"The decline of affordable housing, coupled with weak wage growth and the high cost of living, is pushing more people into the flatshare market, putting immense pressure on the already limited supply of shared accommodation"
- Matt Hutchinson - SpareRoom
Room rents in Wales have risen 40% over the past five years – from £419 to £586 per month – as rents in the UK have risen 28%, according to data from flatshare site SpareRoom. The result is flatsharers now need to ‘find’ an extra £167 per month, or £2,004 per year, to cover their monthly rent.
In Q3 2025, the average room rent in Wales rose 2.3% on the previous year, almost three times the average increase for the whole of the UK (+0.8%).
This is being driven by rent rises in Cardiff, which are up 5% year on year, far higher than Edinburgh, which saw a year-on-year decrease (-4%) in Q3, and London, which saw no change.
Rents in Cardiff have risen by 49% over the past five years from £443 to £661 per month*. By comparison, London rents have risen 37%, as shown in the graph below:
The graph below shows how room rents in Cardiff rose sharply from mid 2021, after ‘stay local’ restrictions were lifted. Furious levels of demand forced up rents, which have never recovered:
Looking at rent rises across Wales’s three biggest cities, Newport overtook Swansea In Q1 2024 for the first time since Q3 2021 and has had a higher average room rent ever since. Renters pay 7% more for a room in Newport, where the average rent is now £575pm, than in Swansea (£539pm):
Demand outstrips supply 4:1
There is a rental supply crisis in Wales, with 3.8 people searching per room available to rent in Q3 2025, according to SpareRoom data. But supply has been on an upward trajectory, and it peaked in January 2025 (January being the busiest month of the year for new flatshare ads).
The data also shows the Welsh market is being buoyed by households who rent out rooms to lodgers. In 2025, around a third (32%) of all flatshare ads in Wales on SpareRoom were posted by ‘lodger landlords’. This is much higher than the figure for the whole of the UK, which is around a quarter (24%).
“The decline of affordable housing, coupled with weak wage growth and the high cost of living, is pushing more people into the flatshare market, putting immense pressure on the already limited supply of shared accommodation," comments Matt Hutchinson, director of flatshare site SpareRoom.
“At the same time, renters are suffering, even years later, from market volatility in the aftermath of the pandemic, which forced rents up to levels beyond people’s ceiling of affordability. They never came back down again because demand has always outweighed supply. Without households renting rooms to lodgers, demand in the Welsh rental market would be far more intense and average rents would be higher.”
