An article on the increasingly fraught London renting market elicited many accounts from our readers. Here is a selection of their renting tales - share your own in the thread below

What are your experiences of London’s rental market? Perhaps you have a tale similar to that of Sam Forbes, who found himself living in squalid conditions on a barge in west London. While his situation - afloat on the Thames - was unusual, the wider picture of an overheated rental market struck a chord with our readers.

Below are a few stories from Guardian commenters describing their own struggles with renting in the capital. Are you currently renting in London? Share your own experiences in the comments thread.



“I sometimes dream of a small place of my own”

I too work long hours, have professional qualifications, and I’m not young but I can’t even afford a studio in London. And if I left London I’d never work again.

I’ve seen windowless basements with rusting fridges with an endless queue of viewers - all working people.

My wages have been frozen for 5 years now which means they have effectively gone backwards while rents, food and travel costs have soared. I have a half-decent room right now but it costs me more than half my wages in Zone 3. I can’t move further out because the travel costs would not compensate for only marginally lower rent and the time taken to get back and forth from work would just add to the exhaustion I already feel.

I am subject to other people’s time-keeping and habits and my possessions are mostly in boxes. I sometimes dream of a small place of my own but it doesn’t look like it will ever happen now.

And I’m one of the lucky ones.

lacaro

“It just goes to show how screwed up the rental market is”



A couple of years ago, I was paying £560 per month, excluding bills, for a zone 2 bedsit with shared bathroom and toilet facilities. Maybe 5m by 2m in size and run down to boot. An absolutely mind-boggling amount of money but taking into account travel and other factors it was the best option I could find at the time.

I’m now paying £950 (albeit in zone 4) for a brand-new semi-detached 3-bed shared ownership house. It feels like a palace. Only £390 difference. It just goes to show how screwed up the rental market is. I thank my lucky stars we were able to scrape together the deposit.

telefunkal

“Supposed to be affordable which even as a teacher it is not”

My key worker flat in islington is now £900 a month - supposed to be affordable which even as a teacher it is not. So now they are mostly occupied by doctors - whereas they would have been nurses, firefighters etc were it affordable.

ginpin

Facebook Twitter Pinterest View of Trellick Tower, west London. Photograph: Ben Ramos/Alamy

“All of us in the house are terrified of the prospect of having to leave”

I moved to London 9 years ago and found a little room in a terraced house for £280. I stayed in it a couple of years, slightly losing my mind, until the occupant of the biggest room moved in with a wealthy boyfriend, so I went up to £350 for a large upstairs front room, the rent hasn’t changed and I’m still in it. All of us in the house are terrified of the prospect of having to leave, because if we lose our tenancy here we’ll mostly have to leave London. The landlady lives in Australia, and nothing around the house is really fixed by the estate agent cowboys, so I have taken to fixing things myself. This many years later there are new floors, doors, carpets, appliances, all replaced furniture and a newly landscaped garden. It has become our house really.



Meanwhile the flat downstairs was bought and sold in a two year turn around for a 40% increase, the couple who lived their basically made about 70k, or 35k a year, or £17,500 each per year of occupancy. I’ve done my best to convince our landlady that her best bet is to hold hold hold, that we’re looking after the house well and that she can sell it for millions in a few years. It seems like our best bet, but it’s not ideal and hardly seems fair. However, we’re also all very aware of the comparably great deal we have here, even if we are hostages to it.

DanielFrisbee

“No paperwork, and rent was only accepted in cash”

Moved down to London at the end of 2007, ended up in a one room bedsit in an utter hovel costing £450 per month. No paperwork, landlord wandered by each month and rent was only accepted in cash. That was all going swimmingly until it turned out that one of the ever-revolving cast of mysterious ‘housemates’ had brought with them a teeny tiny bedbug. The day I woke up covered from head to toe in bites was the day I gave my notice.

I would be astonished if he wasn’t still renting the place out now, and I doubt it’s clear of bedbugs. Happy days for the people of East Acton...

powermonkey

“Come next month I have to pay my next 6-month rent chunk”

I moved into my current flat (shared) flat when I was finishing my masters degree, so needed a guarantor as my part-time job wasn’t paying enough to guarantee I could pay my rent. Fair enough. The agency I was dealing with did not accept my guarantor because they also owned property abroad. They then said that the only way they would let the place to me was if I paid the 6 week deposit and 6 months rent up front. It had taken so long to argue with them that I was dangerously close to my move-out date without a place to move in to, and also had a couple of friends that I didn’t want to make homeless because of me. I was lucky enough to be able to borrow money from relatives, but not everyone else is the same. Come next month I have to pay my next 6-month rent chunk as they won’t let me start paying monthly until I re-sign the contract next year (which I won’t).

ID4258606

“A daily commute of almost 6 hours”



I was staying with a friend in Leicester for a couple of weeks, and had to go to London for a day for a particular reason. I had to be in London early, so I thought I’d save a few quid and take the National Express coach rather than the train.

Turned out that I was lucky to get a seat. The coach left Leicester at 4am or so, and got to London Victoria a bit before 7am, and it was absolutely packed. The young lad in the seat next to me, who was quite smartly dressed - clearly working in some kind of entry level professional job - explained that the round trip to London and back cost around 20 quid or so. He couldn’t afford to live in London, so still lived at home with his parents and paid £100 per week in coach fares and had a daily commute of almost 6 hours. That seemed to me to be every bit as punishing as living in squalor in London in some ways, but was, presumably, cheaper.

ScouseJohnny