Brighton (£1,616), Oxford (£1,667) and London (£2,047).

Some of the UK’s most popular cities for students and young professionals are cheaper than you might think, too. Liverpool’s average rent comes in at £801 per month, closely followed by Sheffield (£809), Newcastle (£833), Swansea (£867) and Plymouth (£878).

When it comes to Scotland, you’ll find cheap city rents in Glasgow, where rents average £951 per month. Edinburgh is much pricier with an average rent of £1,263 per month.

The cheapest places to rent in 2024: Local authority areas

Let’s go one step further and dive into the local authority areas with the cheapest rent in the UK.

At the top of the table we’ve got Hartlepool, with an average rent of £527 in 2024, along with East Ayrshire (£548), Burnley (£556) and Dumfries and Galloway (£557).

The North East dominates the list, with Country Durham (£575), Redcar and Cleveland (£588), North East Lincolnshire (£608) and Darlington (£611) all featuring.

The North West is also well-represented when it comes to cheap rental spots – including Pendle (£583), Allerdale (£591), Hyndburn (£594), Copeland (£598) and Carlisle (£602).

The rest of the spots are filled by Scottish areas, with North Ayrshire (£602) and Angus (£604) recording some of the lowest average rents in 2024.