The scramble for a spare room

Inside the experience of trying to get by in houses of multiple occupation and the realities of renting in 2025. Ella Glover writes as the Renters' Rights Bill looks set to progress.

To Let (subject to scramble)

“Please manifest this for me,” I told three of my good friends, sliding through the photographs of a large double bedroom in a shared house in south west London. It was bigger than the room I’d lived in for the past 10 months, and £250 cheaper. Sure, the living room was small and dank, and the hallway and kitchen were permeated by a strong smell coming from the downstairs toilet. But it was in my area. And £250 cheaper!

I’d found the room on Spare Room, a platform where those who are letting a room and those who are looking to rent can find one another. I was only able to message Harry, the young aspiring DJ who needed someone to replace his spot in the four-bedroom house in the next three weeks, because I paid for the platform’s premium option, which allows you to message housemates in the first week of a property being posted. I went over on a Sunday, after work, and immediately expressed interested. Harry said if I wanted it, I could have it. He wasn’t really interested in going through the usual rigmarole of assessing new housemates based on their vibes rather than their ability to pay rent. It was mine. So I was surprised when, two weeks and three follow up messages later, I still hadn’t heard back.

UK renters face a dire set of circumstances, something which the long-awaited Renters’ Rights Bill, now in it’s final stages, attempts to address. What I’m describing is the private rental market at it’s most dystopian, and something swathes of young renters like me know all too well: the distressing scramble for a spare room.

As a type of living arrangement, house sharing has become increasingly common. Around 4.5 million people in the UK live in houses of multiple occupancy (HMOs). The number of people actively looking to rent on Spare Room, the most popular platform for finding a houseshare, has nearly tripled in the last decade — from 70,838 in January 2013 to 227,148 in September 2023.

While housesharing is to be expected for students and young professionals in their twenties, recent years have seen the age of those living in shared accommodation rising. People aged 18 to 34 are the most likely to live in houseshares, making up 69 per cent of the room rental market according to Spare Room, while the number of those aged 35 to 40 make up 16 per cent. Although those aged over 55 and 65 make up a tiny proportion of people seeking house shares, they have increased by 189 per cent and 970 per cent respectively.

It makes sense. Rent prices are climbing constantly, and house sharing is the cheapest option for those looking to rent privately. In the last year alone, average private rents in the UK increased by 6 per cent to £1,343 a month. The average rent for a room is £748 a month (£660 if you exclude inner London). But the cost of a room is rising all over the country. The price of a single room in the second quarter of this year was 24 per cent higher than the same period in 2019, and affordability is an issue. A March 2025 survey by Spare Room of 6,524 flatsharers found three quarters are now spending more than 30 per cent of their take-home pay on rent, and 26 per cent are spending more than half, myself included.

Meanwhile, any rooms that could be considered barely affordable offer no more than the bare minimum. Living rooms, I came to find during my on search, are now a luxury, with landlords preferring to scrape as much money as possible out of their properties by turning them into extra bedrooms. When viewing one particularly affordable property, I found myself weighing up whether it would be worth having to eat my meals in my bedroom if it meant I could actually save some money every month. The houseshare landscape is substandard and soulless. How could renters possibly get to know their housemates without a space in which to do so? It’s communal living without the community.

Living rooms quickly became a non-negotiable for me, but that only served to make the search even harder. Demand for houseshares is outstripping supply all over the country. On average, for every room available, there are 2.6 people searching. In some areas demand is considerably higher. In Bolton, for instance, there are 5.4 people per room. In Bradford there are 4.8 and in Wolverhampton and Dundee, 4.5. Now imagine how many of the rooms available are actually up to scratch (another flat I viewed had mice). Competition is fierce, making the search for a room high stress: viewings must be organised immediately and you’ll need to do as many as possible if you want the chance of securing a place before your current contract runs out.

The result of all this is a dystopian system that is not dissimilar to dating apps. Hundreds of worthy tenants scrambling over properties offering less than the bare minimum, only to be ghosted, or passed over for someone the existing tenants like more — but not before a painfully awkward meeting with said tenants, where you attempt to convince them that you are, in fact, a cool person and a brilliant tenant, and you’d love nothing more than to sit with them every evening and watch the latest season of The Traitors. And that’s without mentioning the myriad requirements placed on aspiring housemates before even being allowed a viewing (must be vegan, can’t work from home, etc.) It’s the pinnacle of renting in the digital age. And that’s without mentioning the risk you face when moving in with complete strangers who could be a little irritating at best and, at worst, abusive.

For weeks, I spent every day waking up and opening Spare Room like it was the morning news. I woke up early and cut my lunch breaks short to zip from viewing to viewing on my bike, each one more demoralising than the last. My anxiety was through the roof, and my life became consumed by this hellish chase. Eventually, I threw my hands up. I could handle living pay cheque to pay cheque, so long as I never had to send another debasing “Hi, I’d love to rent this room…” message again. After a month of scaling the hellscape that is modern renting, I decided to stay put. What’s the lesson? Renting in 2025 has little to do with what you earn, but who you know. ■

About the author: Ella is a freelance journalist specialising in worker's rights, housing, health, harm reduction and lifestyle. You can find her work in Prospect Magazine, Dazed, Observer Magazine, Women’s Health and - most importantly - here at The Lead.