This Is How Much Your Rent Has Increased Since 2007

Want to know the real cost of renting in the UK? Interested to know how much your room would have cost in 2007? BuzzFeed News has the answers.

How much has monthly cost of renting a room in your area increased in the last decade? Enter your postcode to find out.

Enter your postcode below to find out how rents have changed...

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Rent prices from spareroom.co.uk, for the cost of one room, often in a flatshare, and are based on listings from 2007 to 2015. They may not fully reflect the market in your area.

BuzzFeed News has obtained data on almost 2 million historical property listings from housemate finding website Spareroom.co.uk, enabling us to build a database that reflects the actual rent individuals pay per month for a room in the UK.

Official statistics on the cost of renting are usually based on renting an entire house or flat, which can give a distorted view of the market, especially when fewer people are able to afford an entire property on their own.

As a result we believe our Spareroom data on the price of a room in a houseshare helps provide a more accurate representation of the real cost of finding a place to live. Because ultimately what really matters to people is how much money is leaving their bank account at the end of each month.

The data highlights substantial rent increases in many of areas of the UK during the last decade, with the average cost of renting a room hitting over £600 per month. The rise has been even steeper in London, with rents in some parts of the capital having increased by 40% since the financial crisis began in 2007.

This map shows how the cost of renting a room has changed across the whole of the UK during the last decade – use the slider to change the year.

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Rent prices from spareroom.co.uk, for the cost of one room, often in a flatshare, and are based on listings from 2007 to 2015. They may not fully reflect the market in your area. Some areas do not have enough data for a particular year and so are blank.

The Spareroom data also shows the ever-increasing rents in much of southern England, with prices rising in commuter towns on the edge of London as rents continue to surge ahead. Other areas showing substantial increases include Manchester, Leeds, Edinburgh, and Bristol.

It's worth noting the data is not perfect, especially in earlier years, though we have chosen to exclude postcodes with only a handful of accommodation listings to avoid extreme results. It also features a large number of listings from London, which affects the average national price of a room, and is based on the advertised rental price rather than the final agreed sum.

But ultimately it tends to show one thing: In many places rents are going up fast, even if it's only for a room in a houseshare.